The links were vital to understanding and enjoying this thread. Please keep in mind, I do not endorse, nor am I promoting the author of this thread. It is strictly for aiding in bible understanding. (FYI -- I am no longer a so-named JW).
http://www.focusonthekingdom.org/66.htm
America is flooded with instructions on ?how to make churches grow,? ?how to evangelize,? ?how to disciple,? ?how to win men and women for Jesus with ?four simple steps to becoming a Christian.?? The common objective of these ?programs? is to lead a person to ?accept Jesus,? to ?get saved.?
It appears to us that the phrase ?accepting Jesus? can be deceptive unless it is defined as ?hearing, understanding, accepting and obeying the commands and words of Jesus.?
The point of raising these questions is to invite an examination of the Gospel as Jesus preached it, Christianity as he conceived it, conversion on his terms and not ours. After all, Jesus? central thesis, repeated constantly, was that only those who hear and obey his words will achieve salvation. Did he not, in his most powerful warning, state that many in that day (the day of judgment) will claim to have preached as Christians, exorcised demons as Christians and done many marvelous miracles as Christians? But they will be tragically disappointed to find out that their efforts had been in vain. They had not been recognized as his disciples. They had not heeded his instructions (Matt. 7:21-27).
It would not hurt for us all to conduct a self-inventory. If salvation is for ?those who obey him? (Heb. 5:9), would it not be natural to consider his orders to us?
His first and primary command was given in Mark 1:14, 15. Repent (a command) and believe my Gospel of the Kingdom (another command). The ringing cry of Jesus throughout the land was that the Kingdom of God was approaching. This was the Gospel from God Himself ? God?s Gospel (Mark 1:14; Rom. 1:1). Jesus was the organ of that call to repentance in view of the Kingdom. People were to respond with all urgency to the command to ?repent and believe God?s Gospel? about the Kingdom of God. Mark 1:14, 15 provides a summary of the Christian faith as Jesus taught it. ?After John was thrown in jail, Jesus came into Galilee preaching God?s Gospel: The Kingdom of God is approaching. Repent and believe the Gospel.? The rest of the New Testament is an expansion of this opening salvo launched on the public by Jesus and valid until the future end of the age when he returns.
?Repent and believe.? The original Greek term ?repent? has to do with rethinking, changing the mind, a complete reorientation in a new direction, with a new-found belief in the Kingdom of God and in Jesus the bearer of that Gospel or Good News about the Kingdom.
Repent does not just mean, ?Be a better person. Give up whatever you define as sin. Be good and believe in God.? Repentance, Jesus-style, means firstly grasping the concept of the Kingdom of God, believing in that Kingdom and beginning to live in the light of that coming Kingdom. ?Seek first the Kingdom of God and God?s righteousness [right way of thinking and doing] and all these other things [the necessities of life] will be added to you? (Matt. 6:33).
Jesus unpacked his command to repent and believe in the Kingdom Gospel in the famous Sermon on the Mount, and later in the parable of the sower he detailed the mechanics of the salvation process and program. He started as always with the Kingdom of God Gospel. Here is how the salvation program works. Here indeed is how immortality in the Kingdom is to be gained. The process begins when a person is confronted with the Gospel of the Kingdom as Jesus preached it.
?Whenever someone hears the Message about the Kingdom and does not understand it, the Devil comes and snatches away what is sown [seed] in his heart? (Matt. 13:19). Luke reported these words from his source with the same dramatic clarity: ?Whenever someone hears the Message [of the Kingdom, Matt. 13:19] the Devil comes and snatches away the Message so that he cannot believe it and be saved? (Luke 8:12). Mark begins by reminding us that Jesus makes this parable of the sower the key to all the parables: ?If you do not understand this parable, how will you understand any of the parables?? (Mark 4:13). What a brilliant key to the mind of Christ, that is, the holy spirit of Christ and of God his Father.
Mark details the sequence of events leading to conversion to Christianity. Jesus is recorded as having warned about the danger of our blindness and stubbornness, our failure in fact to believe the word and words of Jesus:
?To you [disciples] has been given the secret of the Kingdom of God, but for those outside everything is in parables, so that seeing they see but do not perceive and hearing they hear but do not understand. If they did, they would repent and be forgiven? (Mark 4:11, 12).
We propose that Jesus here makes an intelligent grasp of and response to the Gospel of the Kingdom, the condition for repentance and forgiveness.
Those words in Mark 4:11, 12 (and parallels in Matt. 13 and Luke 8) warrant close study and meditation. They open up the mind of Christ to us. There is a clear sequence. Seeing, hearing, understanding, repentance and forgiveness (we offer the acronym SHURF!).
Seeing, hearing and understanding relate expressly and specifically to the Gospel of the Kingdom of God. We note too that when Jesus preached these words of invitation to salvation, he had not yet mentioned a word about his sacrificial death, nor a word about his resurrection. Belief in the atoning death and resurrection of course are now (since they happened) also central in the Gospel, but never to the exclusion of belief in the Kingdom of God as the basis of the Gospel message.
Further examination of Jesus? method and message in evangelism reveals that he thought of the word/Gospel of the Kingdom as the essential saving seed which must be planted in our minds. The Gospel of the Kingdom is the germ of immortality, the energizing principle of life. The Gospel message is the vehicle by which the spirit of God is transmitted to us, and that holy spirit is a down payment for the immortality which we gain fully at his future return (not at the moment of death, but at the resurrection when he comes back).
Without a seed there is no new life. Nature is the parable of the salvation process. God puts us in His laboratory surrounded by evidence of seeds as the initiating spark of creatures of all sorts, as well as of plants, flowers and trees. God?s immortality program is initiated by a seed, the seed sown in the mind, the seed defined as the Gospel of the Kingdom (Luke 8:11; M
