Episode 20 begins a three-part outline and summary of Jesus’ gospel teachings that the new teachers of Jesus’ personal religion need to bring to the world to effect the return to Jesus.

 

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Transcript

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The Future of the Teachings of Jesus

9. The Message of The New Revelation–Part 1

Summary Outline of Jesus’ Gospel Teachings (Ep. 20)

The Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of man. What is the message that the new teachers and leaders of Jesus’ religion need to bring to the world? The short answer to this question is that the world needs to be illuminated by a new understanding of Jesus’ original gospel of the kingdom, the Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of man. It is this great central truth of Jesus’ gospel that has the power to unite all the Christian sects and believers, and bring the new and more powerful revelation of Jesus to the world.

The good news of the gospel. Jesus’ original gospel is the “good news” that God is our loving heavenly Father, and we are all his children, sons and daughters of God, and brothers and sisters to one another in God’s heavenly family. Jesus taught that we are all by birth sons and daughters of God, our creator Father. He also taught that God is the spiritual Father of our soul and the Father-source of our unique personality. When, by faith, we believe Jesus’ gospel that God is our Father and thereby choose to do our Father’s will we enter into the kingdom of heaven and become both in fact and in truth children of God.

What the world most needs to know. That which the world most needs to know is that we are all sons and daughters of God, and through faith we may actually realize, and daily experience this great ennobling truth. Sonship with God, by faith, is the saving truth of the gospel of the Kingdom. We need to learn to live and teach others to live as self-conscious and faithful children of God who are dedicated to doing their Father’s will.

The kingdom of God is the will of God. The central theme of all Jesus’ teachings is the kingdom of God, which he also referred to as the kingdom of heaven. He directed us to “seek first the kingdom of God.” (Mt. 6:33) In the Lord’s prayer Jesus identified the kingdom of God as the will of God. He taught his apostles to pray, “Your kingdom come; your will be done.” (Mt. 6:10) He taught that the kingdom is the will of his heavenly Father dominant and transcendent in the heart of the believer. This choice to submit our personal will to the doing of our Father’s will is the most fundamental and important decision of our lives.

Summary outline of Jesus’ gospel teachings. To live as a loyal child of God is to seek, discover, and do the will of the Father. The following is a summary outline of some of Jesus’ most important teachings and concepts regarding life in the kingdom, living by faith and doing the Father’s will.

The birth of the spirit. When we believe Jesus’ gospel that God is our loving heavenly Father and choose to do our Father’s will, to put his divine will above our human will, we are born of the spirit. Jesus perfectly expressed this choice in the garden of Gethsemane when he prayed, “not my will, but yours, be done.” (Lk. 22:42) This new birth brings about a change in the orientation of our minds whereby we increasingly bring forth the fruit of the Father’s spirit in our daily lives. A few of the numerous examples of such spiritual fruit include faith, love, service, forgiveness, righteousness, goodness, gentleness, loyalty, kindness, fairness, honesty, peace, joy, and self-control. Increasingly and spontaneously bearing spiritual fruit is the proof that we have been born of the spirit and are living as children of God.

Faith. The birth of the spirit is a change of mind that takes place through the power of faith. God will for us is that we increasingly learn to live by faith. In Jesus’ gospel we gain entrance into the Father’s kingdom by faith, simple childlike belief that God is our Father, and we are his children. Jesus’ life demonstrated the ideal human faith, the greatest faith the world has ever known. We should learn from him and make Jesus the “author and finisher of our faith.” (Hew. 12:2) He trusted God and depended on Him as a small child trusts and depends on his earthly parent. Faith was his spiritual anchorage throughout a life of trials and tribulations that ended with a cruel and unjust death. Jesus demonstrated in his life a new and higher type of faith­­­­­—a living faith in God. It was not based on tradition or dogma; it was a spiritual attitude that wholly dominated every aspect of his life. He challenges us to achieve this kind of faith, to believe not only what he believed but also as he believed

Love. The most basic and important spiritual fruit for us to bear is love. Love is the greatest of all spirit realities and the rule of living within the kingdom of God. We are commanded to love God supremely and our neighbor as ourself. (Mk. 12:30; Mt. 22:39) Jesus taught that this supreme law of love for God and our fellow man constitutes our whole duty, declaring, “On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets.” (Mt. 22:40) Love is the desire to do good to others.

Service. Closely connected to loving others is our service to others. Those whom we love we will willingly serve. Our greatest service to God is the affectionate dedication of our free will to the doing of his divine will; in fact, this is the only thing we truly possess that we can give to the Father. Our unselfish service of our brethren expresses our love for them, and Jesus taught his followers to live a life of unselfish service to others. He directed his followers to serve all declaring, “Whoever would be great among you must be your servant.” (Mt. 20:26) The religion of Jesus is a religion of loving service.

Forgiveness. Faith is the price we pay for entrance into the kingdom of heaven, but it is God’s forgiveness of our debts that accepts our faith as the price of admission. God loves us with an infinite Fatherly affection and freely forgives his erring children even before they ask. But we may receive and experience this forgiveness only in so far as we forgive our fellows; our forgiveness of others opens the way for us to receive God’s pre-existing forgiveness.  Jesus made clear this necessity to forgive others in “The Lord’s Prayer,” where he taught us to pray, “Forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors.” (Mt. 6:12) To truly forgive others we must learn to love them as we love ourselves.

 

 

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