What is the Gospel?

Misrepresented in the media

Christianity is a despised faith in the UK today.

Let me give you a couple of examples.

On 12th June 2017, Matthew d’Ancona wrote this in his column for the Guardian:

“The DUP [Democratic Unionist Party] is a gang of homophobes, creationists and enemies of gender equality.”

The context of this article was UK Prime Minister Theresa May’s failed attempt to win an increased majority in the 2017 General Election (an election which she called!), and her subsequent resort to a coalition with the DUP, a socially conservative Northern Ireland party with 10 Members of Parliament (MP’s), to secure a majority in the House of Commons.

It is not my point here to show either that the ten elected members of the DUP either are, or are not, a “gang”; nor that they are, or are not, homophobes, creationists or enemies of gender equality.

My point is simply this: Matthew d’Ancona’s clear implication in this article was that such people should not be in government, and that Theresa May’s Conservative party should not be entering into an alliance with them.

Do you see what he’s done there?

He has effectively claimed in this article that a person has no right to be in central government because they’re a Christian.

For a Christian is, by definition, a creationist.

There is lots of confusion out there today about the term ‘creationist.’ Many people (especially journalists, it seems) believe that a ‘creationist’ is someone who believes the earth is 6,000 years old.

In fact, a creationist is simply someone who believes that the world was ‘created’ (hence the name!) by a ‘Creator.’ It matters not whether that happened by a six-day process as in the first chapter of the book of Genesis understood literally, or by a ‘Big Bang.’ Every believing Christian is therefore, by definition, a ‘creationist.’

And so Matthew d’Ancona is effectively saying that Christians have no right to take part in central government. So much for a society that doesn’t discriminate on the basis of a person’s religion.[1]

(As an aside, you may be interested to know that, in the early part of the 20th century, loads of scientists were actually opposed to the notion of a ‘Big Bang,’ because of the implication inherent in it that there was a Creator.[2])

Let me give you another example.

On 27 July 2017 the Independent Online published an article which it entitled,

“Bible says Canaanites were wiped out by Israelites but scientists just found their descendants living in Lebanon”

According to this story, scientists had established a DNA link between five people whose remains were found in the ancient city of Sidon, and the modern-day population of Lebanon.

The problem with this article is that it provided not a shred of evidence that the Bible actually says the Canaanites were wiped out by the Israelites.[3] Indeed, it is very easy to demonstrate that the Bible explicitly says the Canaanites were not wiped out by the Israelites — there is even mention of a Canaanite woman in New Testament times, over a thousand years later.

What the Independent Online was doing, of course, with that headline, was falsely claiming that science had ‘disproved’ the Bible. But their assertion was entirely on the basis of a ‘straw man’ — science had ‘disproved’ something the Bible doesn’t actually claim.

Why not rather say that the discovery of ancient Canaanite DNA in the modern inhabitants of Lebanon provides further validation of the Old Testament’s general historicity?

But then, why let the truth get in the way of a good story?

A misrepresented Messiah

I have mentioned the above two examples — I could have mentioned many more — to show how Christianity is persistently misrepresented in the UK’s mainstream media.

None of this, however, should surprise us.

Christians, after all, believe in a Messiah who was misrepresented and despised.

Writing at least 550 years before Jesus’ human birth, a Judean prophet named Isaiah wrote this about him:

He was despised and rejected by men;
a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief;
and as one from whom men hide their faces
he was despised, and we esteemed him not.[4]

We, then, believe in a Messiah who was despised. Although widely praised, lauded and revered at the beginning of his public ministry, at the time of his death as a criminal in Jerusalem, nearly everyone around him despised him.

The remarkable thing is, Jesus came into this world precisely to be despised. Why would he do this?

The Gospel According to Matthew gives us the answer.

One of the things which Jesus does, quite early on, in the Gospel According to Matthew, is he delivers what is commonly referred to as the ‘Sermon on the Mount.’ You can find it in Matthew chapters 5—7. A few things to note, however, about the Sermon on the Mount:

1. It is a speech given to the disciples of Jesus (not just to the Twelve disciples, but to all his followers).

2. It is written to such disciples as individuals. It is not, therefore, in any sense a blueprint for a state legal system.

3. It expects of such disciples a way of living which far exceeds the requirements of conventional, legal morality. For example,
   

    
   “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, Do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if anyone would sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. And if anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. Give to the one who begs from you, and do not refuse the one who would borrow from you.”

4. The ‘Sermon on the Mount’ in many ways lays out the entry requirements for the kingdom of heaven. For example, near the beginning of it Jesus says,
   

    
   “For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”

   (The scribes and the Pharisees were the religious élite in 1st-century Israel.)

So, according to Jesus in the ‘Sermon on the Mount,’ to enter the kingdom of heaven a person needs to have a righteousness that “exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees” — a righteousness which “turns the other cheek,” as the saying goes.

Now look around the world with an unimpassioned eye, and you will many, many thousands of Christian believers who are living out their lives in this kind of way. I read recently of a Christian woman in Africa who, though herself impoverished, had taken in ten children with nobody else to look after them. These were besides the eleven children of her own.

Indeed, one of the main reasons we see so many films, so many theatre productions, so many dramas, mocking Christianity, is precisely because Christians “turn the other cheek.” Christians and Christianity have always been a soft target for mockery, precisely because we don’t retaliate.

All the same, the demands Jesus makes in the ‘Sermon on the Mount’ are extremely high. The example above is only one: Jesus also tells his followers not to hate anybody; not to look lustfully at the opposite sex; not to swear an oath falsely; to love even their enemies.

How is such a righteousness as this even possible — a righteousness which “exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees” — a righteousness which is fit to enter the kingdom of heaven, when the scribes and Pharisees can’t?

I honestly believe on this basis, the kingdom of heaven must be populated with very few people indeed. I certainly would not be one of them.

An ‘exceeding’ righteousness

Well, straight after the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus then does something surprising. He goes and associates with outcasts.

As Jesus passed on from there, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax booth, and he said to him, “Follow me.” And he rose and followed him.

And as Jesus reclined at table in the house, behold, many tax collectors and sinners came and were reclining with Jesus and his disciples. And when the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?”[5]

The tax collectors were the scum of Jewish society. They were the ones who collaborated with the Roman enemy, while fleecing their own people. Yes, it was common practice for tax collectors to ‘over-tax’, and cream off the difference before they handed the proceeds to the Romans. Nobody wanted to be around a tax collector.

If the scribes and the Pharisees cannot get into the kingdom of heaven, why is Jesus hanging around these people?!

We begin to see the answer to this, from Matthew chapter 16 onwards:

From that time Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, “Far be it from you, Lord! This shall never happen to you.” But he turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a hindrance to me. For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man.”

Then Jesus told his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul? For the Son of Man is going to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay each person according to what he has done. Truly, I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.”[6]

Jesus came to this earth to suffer. To “suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed.”

Why would he do this?

He came to suffer in our place. He came to suffer the death that we ought to die, in our place.

He came to pay the penalty that we deserve for our un-righteousness.

You see, he can do that because he is God.

Just suppose for a minute that I was able to live a perfectly righteous life, the life he lived. Still, I could not pay the penalty for many other people. I am but a man.

But he is able to pay the penalty on behalf of all of us, because he is God. On the cross, God bore the penalty for mankind.

And because God has borne the penalty, that means God is able to give us the righteousness of Jesus — a righteousness which “exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees,” a righteousness which we ourselves certainly could not achieve.

What then? — is Jesus dead?

Let us remind ourselves of what Jesus told his disciples:

From that time Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.

He told them that after his death, he would be raised again. And all the Gospels say that this is what happened.

Now the skeptic will say, “That’s silly. People don’t rise from the dead!” Granted, it’s hardly an everyday occurrence. Indeed, I used to say exactly this myself.

But the Gospel writers claim to be writing history — not disinterested history, of course, but history nonetheless.

Grant, then, for a moment, that what they report actually happened.

Then Jesus not only gives his people his own righteousness by his death — he also gives them the new life he lives now, a life which has beaten death once and now lives for ever with God.

This is the righteousness which “exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees” — a righteousness which is a gift from God, and which promises to us everlasting life with him.

How, then, does one obtain this gift of everlasting life with God? — by ‘doing good’?

Not so. Let us return again to what Jesus said to his disciples earlier:

Then Jesus told his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul? For the Son of Man is going to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay each person according to what he has done. Truly, I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.”

The difference between entering the kingdom of heaven and failing to, is this: taking up our cross and following Jesus.

Why not start today by reading one of the four Gospels (you can obtain Bibles very inexpensively and in modern English from your local bookshop), and finding out more about the misrepresented Messiah?

The mainstream media in the UK loves to attack Jesus and attack those who believe in him. The purpose of this site is to help Christians to keep on believing in Jesus, by showing that belief in him is reasonable, logical, and ultimately true.

 

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Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright ® 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

 

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[1] All believing Jews and Muslims are also, of course, according to the above definition, creationists. This example of anti-religious discrimination will therefore apply equally to people of these faiths. It seems clear, however, that Mr. d’Ancona has Christians particularly in mind when he excludes ‘creationists’ from central government.

[2] http://www.scienceforthepublic.org/blog/resistance-to-new-ideas

[3] Belatedly, and no doubt in response to reader letters such as mine, the Independent Online revised the article and added a ‘proof’ of their position by quoting Joshua 10:40; 11:15. Their addition of this ‘proof’ to their article does not affect my argument: the ‘proof’ doesn’t hold up when considered in the Bible’s broader context.

[4] Isaiah chapter 53 verse 3

[5] Matthew 9:9-11

[6] Matthew 16:21-28