There is a profound difference between the covenant of law and the new covenant of grace. Law evaluates and condemns us based on our performance. Under the new covenant we are justified based on the performance of the Righteous One. We are credited with his right standing before God. We are born again into God’s family in which we are blessed with every spiritual blessing in Christ.

 

The gospel message is the story of the promised coming of Jesus the Messiah, his itinerant ministry, his crucifixion, death, and resurrection, the announcement that God’s kingdom authority has been restored on the earth in his person as Lord of lords, his ascension into heaven after which he poured out the Holy Spirit, and his promised return as the glorious Son of Man, who will judge the living and the dead.

Where we begin a gospel presentation can vary depending on the understanding of our listeners and the leading of the Holy Spirit. We can go all the way back to the Garden of Eden, or ever further back to before creation, as John’s gospel does. We probably should include some reference to how mankind got into the sin predicament we find ourselves. We should tell people how God promised to send a Savior all the way back in the garden. We can include his promise to Abraham that one of his descendants would be a blessing to the entire earth. We might mention his promise to King David that one of his offspring would rule over God’s kingdom forever. We could relate how Isaiah promised that a virgin would have a child upon whose shoulders the kingdom of God would rest. We might wish to include a reference to Isaiah 53 which describes what the Lamb of God would suffer for our sake.

Then we come to that point in history when God fulfilled all those promises as recorded in the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. We can share how Jesus went about doing good and liberating all those held captive by the devil, fulfilling the messianic promise found in Isaiah 61 and quoted by our Lord in Luke 4:18.

All this led up to his crucifixion, when he offered himself to God as the Lamb to take away our sins. Then came the resurrection whereby he was confirmed as the Lord of all. After that he ascended to heaven and poured out the Holy Spirit on the fulfillment of the feast of Pentecost, thus launching the church into the Great Commission. We still wait his Second Coming as the glorious son of man prophesied by Daniel.

In Jesus the Lord, the kingdom of God has taken root on the earth and is growing through the preaching of the gospel. Wherever God’s kingdom is established, people come under the authority and rule of the king, our Lord Jesus.

Eventually God’s kingdom will fill the entire earth with the glory of God.

“You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to our God; and they will reign upon the earth.” Revelation 5:10 

This series of teachings will show how the gospel message proclaims our Lord’s authority in relationship to four of his titles or roles as prophesied by John the Baptist, but first let us see why God’s authority had to be restored in the first place.

How We Lost the Authority God Vested in Us

When Adam sinned against God in the garden, at the most fundamental level it was a rejection of the authority and supremacy of God.

Satan convinced the first Adam and his wife Eve that God did not have their best interests in mind by forbidding them from partaking of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. He appealed to their apparently innate desire to be like God. The first Adam decided to disobey God’s clear command in an attempt to liberate himself and Eve from the supposed confines of dependency upon God. Instead, he opened the door to satanic rule over all creation.

God vested the first Adam with tremendous authority over the earth and its creatures. 

Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” 27 God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. 28 God blessed them; and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” Genesis 1:26–28 (NASB95)

In Adam, God gave man authority over the earth but not the heavens. Due to our inherited and innate sinfulness,  almost from the beginning man has tried to leave our appointed habitation in an effort to be like God by penetrating and conquering the heavens. (e.g. Babel)

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