When we look at the Gospel, we see good news.

Despite the cost, despite the hardships, despite the pain.  Despite anything.

When we look at the life of absolute surrender, the life of absolute submission, and absolute loss of this life, it is only a most extraordinary gospel that can still be good news in the wake of this.

The thought that this cross walk costs anything short of everything is absolute ludicrous.  It is absurd to think that Jesus would come and give everything He gave, suffering the most extreme punishment on our behalf, tell us that the most extraordinary punishment for not following Him was eternal damnation, and say that to follow Him you had to lose your life, claiming that He was the way, and not expect to live as He lived, at least in some measure.

This is the failing of faulty grace teachings, faulty teachings on judgement, faulty teachings on the Kingdom, and faulty end-times interpretation, to name a few.  In short, the Jews missed Jesus.  Studying the scriptures, they failed to see the Eternal God, the one who had made them, standing there, in human form, sitting, talking, eating, and making disciples.  They simply, flat-out missed Him.  The Eternal.

The difference in understanding is as vast as Christian versus non-Christian, new creation versus old, carnal mind versus mind of Christ.  In a word, if a non-Christian can see it, it is NOT what Christ died for (John 3:3-5).

There are two or three main themes that run through the Gospels.  First, is the gospel of the Kingdom, the Kingdom of heaven or the Kingdom of God (meaning the same, obviously).  Another is Faith.  You cannot have the Kingdom without Faith, and you cannot have Faith without the Kingdom.  If you attempt to build any kind of Kingdom theology that can function outside of faith, you have something built in the mind of man, also known as idolatry, and if you attempt to build any kind of faith teaching outside of the true Kingdom of God, you are a thief and a robber.

From the text, it is from these to specific points that all the power gifts flow as demonstrated in the Gospels.  Healing the sick, cleansing the leper, raising the dead, and casting out demons.

But if I cast out demons by the finger of God, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.

Luke 11:20

It is ONLY in the context of faith and the Kingdom that any of these are performed.

Despite any “bad taste in the mouth” that talk of Faith may bring in some circles today especially as related to healing, if you do not have the faith of the Gospels, you cannot have Christianity, plain and simple.  While it only takes a mustard seed, it is faith, great or small, that gives us entrance to Jesus.

But, it is these two concepts especially, through the door of Christ, that we have access to the Kingdom.  Being born again by believing in Jesus Christ, we have entrance to His Kingdom, the right to become children of God (John 1:12).

But, the only kind of Gospel that can demand such sacrifice as Jesus did, for the principles He taught were the principles He lived.  The way He overcame, we overcome, and the heart depicted in the Sermon on the Mount is as good of self-portrait as anywhere in Scripture.

Yet, if we see the Kingdom, if we truly see His worth, if we can, with the eyes of the heart and the eyes of the Spirit, catch a glimpse of what lies beyond, if we can ever really get a revelation of Spirit of Grace, in ever increasing measure, this alone is what is the compulsion, the desire, the longing to give all for the Master, the one who demonstrated the power over death itself, the heart of laid down surrender.

We can look at Jesus, and see the cross, and know Him as savior, and be saved.  And, that is wonderful.  But, if that was all Jesus came for, He could have showed up one Passover Sabbath, and got killed that way.  And, there would have been no need to record the Gospel accounts, other than His death.

But, we have a life.  We have a cry of the Heart of God, the demonstration of strength, and love, and hope, and faith, that the ways of the Kingdom were demonstrated in absolute perfection when God the Father raised up Jesus from the grave, that that same Kingdom, those same secrets hidden for all ages, which Jesus had spent His ministry revealing, were so true, that they were THE way that God had chosen to redeem all of mankind as well!  The Cross functions in the principles of the Kingdom.  Even as the Lamb was slain before the foundation of the World, so too, the secrets of the Kingdom, the very way the cross would occur and happen, were too hidden from the foundation (Matthew 13:35).

It was by these that Jesus triumphed, it was by these that He taught and lived, it is by these, that, according to 1 Peter 1:22, our souls are purified, by letting the Spirit so live in us that we find ourselves living out of them, and it by these that we are told to obey if we are truly His disciples, and want to last through the storms of life (Matthew 7:24-27).

We can see that Jesus looked to the Father, saw His will, and obeyed it.  He said that the Kingdom was like a treasure hidden in a field, that when a man saw it, he hid it again, and for joy, went and sold all he had and bought that field (Matthew 13:44).  Jesus saw the will of the Father, and despite any obstacles, despite any interference, He obeyed that call.  Because He knew that all God’s commands led to life (John 12:50).  He knew that obedience was the only way to the Father, and  it was only possible through a life empowered by the Holy Spirit.

This was the nature of His Kingdom.

How is a life of absolute loss, gross neglect, and vast suffering good news?  If you can see it, it’s like when the Israelites wandered around and got upset, and complained because their trials were sever, and their suffering was great (Numbers 11:1-3).  God had to send fire to consume them the outskirts of the camp, because they were complaining.  But, we could say, reverently, “But weren’t their trials a little bit hard?”  And, Gods’ response would be:  But that’s just it, your eyes are on the trial, and not on me!  If your eyes were on Him, instead of the trials, if you could look beyond the temporary pain and suffering and see Him that is Eternal, you not get mired in them.  The eyes of faith look Beyond, over the natural, beyond the soulish and physical realm, into the Eternal, Spirit.  They say, with Paul, “these light and momentary afflictions are not worth comparing with the eternal weight of glory waiting to be released.”  (2 Corinthians 4:17).

With the eyes of Faith, if we could see the Kingdom, the Eternal Spirit realm of the Holy Ghost, we would would throw off all restraint at ridding ourselves of everything of this life.  But, we are not always given the full glimpse, yet, we are given the full call today.  If we knew the worth, even in this life, of the Kingdom of Heaven, we would not hesitate.

Yet, this is the claim of this Glorious Gospel, as testified by thousands through the centuries.

Jesus said that whoever has left things for Him and His Gospel would not fail to receive a hundred times more in this life, and in the age to come, Eternal life (and with them persectutions) (Mark 10:30).

Get a glimpse of this.  The Kingdom of Heaven, the one that was at Hand when Jesus came then, and has only been increasing since then, is so good, so out of this world, that it demands the complete loss of this life.  Not only are they incompatible, but nothing of this life can ever add to it.  No amount of human thought or effort can ever assist it.  It is the only life in which you could lose your entire life here on Earth, and by it, because of it, find true life, and find it in abundance (John 10:10).  When you have found something, by Faith, that you can lose absolutely everything for, be brutally mistreated, mutilated, and murdered for doing good in, and still know with absolute assurance that it was good news, you have found the Kingdom.

Without questioning anyone’s legitimacy in the gospel, it is truly, only the life fully surrendered to the Holy Spirit, completely lost, and completely forsaken, that has any merit before God.  To the degree that we do that, is the degree that we please Heaven, and produce His fruit, from the least to the greatest.

When we have seen that absolute death to our old life is absolute life indeed, we have known Good News.