THE GOSPEL OF THE GLORY OF GOD - Part II

Now, there’s news and there’s breaking news. Simply put, news is something you haven’t heard before and now learn about. It is not necessarily immediate. Breaking news, however, is urgent and immediate. It records the breaking in on the scene of an event or truth hitherto unknown.

And such is the case with the gospel of the glory of God. In 1 Tim. 1:5 (World English Bible) Paul declares that sound doctrine and “charity out of a pure heart, and of a good conscience, and of faith unfeigned” is “the end of the commandment”:

According to the Good News of the glory of the blessed God, which was committed to my trust (vs. 11).

Thus the good news of the glory of God is the end of the commandment. In other words with the law fulfilled in Christ and done away with on the cross God’s latest good news at this point is that we can now receive the fullness of his glory as a free gift through Christ.

Now, it comes as a shock to some believers to learn that there are different gospels with different terms of salvation in the Bible. Most of us have been taught to believe there is only one gospel that saves all, whether that is found in the pages of the Old Testament or the New.

Yet the truth is that God has had different gospels, each “good news” in every dispensation or age and often to each succeeding generation.

For example, his message to Israel for many centuries was that He would send their Messiah to them. When Israel’s leaders had Him crucified, the message changed. The gospel then was that He had risen and offered forgiveness and reconciliation to his enemies. With the setting aside of Israel as the vehicle for salvation at Acts 28:28 the gospel of grace became the way in which all people could be saved, without becoming part of, or reliant upon, Israel. No longer would Gentiles be “grafted” into Israel’s olive tree, nor be dependent on her spiritual gifts.

Thus came in the “gospel of the grace of God” (Acts 20:24, Col. 1:6). It was not just the message that God was now freely forgiving all who trust in Jesus as Saviour and Lord but also fully reconciling them unto Himself. Sadly, this gospel of grace by which we are saved today, has been widely rejected; the light of it has only blazed forth in times of precious revival given by the mercy of God.

It should be no surprise to Bible believers that God’s remedy for this ongoing indifference and rejection of his Son is to promulgate yet another gospel. From Paul writing to Timothy we learn that now He will do so revealing in those that truly surrender to Him the fullness of his glory, the very essence of his nature, thus making them part of Himself for all eternity.

 And that, in short, is the meaning of the “gospel of the glory of God” which we find drawn to our attention in 1 Tim. 1:11. In the KVJ the verse reads “According to the glorious gospel of the blessed God which was committed to my charge”. However, the word “glorious” is not a true translation because doxa (glory) is a noun not an adjective. And while any gospel proclamation is to the glory of God, the meaning here is that a special gospel, the “gospel of the glory of God” is referenced.

What’s more, while God is truly blessed, and is to be blessed, the Greek word for blessing, makarios, really means to be happy. God is a happy, fully fulfilled God both in who and what He is and what He does.

And He wants you and I to be just as happy in Him. More than that makarios has the nuance of continual extension. God wants you and I, as believers, to know his happiness by forever extending more of it to us. You see, it is God’s essential happiness that is his glory and pouring it out to you and I makes Him (and us) happier still.

As said, down the ages there have been various gospels. It was “good news” of God’s deliverance that Moses brought to the enslaved children of Israel in Egypt. It was “good news” that God would be with them as they journeyed through the wilderness. For, just as there was “a church in the wilderness” there was a “gospel” to go with it. It was that God would lead them into the Promised Land.

Moving on, we come to the “good news” that Messiah (God manifested as a man) would be born and, as Immanuel, live and dwell among his people Israel.

But he was rejected and crucified and so the next “gospel” proclaimed during the Acts period was that God had raised Him from the dead and that through his death all who trust in Him could be forgiven of their sins. However, wonderful though that is, the gospel of the Lord’s resurrection and his forgiveness did not display the full glory of God.

To display more of that glory the Lord then had the Apostle Paul preach the “gospel” of reconciliation not to just Jewish people but to Gentiles also. It was a wonderful gospel for in it …

…God who commanded the light to shine out of darkness hath shined in our hearts to give the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. (2 Cor. 4:6).

This gospel of reconciliation “gave the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” and held out the prospect of believers being changed “from glory to glory even as by the Spirit of the Lord” (2 Cor. 4:18).

However, the Lord had even better “good news” for Paul, the apostle of grace to the Gentiles, which He revealed to him to once the miraculous Pentecostal dispensation drew to a close at the end of the Book of Acts. This later and fuller gospel is found in 1 Tim. 1:11:

According to the glorious gospel of the blessed God which was committed to my charge (King James Version).

But to be frank, this interpreted KJV translation sells the Greek original short. Rather, it should say, as it does in other translations, “the gospel of the glory of God”. Thus the World English Bible, the Literal Standard Translation, the Berean Literal Bible, the ESV, NIV, Young’s Literal Translation and Smith’s Literal Translation render it as:

According to the good news of the glory of the blessed God, which was committed to my trust.

You see, a “gospel” must be “good news”. If it is merely repeating what has been said before it is not “news”. Ask any journalist (and I have been one) and he will tell you the news of yesterday and yesteryear is not fit even to wrap fish and chips today.

The “good news” in 1 Tim. 1:11 is that God will bestow his full glory in and upon us. It is news because no such promise had been made before in all of human history. In simpler terms, the Lord will make us to be changed to be as glorious as He is. Thus in Phil. 3:21 we are told:

... the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ, shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body, according to the working whereby He is able even to subdue all things unto Himself.

In resurrection or change while still alive we will be remade to have a human, flesh and bone body that has all the fullness of the glory that is Christ’s own flesh and bone body. Remember, Christ’s body is the one in which dwells “all the fullness of the Godhead bodily” (Col. 2:9).

Fullness is a key word here. The good news of the glory of God is neither a partial redemption, nor just a reconciliation. Nor is it only Spirit-imparted knowledge about God’s glory. It’s the real thing, the fullness of everything that is the glory of God. It goes all the way to the heart of God’s ultimate purpose for saved and redeemed mankind. It is to have a man who has been “fashioned” to be just like Him. Not in power but in glory, that is, in character.

Once fashioned to be like Christ our remade body will never again sin or want to. The reason is not only that it has been made to be like “his glorious body”, but that also it lives as an organic part of his body.

Because already, spiritually by faith but ultimately physically and factually we will be “of his flesh and of his bones” (Eph. 5: 30).

John Dudley Aldworth

Email: john.aldworth@hotmail.com