[OBW]

I'm not sure that the view that the gospel is just in the "Gospels" is such a simple thing. But is there anything added to the truth beyond that other than commentary on how it played out, including letters, mostly from Paul, that directed the believers back to the path. All Paul had was the existing scripture (the OT) and what Christ had taught and patterned while visibly on earth.

If there is anything "simple" about the gospel as presented in the four "gospels" it is our over-simplifying it down to just a matter of knowing and believing but not obeying — or at least not obeying the parts that require any act of our mind, emotions, will, or body (other than believing in our minds). We have misread Paul to eliminate the call to a different way of achieving the righteousness demanded in the law. Christ did not abolish the demand for righteousness. He provided a different way to achieve it. One that is greater than our will and effort and has guaranteed success.

"Go and disciple the nations. Baptize them. And teach them to obey all that I have taught you." Too much of Christianity, including the LRC, has abandoned that last charge. The LRC and some other inner-life groups replaced obedience with spiritual stuff. Others replaced it with a different kind of cheap grace in which everything is about your mental assent and agreement. But many are beginning to return obedience into the mix. Without obedience, even salvation has somewhat of a question mark.

And when you layer in Paul, one of the more prolific commentators, he did not say that obedience was being spiritual. He said there were spiritual truths that provided the way to obey. Like in Galatians. He didn't tell anyone to be crucified. He said that we have been and because of that we should not be doing what we are doing, but instead be righteous.

And then Peter came along and said that we already have everything we need for righteousness. But Lee didn't think so. He said we needed more dispensing. And he didn't like the book of James because it described the Christian life from the opposite viewpoint. If you are not obeying, then your spirituality is to be questioned. That does not contradict anything that Paul said. Paul just said that because you have this spiritual reality, obey. Paul said how and James gave us a benchmark to review success and failure.

Waiting for dispensing is not the gospel. "I'm free from the law" is not the gospel. (You are free from the bondage of the law, but not from its righteous requirement.) Just call on the Lord, meaning "say 'Oh Lord Jesus' three times" is not the gospel. That is cheap grace. We need no realization of our depravity or repentance. We just get a different feeling — one supported, and maybe created by the enthusiasm of the crowd around us. And we don't have to obey after that. Just sit back and take in the dispensing and all our sins, whatever they are, will fall off us without any act of our own will to set our mind and walk.

No we have probably rejected the most extreme parts of that kind of teaching. But do we still resist doing? Abiding was not for abiding. It was to provide the means to do. It is probably what Paul called setting the mind. It is not floating in a spiritual dream, soaking in dispensing, but communing with God to tap into the means to do.

Remember that God didn't put man here to be spiritual, but to have dominion over the earth. We were not put here to worship, but to do. And God provided his truth when he gave the Israelites the law. It was about living righteously and having no other God. And because they would fail, he provided the animal sacrifice as a substitution for the requirement of their own life. And we now think that God just abandoned the whole righteousness thing because there is no more system of sacrifices. That is erroneous thinking. The primary law is not abolished. There are too many passages in the NT saying that we are to be obedient, to follow, to do, etc., and we jump on the one place that says we are dead to the law and presume that means that all those other passages are wrong. More like we are wrong about what being dead to the law meant in that one place. Seems more like wishful thinking. Wanting to not have to obey and finding a few words that can be twisted to mean it despite many words that say otherwise. The volume of words that speak against that position leaves the only conclusion to be that we don't understand what being dead to the law is.