With Discontinuance
Comes Dissonance
By John Gavazzoni

Luke's Book of Acts account of that period following Jesus' resurrection and numerous appearances to His followers, leading up to His ascension with His departing (yet-not-really-departing) instructions, notes that all He had done and spoken up to that point was the beginning of what He would continue to do through His commissioned emissaries. They were shortly to be empowered by the Holy Spirit which would unite them with their Lord in such a union, that He, Himself, would be the source and dynamic of what He sent them forth to do.

Simply: they would continue to do and teach what He began to do and teach, and in both cases, the doing and the teaching would be His.

So one can find an understanding entrance into what Jesus often taught in parables and in His oft-use of highly figurative language (so easily misunderstood even on the part of His own disciples before they were infused by the Spirit of Truth who would guide them into all truth) by studying carefully our brother Luke's record of what Jesus continued "to do and to teach" as the head of His body, the church. If convention interprets Jesus' teaching in a way that suffers a discontinuance, with its attending dissonance, from the apostolic preaching, teaching, testimony and witness, then something is wrong.

Biblical interpretation ought not to project onto highly figurative language found in the gospels what is not to be found in the apostolic church's quite explicit proclamation. Approaching what the gospels have Jesus saying, and what He continued saying post-resurrection, post-glorification, expecting to find consistency of spirit and content is the way to discover that which the Book of Hebrews tells us "God has, in these last days, spoken to us in a Son." One ought, certainly, to find a seamless continuity between the record of the gospels and that of the Acts of the Apostles. Were those apostles, and those others within the ranks of the believing community who stood with them, faithful to the Spirit of Truth promised to them by their Lord?

Proceeding thusly, the average Christian will discover that much of what has been taught as intrinsic to the gospel, amounts to layer upon layer of alien encrustation laid upon the pure truth of the gospel in such a way that barely even some of the truth manages to shine through. While skeptics maintain that there is a discontinuance and dissonance between the church's message and that of Jesus, most Christians don't bother to look for continuance and harmony from one to the other.

What becomes clear in the Acts of the Apostles, is what is totally missing in Peter's sermon on the Day of Pentecost as the proto-typical example of gospel preaching, along with his other recorded messages up to and including his message to those Gentiles gathered in the house of Cornelius, and what is utterly missing in Stephen's prayer that God would not hold the charge of murder against those stoning him to death; going on to add also the witness of Paul before Festus and Agrippa, plus his witness to those listeners on Mars Hill, namely...(drumroll please), the complete, yes complete absence of warning that unless the listener responds rightly to the message, his end is eternal damnation.

There is nothing, nothing, nothing, of that insidious dark imagining that pseudo-orthodoxy presumes to be part and parcel of the (ahem!) good news. What we have is a completely non-dissonant, non-discordant continuance of essential message explaining explicitly, post-resurrection, what indeed was not meant by the use of figurative language pre-resurrection. Clearly what the promised Spirit of Truth was teaching those first heralds of the gospel was that such figurative language as "outer darkness," and "weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth," had nothing to do with God finally abandoning souls to everlasting torment.

Of all the issues concerning which Christians, yes, Christians, bear false witness against God, this issue re: the never-ending destiny of most of mankind, has to be at the top of the list, for God's testimony is that He is "God, our Savior, who will have all men to be saved and come into a knowledge of the truth." Yet we counter such clear testimony of scripture with our false witness, claiming "no, He will not have all men to be saved, only those who choose to let Him save them, and those will be a small minority of mankind" (the Arminian version of false witness.) Or there is the Calvinist version: "no, He will not have all men to be saved, only those elected to salvation; only those for whom 'limited atonement' applies."

Such blatant objections to the ultimately determining greatness of the salvation which is in Christ Jesus, cannot amount to anything less than bearing blatant false witness against God. St. John wrote, "God is love," and feels it important enough to repeat the exact same words within a short context. Paul complements John writing, "Love never fails." Never fails in what way? Love never fails to carry out the will of God who "sent His Son into the world to be the Savior of the world." But we give counter testimony, alleging that "God is a God OF love, and a God OF wrath." That kind of clever attempt at an end run around the divine testimony will not stand before the Judge who "was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself."

So much misunderstanding is behind such machinations of theological maneuvering. In many places where wrath is, in conventional translations, attributed to God, the Greek root conveys "intrinsic fervor," not vindictive reaction to man's sin on the part of a petulantly offended Deity. If one insists on "wrath" in such cases of translation, then it must be admitted that there exists an infinitely wide chasm of meaning between the wrath of men, and the wrath of God. Wrath, that proceeds forth out of the love that God IS, is love in its impassioned mode. Divine love is not reactive, it is passionately compassionate in the face of man's lostness, for "where sin abounds, grace doth much more abound." God's love gets passionately fired up at the challenge of drawing all men to Christ. The hymnist wrote, "O love that will not let me go..." That love, which is the essence of God's holiness, will not permit one single soul to escape it's saving grasp.

I am emboldened by the Spirit of Truth to call to repentance all, each in their due time, as God gives them ears to hear, those purveyors of "another gospel," which effectively denies the pure, simple goodness at the heart of the love of God. Goodness for all creation is the goal of the love that God is. Toward that end, God in His wisdom draws upon evil to ultimately serve His good intention, purpose, and will. Evil crucified Jesus, whose death was the reconciliation of the world. That alone establishes the fact that evil's intention is always outsmarted, and frustrated by love's wisdom, and love's power. To preach a "gospel" that denies the testimony of our Lord that He is making all things new, amounts to complicity with that spirit that treads under-foot the Son of God, and counts the blood of the covenant an unholy thing.

The prophet, Isaiah, gives true witness to the freedom of God, declaring that the pleasure of God will prosper in the hands of the coming Messiah, and that that One will see the travail of His soul and be satisfied. Be satisfied while billions writhe in agony in the fires of everlasting damnation? Will the precious shed blood of Jesus Christ be effectively wasted for most and only effective for a few? Did Christ shed His blood for the sins of the world, or did He not? Will you, who read these words, who have embraced such theological gibberish repent of portraying God as headed for final, everlasting defeat? Will you, by that belief give honor and glory to Satan?

Will you continue to insist that human resistance to the will of God can withstand the power of the will of God? What prevails finally, the will of God or the will of man?

Was the hymnist right in extolling "grace that is greater than all our sin," or will the love that never fails, and that gives Itself to us in the freeness of grace, finally yield to man's resistance, and say, OK, I give up; go ahead and go to hell?" I am not alone in this call to the change of mind which is repentance. Each day, more and more voices are joining that ministry of the gospel that frees men's minds from such bondage of darkness. In the words of a Christmas carol, the effectiveness of the salvation which is in Christ goes "far as the curse is found, far as the curse is found."