Perhaps:
·         Famous character from history (Nelson Mandela, Ghandi)
·         A great teacher – the sermon on the mount
·         Miracle worker – walk on water, feeding 5,000, healing people
·         Man on a cross, a man resurrected from death
·         As God?
 
The gospel is Jesus
The gospel is God’s message to us and the gospel is Jesus. In the gospel of Jesus we find answers to all the great questions of life:
·         Intellectual – how did I get here? What does it all mean?
·         Existential – who am I?
·         Spiritual – why am I here? Is there someone out there?
·         Moral – what’s the right way to live?
·         Eternal – what happens next?
 
All the answers to life’s questions are found in the gospel and the gospel is Jesus.
   

The Gospel of God – the gospel he promised beforehand through the prophets in the Holy Scriptures, regarding his Son, who as to his human nature was a descendant of David, and who through the Spirit of holiness was declared to be the Son of God in power by his resurrection from the dead: Jesus Christ our Lord.

 

1:1b The Gospel of God

We believe in the gospel. The royal edict, the announcement from God to the world about his love for us and his plan to save us. This is the only gospel, the only message of God, and it announces Jesus Christ as Lord.
 
But we live in a pick-n-mix culture which makes a virtue of being able to believe what pleases you.
 
I do like a good carol service but I might also check out a spiritualist to get in touch with my Gran. When I’m ill I might try Reiki or some Chinese medicine and some of Madonna’s kabbalah water. There’s some good stuff in the sermon on the mount but Western Capitalism is also good for me. 
 
But the gospel doesn’t sit comfortably alongside that pick-n-mix, individualistic philosophy. The gospel is unique, it stands alone not as one of many but as the only gospel. The gospel of God.
 
In the three classic laws of thought there is one called the law of non-contradiction. This was developed by Aristotle and it means that where two beliefs contradict each other they can both be wrong but they can’t both be right.
 
Because the gospel claims to be the only way to God (through Jesus) and other religions claim one or more ways to God, the gospel is either right or wrong. It can’t be a bit right.
 
In fact it is a glorious, glad-making truth which, by rights, should put a grin on the face of everyone who hears and understands.
 
We sing because words alone are not enough,
We dance because we cannot fly,
Our hearts burst with celebration
Thanking God for what He’s done
 

1:2 the gospel he promised beforehand through the prophets in the Holy Scriptures

 
This gospel wasn’t made up by the apostles. It didn’t just start when Jesus lived. It isn’t my gospel. It isn't Dan Brown's gospel.
 
The gospel, the announcement of God to the world has always been there. Amongst other declarations it has been proclaimed through the Old Testament too.  There are over 100 references to Jesus in the OT and indeed it is only once you have understood about Jesus that the OT comes to life.
 
The gospel gives us an entrance into scripture (Luther).
 
For hundreds of years the Jewish people had been waiting for the fulfilment of the scripture, looking out their doors, listening for the announcement. Is this him? Is that him? When will he come?
 
When Paul makes this statement in his letter he is declaring his allegiance to this history of waiting ad he is saying, he has come. He identifies with the Jewish inheritance of the scriptures. He is standing in the river that flows from the call of God to the Jewish nation, the scriptures that record that relationship through to Jesus. But as we will learn through the rest of Romans, he believes that the river flows on to the whole world.
 

1:3 regarding his Son, who as to his human nature was a descendant of David

 
The gospel is about God’s Son – but here he is identified as the son of David. Son of David is a messianic title developed from the time when the prophet Nathan declared God’s plan to establish King David’s family line (2 Samuel 7:12).
 
Here Paul draws attention to Jesus’ human nature – born from the genealogical line of David. Adopted by Joseph into the family. Born in physical weakness and vulnerability, frail flesh.
 
When Jesus placed his foot on the dusty paths of Palestine it left a footprint. He ate our food, slept our sleep. He knew pain and loss. God incarnate.
 

1:4a who through the Spirit of holiness was declared to be the Son of God in power by his resurrection from the dead

 
In the next phrase Paul uses the title, Son of God – a divine title.
Not only a son of man but the Son of God.

This is not a change in state or a change in Jesus’ nature from man to God but a declaration of what was there all along and became clear by the Spirit’s explosive power of new life given in the resurrection. The resurrected body of Jesus allows us a glimpse of the nature of Jesus as God.
 
When Jesus was raised from the dead the incomprehensible power of God was released into our world and demonic power was shattered and broken forever.
 
This Jesus is divine and exalted and empowered.
 
Let's summarise these contrasts
 

Title	Son of David	Son of God
Action	Became, born Descended from David, born of a woman, adopted by Joseph	Declared, attested, revealed by the power of and through the resurrection
How	From flesh	By the Holy Spirit
	Pre-resurrection: Human Weak Vulnerable Frail, flesh Humbled	Post-resurrection Divine Power Ruling Exalted, heavenly Lord

 
Which means we have someone who feels our pain and yet can rescue us from that pain.

Hebrews 4:15
For we do not have a high priest (Jesus) who is unable to sympathise with our weaknesses but one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are, yet was without sin.
 

Questions

We arrive at a crucial junction in our journey. The gospel is about Jesus and we have to respond to his claims. I started by asking the questions we all ask at some point, Why am here? How Am I here? How should I live? What happens next? Jesus claimed to be the answer to all those questions and he doesn’t give us many options. Either we believe him or we don’t.
 
The Alpha Course starts with this discussion (October course).  We can simplify the possible responses to Jesus’ claims by asking was he a lunatic, a liar or is He Lord?
 

Lunatic, a liar or is He Lord?

Based on traditional analysis of our options and popularised last century by C.S.Lewis in some BBC lectures he gave, we are presented with three options when it comes to how we respond to Jesus’ claim to be the only way to God, his claim to be a man and God, his demand that we lay down our lives and follow him:

1. He was a lunatic. Just plain strange and deluded. Mad. The trouble is that, except for this claim, he behaves nothing like a lunatic, he speaks wisdom and people have listened to him for 2000 years. A lunatic would long ago have been buried and forgotten;
2. He was a liar. A charlatan, a bad man. Somehow he has pulled the wool over everyone’s eyes and for some selfish reason made extraordinary claims. The trouble with this is that despite 2000 years of investigative journalism, no one has been able to pin anything on him.
3. He is Lord. He is God. He is who he said he was and we have no choice but to bow our knee and worship. We become aware of our huge inadequacy in the face of the gracious eternal King and we repent and call him Lord.

Lunatic, liar or Lord? Mad, bad or God?
 
Pause and pray
 
Philosophy diversion
Karl Barth talks about the intersection of two planes. One plane we know, we experience, we can see. The other we can’t know, or see, or understand.
 
The plane we know is creation, that which has been made.
The plane we don’t know is the creator and redeemer plane which exists outside time and space and comprehension.
 
The only time the invisible plane becomes visible is where it intersects, touches the visible plane in which we live. But even then we can’t see it because it is unknowable by our small minds. But we can see it in a mysterious miraculous way. And when our eyes catch a glimpse or our ears catch a note – it is characterised by grace and power.
 
The intersection is like the glancing touch of a flat line against a curve. It doesn’t touch but it does. Perhaps we can understand by looking at the hole left in the earth by a meteor – we see no meteor but we witness its effect.
 
And in the years AD 1-30 we perhaps see the greatest intersection of the invisible with the visible – in the life of Jesus. A man, fully man, but a man come from God.
 
Jesus wasn’t a man in whom the nature of God was placed – nor was he God overflowing into a man. Jesus is fully man and fully God and we can’t see him and yet we do.
 

1:4b Jesus Christ our Lord

 
So this unique person:

• born of the line of David and also Son of God,
• weak and powerful
• incarnate and exalted

 
Jesus -  a human historical figure
Christ – the Messiah long awaited
our Lord – the mighty King to whom we bow the knee and obey
 
The gospel is Jesus – who from before time is with God, who humbled himself to become a man, fully human, an historical, actual figure, the promised one.
 
By the power of the resurrection he is revealed as God, King of kings, Lord of lords and we are called to worship and follow him.