STATION 15: THE EUONGALEONYou can learn a lot about life from words. "Etymology" is the study of words, their history, and how they interact. I find this endlessly fascinating. Our word "gospel" comes from a Greek word "Euongaleon." "Euongaleon" means good news. The "eu" is a prefix meaning good, as in euphemism, euthanasia. "Euongaleon" is a derivative of angel or angelos, which means proclamation or messenger. Now, why do I give you this little bit of etymological history? It turns out that there is an astounding proclamation inside of the Bible which virtually no one accepts. It is very scriptural. It is very sound, yet we cannot begin to comprehend its power and depth. Most people think that they are now an evil, wicked, sinner, whom God has not forgiven, that they are born and live in their sins and have no justification. This is scandalous, as it may sound, and is absolutely not true. People further think that once they accept Jesus as their Lord, that they at that point, receive a different status, that God at that moment stops holding their sin against them. That also is absolutely not true. Here is the scandalous verse in the Bible which contradicts all of these misconceptions. Romans 5:18, "So then as through one transgression, there resulted condemnation to all men, even so through one act of righteousness, there resulted justification of life to all men." I advise you, if all of the reading you have done has instilled any confidence or trust in me as your author at all, re-read that verse several times until you have it memorized. What the verse tells us is something that goes completely beyond our normal way of thinking. Most people are comfortable with the notion of original sin. The idea is that Adam sinned, and that this sin cast all of his children likewise into sin. This is what the verse refers to when it talks about in the first half, so then as through one transgression, there resulted condemnation to all men. "Resulted" is past tense. Adam was cast from the Garden of Eden and set to live a life, basically, of slavery. If a person is captured by another and forced to be a slave, then all of that person's children will likewise be born in slavery. Adam's sin resulted in condemnation to all men. This is past tense. You do not need to lend a cent to this in order for it to be true. You do not have to believe in it. You do not have to accept it. It remains true, regardless of how you understand things. A baby does not have to understand or accept that the baby is a slave, in order for it to, nevertheless, be true. The Bible is clear. If you are comfortable and can truly understand that notion, then the remarkable and astounding notion that the Bible is going to tell you, is that exactly the same thing occurs through Jesus' death and resurrection, because the second half of the verse says, "Even so in exactly the same way through one act of righteousness (that is Jesus' death and resurrection), there resulted past tense justification of life to all men." I did not make this up. What this verse says, quite clearly, is that every single human being on this Earth, right now, is justified in the eyes of God. "Justified" means just as if I'd never sinned. Every human being on this earth is already forgiven. I know this sounds like universal salvation, but you have to continue reading. We have misunderstood something. The Bible is clear then that at the moment you accept Jesus, it is not that you are all of a sudden forgiven by God, because you have already been forgiven. That is what Jesus meant when He hung upon the Cross and said, "It is finished." You are already forgiven. You are already justified, whether or not you accept it and whether or not you understand it. Just as the children of a slave are born a slave, so too the children of a free man are born free people. But, the children of the slave can live as though they are free, and the children of the free man can live as though they are slaves. This is why I bring up the issue of the Euongaleon. What was the Euongaleon? In Greek terms right now, the euongaleon is the message--the message which a messenger brings. That's why we translate the word into "good news." Etymologically, this is not the origin of the word. The origin of the word meant the messenger. The euongaleon was a messenger who performed a very crucial service. Through the course of time and entomological transformation, the euongaleon came not to be associated so much with the messenger, but with the message which he brought. Why does this matter? Well, let me explain who the euongaleon was, and hopefully you will see. We have to roll back the clock several thousand years. There is no instantaneous satellite communication; there is no teletype; there are no telephones; there are no VCRs. There are only people and occasionally pieces of paper or stone that they can etch words into. One of the things that the Greeks did better than anyone else was wage war. When they would do this, the people in the city would have to be on wartime rationing. They could not use their salt as much. They could not use iron. They had to send their food to the front line in order to help the soldiers. The people back home in the city are living in wartime. Several hundred miles away, the Greeks wage war, and much more often than not, the Greeks were victorious. At that point, the victory is won. The people in the town did not do the fighting, did not win the war. And, the people in the town cannot make the victory any more real than it is. But, the victory has happened hundreds of miles away. They cannot see this on their television sets. So what happened? The Greek army would send the euongaleon, a messenger on horseback, and that messenger would ride and ride and ride until either he reached the home city, or else he would hook up, as in a tag team or a relay, with another euongaleon who was fresh and whose horse was healthy and rested. Days sometimes weeks would go by, until finally the euongaleon would arrive and tell the city, victory is ours. The war is over. That is the most perfect illustration of the Gospel of the Good News of the Euongaleon that I have ever heard, and it is the clearest explanation of the power of the death and resurrection of Jesus that I can ever imagine. The war is over. The people did not fight the war. The war is over. Jesus died upon the Cross and said it is finished. The war is over. He broke the bonds of sin and death. However, the people in the city do not know this. They cannot make the war over, and they cannot keep it from being over. There is justified to all mankind the forgiveness of sins. Right now, period, it is finished. The war is over. All people are justified. However, the people in the city live in ignorance and darkness. They do not understand the truth, so they have to have the word proclaimed to them. Once the word is proclaimed to them through the Euongaleon, they have a choice. They can accept that this is the euongaleon, that he is the official representative of the government, and begin then to rejoice. At the moment they accept the message of the euongaleon, the past victory becomes their present reality. That is the essence of Christianity. The moment at which we hear and accept the Word and the past, victory becomes our present reality. So, who goes to hell? This is a question which is always asked of me in the context of this discussion. The people, who go to hell, are the ones who do not accept the message of the euongaleon. They do not believe he's an official representative, and they scoff at him. Therefore, they reject the message that the war is over. They continue to ration their salt. They continue to ration their food. They continue to live as though there is a war. The war is over, externally, objectively, and factually, but their internal world does not accept it. Therefore, they're still living in war. They are still in hell. That is precisely what happens to us. We begin with an objective fact: God has forgiven the entire human race. The objective fact is that every human being has been perfectly justified. The objective fact is that the war is over. The objective fact is that it is finished. What we must do is hear the good news, and we must accept it. Once we do that, then the fact of the objective realities become our internal truth. We begin to learn and live in accordance with what has always been true. It has been true for ages that the war is over. It has been true for ages that justification has been given to all men. But, it takes so long for us to accept and understand the message of the euongaleon, and it takes a long time for the objective truth to take hold within our hearts and enable us to live as truly redeemed free people. That is the message of the euongaleon That is the good news. All people are justified. All people are free. Sin is dead. The war is over. A powerful revelation, which the Bible contains, is the notion of repentance. Once we accept the gospel, we are always called upon to repent, to turn from our current ways. Repentance is, again using the original Greek words, "metanoia." "Metanoia" is the Greek word, which we translate into repentance. Metanoia, in its etymology, means beyond knowledge: meta, beyond or change; noia, knowledge. Repentance, then, actually means to change your way of thinking. You do not have to change the reality, because the reality is forgiveness. You only have to change your thinking. As St. Paul says in Romans 12, "We have to be transformed by the renewing of our minds," so that we can begin to see the truth, to be able to see the truth that there is no war, there is no problem. Every pain and every suffering which exists on this planet exists because human beings want it to be here. We have the technology, we have the knowledge, we have the ability to eliminate all suffering, all hunger, all disease. We spend $2,000,000 every 60 seconds on war on this planet. We do not spend one fraction of that researching how to cure cancer, or how to cure AIDS, or any number of a host of other diseases. It is more important to us, in terms of how much energy we spend on this planet, to maintain our war machines and our military tools, than it is to eliminate disease. The myth of scarcity is taught to our children from the day they enter school. There's not enough to go around. This is simply not true. There is plenty of food. There are plenty of resources so that every human being can live a completely fulfilled life. It is finished! We do not think of it that way, and we do not desire it to be that way. We live in darkness and pain and hell, because we want it.
The good news is, though, that it need not be this way. |
|
[Home] [Colorful Introduction] [God's Name] [The Revealing Science of God] [Jesus Died for You] [Contact] [Support]
(c) 1996-2008 The Church of Yahweh. All rights reserved. May be freely
distributed, but never sold. |
