Paul, One Man, One Final Gospel

By Tammy Lacock

In this week’s podcast, Warren Litzman emphasizes the urgent need for Christians to know what Paul has plainly written throughout all his 14 epistles. And yet, most Christians are ignorant of his message, his final gospel for the born-again believer.

In fact, about 90 percent of born-again preachers today don’t know what it means to be born again. As Christians, we can live a lifetime and never know what’s going on, unless we dive into Paul’s epistles and the Holy Spirit reveals to us the answer to the ultimate question “What is Life?”

Paul knew he was the only man God raised up to deliver the answer to this question and how to live once knowing the answer. God’s entire plan, His entire hope, His entire scheme was placed in Paul.

How did Paul handle it?

He knew nothing else. His old life was dead, and Christ was his new life.

“Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ” (Philippians 3:8 KJV).

Throughout Paul’s epistles, he tells us over and over that Christ is life. He doesn’t just give us life; He is our life. Our old lives died at the Cross, and we are an entirely brand-new creation in Christ (Galatians 2:20).

The problem is, we don’t know it and, therefore, haven’t given our minds over to this new knowledge. Our minds are still fixed on the old person, the only life we’ve known. Paul said, “Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 2:5). We must allow the Holy Spirit to do His job and now fix our minds on the Christ that lives in us. Once we can do that, we will be shown and guided on how to live in our new status as God’s bona fide children. We are now complete in Christ, free to be who God uniquely created us to be “before the foundation of the world” (Ephesians 1:4).

We have been born again into a new life in Christ, bred by God by the placing of His Son, the “Incorruptible Seed,” in each of us (1 Peter 1:23). Our salvation is Christ, not by any self-effort. God no longer accepts our self-effort as He previously did for 4,000 years before Christ’s death. He only accepts Christ, the Christ that now lives in each and every one who believes.

Paul was the only man who brought this final gospel to the world. Nothing, not even jail, kept him from getting his gospel out. Will you follow Paul as he follows Christ? (1 Corinthians 11:1). Drop the structures we’ve built up around us and truly live from Christ within as Christians, Christ-persons?

Christ is our strength, our joy, our peace, our righteousness.

He IS Life!