Revelation 14:6-7

And I saw another angel flying in mid-heaven, having an eternal gospel to proclaim to those who sit upon the earth, even to every nation and tribe and tongue and people,

Saying with a loud voice,
Fear God and give Him glory!
  For the hour of His judgment has come;
And worship Him who made
  The heavens
  And the earth
  And the sea
  And the springs of waters.

As the believers in Christ, we naturally feel the gospel must always be focused on Christ Himself and our need to have faith in Him as our Redeemer and Savior. And when it comes to the gospel of the grace of God that we have believed, and which we preach (Acts 20:24), that is surely true!

Moreover, as we have stressed before, the holy God can only make the offer of forgiveness of sins based upon the payment Christ made on the cross for our sins. The question is, how is that payment applied to our account of sin? In the case of the gospel of grace, which is the basic New Testament gospel, it is through our faith in Christ (Rom. 3:21-28). However, with the eternal gospel, it is applied on a very different basis.

This is because the content of the eternal gospel is very different from that of the gospel of grace. In fact, when we look at the verses above that present this gospel, we find no mention of Christ at all.

So, unlike the gospel of grace, the eternal gospel is not focused on faith in Christ. Rather, just as the preaching and the audience of the eternal gospel are very different from that of the gospel of grace, so also is its focus.

What then is this eternal gospel focused on? Very simply, on fearing and worshiping God, based upon what one has seen of His creation:

Fear God and give Him glory!
For the hour of His judgment has come;
And worship Him who made
The heavens
And the earth
And the sea
And the springs of waters.

That is the eternal gospel. Again, as the believers in Christ, our gospel, the gospel of the grace of God, is focused on Him. That cannot be the case, however, for those who have never heard of Christ, or for those who have not had the opportunity to believe in Him, and that’s why the eternal gospel makes no of mention of Christ.

As we saw in the previous Note in this series, throughout human history, this eternal gospel has been preached by God’s creation (Rom. 1:19-20, Psalm 19:1-4; see “The Eternal Gospel (2): How It Is Preached, and to Whom.”) That is why this gospel is for all those who live upon the earth, and specifically, for those who have never had the opportunity to believe in the name of Jesus.

Since these have not had the chance to believe in Christ, they cannot be judged based on whether or not they accepted the gospel of grace. They can and will be judged, however, on the basis of whether in their lives on the earth they feared God and worshiped Him. The examples the New Testament gives of this include the repentant tax collector who was justified simply by recognizing he was a sinner and asking for God’s mercy (Luke 18:13-14), and the “sheep” and “goats” at the Lord’s return, who will be either justified or condemned based upon whether or not they expressed their fear of God by caring for the Lord’s “brothers” during the Great Tribulation (Matt. 25:31-46).

But if the preaching, audience, and focus of the eternal gospel are all very different from that of the gospel of grace, so also is its result; and that is what we will consider in the next Note in this series.

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—  25 February 2025 —