The Whole Counsel Of God

Acts 20:27
"For I (Paul) have not shunned to declare to you the whole counsel of God."

What does it mean to preach the whole counsel of God?  If you're like most of us, you were probably taught that it means "We must teach from the Old Testament, not just the New," right?  What they mean by that is, "You must preach more on repentance!"  But their definition of "repentance" is nothing more than "sin-consciousness."  That is not Biblical.

 

The word, "repent," simply means, " to change your mind," not this wailing, beating your breast and falling on your face kind of thing.  Nothing wrong with doing that, per sè, but it's not a requirement.  

The word, "repent," simply means, " to change your mind," not this wailing, beating your breast and falling on your face kind of thing.  

Just because you're remorseful doesn't mean that true repentance is going on.  Judas was remorseful, too.  Look what happened to him!

For more on the topic of repentance, follow these links:  http://emmausrevelations.blogspot.com/2015/02/repentance-to-life.html

http://emmausrevelations.blogspot.com/2014/07/repentance-days-of-t.html

Let's have a  little history lesson.  We'll see that what Paul meant here is exactly the opposite of what we were taught. 

You see, the problem in the early Church was that they preached TOO MUCH from the Old Testament.  There's nothing inherently wrong with it, of course.  But what they did was go there and preach the Law.  Christ, by His death on the cross however, had instituted a New Covenent, DEARLY bought and paid for IN FULL, signed and sealed by His precious blood.  We were no longer under that Covenent because Jesus, having fully met all it's claims on us, nailed that handwriting of requirements to the cross!  HALLELUIJAH!  

That doesn't mean we are now "LAW-LESS."  Far from it.  In fact, we are more law-abiding, almost by accident, because we have a better deal.  We are lead from within by the Holy Spirit.  God has written His laws on our hearts.....and it isn't the Big Ten.  

If not the Ten Commandments , then what are these laws?  For more on that topic, follow this link:

http://emmausrevelations.blogspot.com/2014/08/the-laws-of-new-covenant.html

Once upon a time, there was only the Old Testament because, well, the New hadn't been written yet.  You can imagine how difficult it was for the Jewish people to wrap their heads around this "new and living way," which was preached by those who had walked with Jesus.  Remember, they had been under the Law for 1500 lo-o-o-ng years, so this New Covenent was a "bit" unfamiliar.  They were really struggling to catch up.  Even the concept of the Church was foreign to them.

When Jesus walked this earth He preached the "Gospel of the Kingdom--the millennial one, that is.  Yes, you read that right.  He would have set it up back then if His people had accepted thier Messiah.  But they didn't.

After His ascension, this is the gospel that was was preached by the Apostle Peter:  "Repent!  For the kingdom of God is at hand."  It wasn't until a zealous young Pharisee named "Saul" came along that things changed.  He, however, had to be knocked off his high horse, get saved and be totally transformed until he became the man we know as the Apostle Paul.  He was the first one to preach The Gospel of Grace!  

There are several important differences between the Gospel of the Kingdom and the Gospel of Grace.  They are not the same, though there are similarities. We're not going to go into this topic here but, if you'd like learn about those differences, follow this link:  http://emmausrevelations.blogspot.com/2014/11/part-8-of-16-rightly-dividing-word-of.html

Jesus Himself personally schooled Paul in this gospel of Grace.  He was the only one to whom the full-up revelation was given.  As he preached what Jesus told him, the Church began to catch on.  But what Paul discovered after a while was that what the Churches were teaching was almost exclusively the Old Testament.  The letters of Paul, which comprise our New Testament, were written to open their understanding of the Old in light of the New Covenant.

The Old is the New concealed and the New is the Old revealed!  That is the lesson of the Emmaus Road.  You remember Jesus, the day He rose from the dead, how He came alongside two of His disciples as they walked along that road?  He did not allow them to recognize Who He was.  It says the "He restrained their eyes."  Why did He do that?  Because He wanted to show us how to to preach from the Old Testament.  

We don't go there to find laws, laws and more laws.  No!  WE GO THERE TO SEE JESUS IN ALL THE SCRIPTURES CONCERNING HIMSELF.  Follow this link for more on that topic:  http://emmausrevelations.blogspot.com/2015/02/the-emmaus-road.html

So you see when Paul admonished the Church to preach "the whole counsel of God," what he was telling them was, "Don't just preach from the law:  Preach the gospel.  PREACH GRACE!"

That's what it means to "Preach the whole counsel of God!"