This is my attempt to use the sharpness and precision of Scripture to distinguish the Gospel from what I call the religious mind.  Admittedly, the religious mind may be nothing more than a subspecies of the carnal mind (KJV) or the outlook of the flesh (NET),¹ but it is and has been particularly troubling to me.  To begin let me clarify what I mean by Gospel.  The standard text is 1 Corinthians 15:1-8 (NET):

Now I want to make clear for you, brothers and sisters, the gospel that I preached to you, that you received and on which you stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold firmly to the message I preached to you – unless you believed in vain.  For I passed on to you as of first importance what I also received – that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day² according to the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve.  Then he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at one time, most³ of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep.  Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles.  Last of all, as though to one born at the wrong time, he appeared to me also.

These historical facts are only part of the Gospel as I am using the term.  To this, at a minimum, I would add Romans 6:3-6 (NET):

Or do you not know that as many as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?  Therefore we have been buried with him through baptism into death, in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too may live a new life.  For if we have become united with him in the likeness of his death, we will certainly also be united in the likeness of his resurrection.  We know that our old man was crucified with him so that the body of sin would no longer dominate us, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin.

Here is where the Gospel begins to affect my life.  Here is where I share in the Gospel.  But just as the carnal mind or outlook of the flesh argues against the historicity of Christ’s atonement and resurrection, my religious mind debates my liberation from sin.  It fills me with fear and outright unbelief when I encounter statements like 1 John 5:18 (NET):

We know that everyone fathered by God does not sin, but God protects the one⁴ he has fathered, and the evil one cannot touch him.

But if I remain calm and think for a moment, this fear and unbelief make perfect sense.  My religious mind, as a subspecies of the carnal mind or the outlook of the flesh, feels its own weakness and fears its own demise when confronted with this Gospel (Romans 8:7 NET),

 …because the outlook of the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to the law of God, nor is it able to do so.

 

Addendum: September 22, 2018

Tables comparing 1 Corinthians 15:4; 15:6 and 1 John 5:18 in the NET and KJV follow