Good News

Aurelius reclined on his triclinium. It had been a hard day at the agora. He hadn’t managed to sell much casus. He wasn’t sure why, although that was just the way it seemed to be. Maybe it was to do with the weather or, as some would have you believe, the whim of the gods, but in any case, those Sestertii were hard to come by. He was hoping to save up for a new villa, but he had a long way to go. He had been working on a new line of hard caseus, using skimmed milk and various herbs brought from distant lands. He hoped that this healthy, exotic line might go down well.

Just as he was beginning to dream. The door to his domum burst open and in rushed a sturdily built fellow. Without a word he grabbed Aurelius and began dragging him outside. Aurelius attempted to protest and resist his abduction but it was in vane. His assailant was far stronger than he.

Aurelius was man handled, rapidly without explanation, until he had been brought through the domum’s courtyard and out the front porta. Here, he was released, collapsing to the floor from exacerbation.

Somewhat dazed, Aurelius raised himself to his feet with the intention of legging it to safety. He was most exceedingly annoyed by the experience and would have lashed out at the man, had it not been for his size.

Strangely, the man had backed off. Aurelius thought about daring to give him some verbal abuse, but thought better of it and turned to run. However, as he span around, his eye was caught by an unexpected sight. There was smoke rising from the neighbours condominium and the wall which adjoined Aurelius’ was being consumed in flames.

Ipso facto thought Aurelius. His neighbour’s domum was on fire and it was threatening to spread to his own residency. He realised that the man who had dragged him from his sweet thoughts, rather than being an attacker, was actually a saviour who had sacrificed himself in order to rescue Aurelius from an impending danger. Aurelius was suddenly filled with a joyous maximus!

In life there are many contrasts. For example white and black. Black writing looks good on a white background as does white on black. However, black writing on a dark grey background is hard to read. In other words, the darkness of the one, is made clearer by the lightness of the other.

Christianity is often referred to as the Good News. Indeed, this is the origin of the word gospel. In ancient times, long before the internet, news had to be delivered by heralds who travelled all over the empire and announced it in the public squares. Their messages were known as Euangelion in Greek, literally good news. This term Euangelion came to be used for the Christian message, such as can be seen in the first verse of Mark’s gospel. The old English translation of Euangelion was ‘Godspel’, which eventually became gospel. Remnants of the word Euangelion can also still be seen in the English language in the word evangelical.

In order to fully understand and appreciate good news, it needs to be seen in contrast with the alternative. The news that someone is getting married is good news because two people, instead of continuing to live their lives in singleness, will now be forming a family, which is often seen as a superior way to live. However, this good news is tapered by the fact that singleness is not so bad (well, that depends on your point view!).

In another scenario, if someone has a bad illness, but then finds out that they have been cured, this can really be considered good news as the alternative would have been sickness, suffering and maybe even death.

Thus, to be able to fully understand why the Christian message is good news, we need to understand the alternative.

In Genesis 3 we see that although humans were created in a good world and had a perfect relationship with God, a tempting factor manifests itself in the form of the serpent. This serpent manages to convince Eve to go against God’s command of not eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

The consequences can be seen in the ensuing verses as the humans feel shame, hide from God and start passing the blame. Moreover, God gives punishments. The woman receives pain in child birth and the man has to toil hard to make a living from the soil. The ultimate punishment though is banishment from the garden of Eden. Paradise lost as it were. This is the bad news.

The good news can however also be seen in this passage. Firstly, God does not abandon the people He has created, indeed it is He who goes looking for them and calls out, ‘Where are you?’.

Next, in verse 15 there is a famous prophecy. In the middle of God giving out the just punishments, we see that there is even here a beacon of hope. A promise is made that although the serpent will strike the seed of the woman, he will ultimately crush the serpent’s head. This is seen as a reference to Jesus, who after being born from a woman is crucified and killed, thus is struck by the serpent, but eventually rises to life after three days and so defeats death. This death has been caused by the serpent, whose head is crushed so to speak by Jesus’ victory!

 Finally, towards the end of the chapter in verse 21, there is an important detail that could easily be missed. God is said to have clothed the humans with skin. In this way, he covers over their nakedness with something better than the leaves that the humans had managed to rustle up. This skin must have come from the sacrifice of animals, so here we have a picture of the gospel. That in spite of humans disobedience to God He was prepared to make a sacrifice in order to cover their shame.

Of course, if we think that we are alright, this won’t seem like such a big deal. But if we understand that the fig leaves we are all naturally trying to use are not doing a very good job of obscuring our nakedness, we will be infinitely grateful to receive the gift of skin from God, bought by sacrifice, which truly does the job of covering up all that we have to be ashamed of and thus freeing us to live life to the full!