Good News about God’s People: Homework

Thanks for reading the study material in Good News About Jesus Christ. Welcome to our Good News is for Sharing Homework Pages.

If you don’t have a Bible in e-format, you can click here for online access to a free complete Bible in translations for several different languages.

This page has two sections: Getting Straight Information and Getting Straight Answers.

In the first section, we will ask you clarifying questions and help you begin to work out the information you’ve read in Good News About Jesus Christ.

“Exploring the Issues” will help you to identify what you already believe, based on what you already know or don’t know about the Bible’s presentation of Jesus Christ. This will help you establish a marker, a reference point for your further learning. To know where you’re going, it helps to know where you’ve come from!

“Getting the Straight Story” will help you to make sure you understand the Bible study material.

“Working It Into Your Life” will help you figure out what all this means for your daily life.

The second section of this document works like an “answer key” for the Getting Straight Information and Working It Into Your Life sections of this lesson.

We have not included suggested answers for “Exploring the Issues” section because these questions are intended to help you think about your own ideas. We hope this process will help you compare Good News with what you presently believe.

You will find our suggested answers to the True/False sections, and also some of the reasons why we believe these answers. We hope that providing this will help you understand and evaluate the content of Good News.

The “Working It Into Your Life” questions can help you sort out what Good News means in real life.

We’ve included some of our own thoughts as a general guide to the direction we believe Good News is intended to take us. You can use the “Leave a Reply” section on this page to share your impressions and views on these questions, too.

Thank you for letting us share in your journey.

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EXPLORING THE ISSUES

The purpose of this section is to help you examine what you presently believe about God’s people and how it affects your life.

What do I think about “God’s people,” “the church”? (Check as many as apply.)

_____ I never thought much about it.

_____ I’m not sure that it is important at all today.

_____ I’m sure that it has some use, but nothing beyond servicing people who are already religious.

_____ The church should be the moral conscience of society, reminding us of lasting values.

_____ I’ve always believed that church affiliation is important, and I have a clear idea of what it’s all about from my association with organized religion.

_____ I think that churches/organized religion is one of the real evils of our time, and should be abandoned immediately.

_____ I’ve always believed that churches were important, but I have not known exactly what they are for nor what I should believe about them.

What “picture” do you have in mind of “church”? Where did your impression come from?

What about church is the most interesting/attractive to you?

What about church is most confusing/unappealing to you?

If churches were what God intended them to be, how would people in them treat you? What would they think of you? How would you feel about it?

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GETTING THE STRAIGHT STORY

This section of the course is designed to help you gain a clearer understanding of what the Bible has to say about the church, the community of people who follow Jesus Christ.

Your picture of the church will strongly influence your picture of God. It will also affect how you relate to other people. To help get your life “on-target,” let’s get your picture of the church “on-target.”

A. True or False: All are answerable either “T” or “F.” There are no “middle ground” questions in this section. All the questions and answers are in the Book of Acts in the Bible’s New Testament.

We suggest that you read the Book of Acts, preferably in one sitting, as your primary reference. It will be a challenge, but the results will be worth it.

1. _____ Anyone from any race or country can respond to the Good News, be baptized, and become part of the New Community. Ethnic background is not a barrier.

2. _____ Being baptized is not important because it’s a physical act. The only things that count are to repent and believe, because they’re spiritual.

3. _____ God is trying to rescue people from the destructive effects of sin. Sin without forgiveness will destroy people in this life and on the Great Day when God makes everything permanent.

4. _____ The real church is supposed to protect its purity by avoiding sinful people.

5. _____ God wants people to learn all about organized religion and follow it.

6. _____ The early church taught a very definite spiritual way, and insisted that its view was the only correct one. It tried to convert people to its view.

7. _____ The church’s main concern is helping individual people get right with God and do right to other people, just like Jesus did.

8. _____ People in real churches are supposed to always do right. Otherwise they’re hypocritical.

9. _____ People don’t need the church to have a good relationship with God. They can do it all with Him on their own and have the same benefits.

10. _____ God allows people to ignore or reject Him. If they persist, He doesn’t like it, but He gives them what they want: independence of Him for eternity. He wants people to be with Him, but He won’t force people to believe Him.

B. Correcting the True/False Write a brief correct answer for any “False” statements in Part “A” above. Where you can, refer directly to the Bible story in question. Scroll down the page to see our suggested answers.

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C. Working It Into Your Life These questions will help you to bring the information about God closer to your everyday life. Click here to see what we would suggest.

Based on what you’ve learned about God’s character from “The Good News About God” and about Jesus from “The Good News About Jesus Christ,” if God were to live within a group of people, what would the group be like?

What would be most important to them?

How would they treat people who were “off-target,” sinful?

In what ways does your experience with churches agree with this study of the Bible?

How does it not agree?

What does God want most of all from people?

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GETTING STRAIGHT INFORMATION

To correctly answer the True/False section requires reading the Book of Acts, along with the course material.

B. Correcting the True/False

1. True The stories of Acts 8 and 18 illustrate this. To many people “Christianity” (a non-biblical word) has become a “world religion” specifically for Europeans and North Americans. A surprising number of people simply assume that people of other ethnic backgrounds already have their own national religion, e.g. Sikhism, Buddhism, and so do not qualify and have no need to hear Good News. The real Good News and the real New Community cut across all ethnic lines.

2. False Nothing in the stories indicates this, though many people tend to believe this way. Baptism is part of the answer to the “What shall we do?” of Acts 2. 3 of the 4 Acts stories show it to be a natural part of the response to the Good News.

Well-intentioned people have de-emphasized baptism altogether. They over-react to traditional “magical” views about baptism. There is an intimate connection between baptism and the Good News itself. When the real Good News is proclaimed, water baptism expresses faith and repentance and leads to freedom from sin and the Presence of God’s Spirit for a new kind of life. For additional perspective from Scripture, see the Bible Study Resources tab “Q & A: Baptism.”

3. True This forms the main thrust of everything God does from after Adam and Eve’s failure to the ministry of Jesus to the mission of the church. God knows what sin can do. Many people don’t understand it, and expect God to have other agendas such as promoting religion, solving the world’s social and economic injustices, etc. They also tend to think of sin as a “legal event” with no effect beyond the accumulation of a “record.” The result of this is a view of church which calls for “doing religious obligations,” with little life-impact.

The New Community is part of God’s plan to overcome sin. It’s where we experience in human relationships what God Himself is like – where we are re-educated in what is most important. God replaces the misdirection of the “off-target way” with the new way that fits what we’re made for – through His Spirit and in the church.

4. False Prejudice and some aspects of traditional religion confuse sincere seekers of truth into thinking that because they can’t get over some of their sins on their own, they don’t qualify to become part of the church. Being willing to change direction and director – to repent – qualifies. No one is shut out because they need help to overcome sin. The church is one of God’s gifts to help us with it.

5. False Organized religion has in many instances done good for people. However, it has in many more instances replaced God for people by trying to do for them what God does, e.g. forgiving sins, giving laws and direction for life, providing assurance of favor, etc. and demanding submission and obedience that should be only reserved for Him. See Acts 4. In the Acts stories organized religion shows itself to be against the Good News. Sometimes religious background helped people be receptive to the Good News. Sometimes it didn’t.

God wants to love and communicate with people individually and in the New Community. While starting out with good intentions, organized religion often mixes the Good News with power structures and traditions which “nullify” what God has to say. W hat God wants to do for people is better than what people expect.

6. True Modern culture reacts sharply to anyone who does this. The leaders of the church in Acts took such a stand because their Good News came from God. The authority for it doesn’t originate with the church, but with God. To believe the Good News is to affirm God’s authority; to reject it is to reject God.

To respect others’ freedom of choice is right – God Himself allows people to choose against Him. If anything, true respect affirms the value of another person by helping them to find truth, rather than leaving them to the ravages of the off-target way. People are designed for right relationship with God and other people. The Good News is all about how that can happen.

7. True The approach Jesus took to life is the approach people in the church are trying to adopt and implement for themselves and for other people. There were many issues in Jesus’ time which were important to the public but which He never directly addressed. His mission was less with bringing political and moral force to change society, and more on loving people and helping them love others. All the stories in Acts show Jesus’ early followers continuing in the same direction.

The reason for this is because the issues Jesus dealt with are important everywhere, regardless of social condition. No change in social and economic condition, important and helpful as it can be, can replace the impact of the Good News on real human need.

8. False Prejudice and some experience lead some people to believe either that there is no sin in the lives of church people, or that church people believe that they don’t sin. People who have heard the Good News know that repenting (changing direction and director) is the requirement – not sinlessness.

Hypocrisy is pretending to be something one is not. It’s pretending to believe something when one’s actions show one doesn’t. No one who has heard and responded to the Good News ever has to pretend anything. The Good News of forgiveness allows us to be completely honest about our own weakness and failures. It lets us hold up the truth as something we are working on, instead of pretending that we’ve already mastered it. Our own weakness and growth can be an example for others who don’t yet realize that God wants to help people.

9. False People who say this don’t understand the power of the off-target way, and they don’t understand what God has in mind for the church to be. Sometimes they’re over-reacting to organized religion. Sometimes they simply do not have a well-informed faith. Acts 2 shows God forming a community of people who believed the Good News. They devoted themselves to God and to each other. Acts 8, 18, etc. show that believers formed communities to worship God and encourage each other. They did this because they needed to learn how to love people as God loves them. They needed instruction in God’s Word. They needed each other to remember what they were all about.

10. True One’s acceptance or rejection of God in this life directs its permanent course in the Great Day. People tend to think that if God really judges people, it will be on the basis of how good they are. Since a sin-distorted perspective makes them think they’re “no worse than anyone else,” they assume it really doesn’t matter whether they believe and respond to the Good News.

Independence in this life leads to independence in the next. Permanent independence from God is the worst thing that can happen to a human. It’s what the Bible calls “hell.” It’s not worth whatever advantages it appears to hold for this life.

God tries to save people from the tragic consequences of this misunderstanding through the Good News. If people persist, they have done the one thing that even God can’t change. This is the essence of “judgment.” See Acts 17.24-31, 24.15-16, etc. for general teaching. God is trying to bring as many people as possible into a whole new creation, free from all the pain and sorrow and misery of this age. He doesn’t want anyone to miss the opportunity to wake up to a whole new kind of life, well worth living.

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C. Working It Through to Life

These notes will give you a general idea of the direction Good News is designed to lead you. You’ve probably written down many other considerably valuable insights which aren’t referred to in the following paragraphs. We hope that these are helpful for you.

1. You might identify a few characteristics such as: the freedom to start over; understanding and help instead of anger and criticism for ignorance and mistakes; a variety of many different kinds of people; a lot of mistakes being made; a joyful atmosphere as people appreciate what God has done for them and is doing for them; they would be very attractive to some outsiders, and very repugnant to others; etc.

2. You might write many different ways of saying a few basic things, among others:

loving God and loving people;

worshipping God, loving each other,

getting the Good News to others;

helping people get their lives “on-target”;

helping them learn how to live with God; etc.

3. Off-target people could expect to be loved, understood, etc. They would see and experience what God’s love for people is really like. They could also expect to hear truth directly about their lives, so that they could continue to repent and grow in their ability to love.

4. This answer depends on your past experience with churches, and isn’t necessarily “right” or “wrong.”

5. Most of all He wants people to recognize that He loves them, to trust that He knows what’s best for them, and to respond to the Good News in baptism. God wants to permanently love people and be loved by them. He wants to transform people from self-centeredness to self-sacrifice, which is His own character. The total response God hopes for is joy at who He is and how He loves us all.

For more detailed information about how we’ve applied Good News about God’s People to our own life as a local congregation of New Community people, you’re welcome to refer to “FAQ’s About Us.”

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South Burnaby Church of Christ

7485 Salisbury Avenue

Burnaby, BC V5E 3A5 Canada

(604) 522-7721