This Is the Good News

This is the doctrine I have been working out from the scriptures for twenty years: what the good news is, and what it is not. Every step is set out with the verses under it, so you can check each one for yourself. Enjoy it. — Jon

This note is interpretation, not translation. It is Jon’s definition of the good news, the gospel, set out step by step. The sections marked as Jon’s reading are in his own voice; under each step are the texts; and each step that no verse states carries a red flag.

In this book the good news comes by messengers. The noun euangelion, good news, is in Revelation once, here, and the verb euangelizō, to announce good news, twice, here and at 10:7. Here they stand side by side: echonta euangelion aiōnion euangelisai, “having good news that lasts into the ages, to announce as good news,” the same word twice where the translation says “good news … to announce.” Both places have a messenger, an angel. Here it is “another messenger flying high overhead,” sent “to every nation and tribe and language and people” (14:6). At 10:7, in the days of the seventh messenger, “God’s secret will be finished — as he announced to his servants the prophets,” where “announced” is the same verb. Paul set the bar for any messenger: “even if we, or a messenger from heaven, should announce to you good news other than what we announced to you, let him be accursed” (Galatians 1:8). This good news is aiōnion, lasting into the ages, the word Hebrews uses of the redemption He obtained with His own blood (9:12). What the messenger says is: “Fear God and give him glory, because the hour of his judgment has come. Bow to the one who made the sky and the earth and the sea and the springs of water” (14:7).

The good news to the nations, Acts 10 — Jon’s reading. I take the definition of the good news from the first sermon to non-Jews that scripture records: Peter’s, at the house of Cornelius. Peter himself says it was the first: “God chose among you that through my mouth the nations should hear the word of the good news and trust” (Acts 15:7). God sent him there and convinced him first: an angel to Cornelius (10:3), the vision of the sheet, shown three times (10:16), and the Spirit’s word, “look, two men are looking for you” (10:19). Peter begins: “God is not one who shows favouritism, but in every nation the one who fears Him and does what is right is welcome to Him” (10:34–35). He names the message: “the word He sent to the sons of Israel, announcing good news of peace through Jesus the Anointed — He is Lord of all” (10:36; euangelizomenos eirēnēn, the verb of 14:6). God anointed Jesus of Nazareth “with the Holy Spirit and power” (10:38); they killed Him, “hanging Him on a tree” (10:39); “God raised Him on the third day and let Him be seen, not by all the people but by witnesses chosen beforehand by God, by us, who ate and drank with Him after He rose from the dead” (10:40–41). Then: “And He commanded us to proclaim to the people and to testify that this is the one appointed by God as judge of the living and the dead. To Him all the prophets testify, that through His name everyone who trusts in Him receives forgiveness of sins” (10:42–43). “While Peter was still speaking these words, the Holy Spirit fell on all who were hearing the word” (10:44), and the believers who had come with Peter were astonished “because the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out on the nations too; for they heard them speaking in tongues and magnifying God” (10:45–46). Then Peter asked, “Can anyone withhold the water for these to be immersed, who have received the Holy Spirit just as we did?” and ordered them to be immersed in the name of Jesus the Anointed (10:47–48). They received the Spirit while they listened; the water came after.

Here is what I see in it. Verses 42 and 43 are Peter passing on what the risen Jesus Himself told the apostles, and Luke records it. On the road to Emmaus, the day He rose, “beginning from Moses and from all the prophets, He explained to them in all the scriptures the things about Himself” (Luke 24:27). That same evening in Jerusalem He told the eleven that everything written about Him “in the law of Moses and the prophets and the psalms” must be fulfilled: “thus it is written, that the Anointed should suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, and that a change of mind for the forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in His name to all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem” (24:44–47). Peter was one of them, “us, who ate and drank with Him after He rose” (Acts 10:41), and at Cornelius’s house he says it back: all the prophets, forgiveness of sins, His name, the nations. And the Holy Spirit fell on those very words. It fell “while Peter was still speaking these words” (10:44), and when he told it later he said it was “as I began to speak” (11:15), so the sermon was cut short, and the last words Luke gives before the Spirit fell are verse 43. All of God is in it: God appointed Him (10:42), Jesus gave the command (10:42), and the Holy Spirit fell as it was spoken (10:44), just as 10:38 names all three. And verse 43 is the good news to the nations in a single sentence: everyone who trusts in Him receives forgiveness of sins through His name. Paul, writing to the nations at Corinth, gives it in the same order of events: “that the Anointed died for our sins according to the scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He has been raised on the third day according to the scriptures” (1 Corinthians 15:3–4).

All the prophets testify — three witnesses. Peter says that “to Him all the prophets testify” (10:43), and the law asks for two or three witnesses before a matter stands: al pi shenei edim o al pi sheloshah edim yaqum davar, “on the word of two witnesses or on the word of three witnesses a matter shall stand” (Deuteronomy 19:15; Paul quotes it at 2 Corinthians 13:1). Here are three prophets, each with a part of Peter’s sentence. Forgiveness: ki eslach la’avonam, ule-chattatam lo ezkor od (כי אסלח לעונם ולחטאתם לא אזכר עוד), “for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more” (Jeremiah 31:34), the promise of the new covenant (31:31), quoted twice in Hebrews (8:12; 10:17). Through Him: “he was pierced for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds there is healing for us … and the LORD laid on him the iniquity of us all” (Isaiah 53:5–6); “by his knowledge the righteous one, my servant, will make many righteous, and he will bear their iniquities” (53:11); “he bore the sin of many” (53:12). Peter writes it in his own letter: “by his wound you were healed” (1 Peter 2:24). Everyone, through His name: kol asher yiqra be-shem YHWH yimmalet, “everyone who calls on the name of the LORD will be delivered” (Joel 2:32; 3:5 in the Hebrew numbering), which Peter quoted at Pentecost (Acts 2:21) and Paul at Romans 10:13. And the one who trusts: “the one who trusts in him will not be put to shame” (Isaiah 28:16 in the Greek; the Hebrew has ha-ma’amin lo yachish, “the one who trusts will not be in haste”), which Paul quotes at Romans 9:33 and 10:11, “everyone who trusts in Him.”

Peter preached it — Jon’s reading. Notice who is preaching. Rome counts Peter as the first pope: “The Lord made Simon alone, whom he named Peter, the ‘rock’ of his Church” (Catechism of the Catholic Church 881). This is Peter’s own sermon, and he says the same thing everywhere else he speaks. At Pentecost: “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved” (Acts 2:21). Before the council in Jerusalem: “there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among people by which we must be saved” (4:12). At the council in Acts 15, speaking of this very house: God “made no distinction between us and them, cleansing their hearts by trust,” and “we trust that we are saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, in the same way as they” (15:9, 15:11). And in his own letter: “He Himself bore our sins in His body on the tree” (1 Peter 2:24); “the Anointed also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God” (3:18); “this is the word that was announced to you as good news” (1:25). So if anyone who claims Peter’s chair teaches otherwise, I say they are wrong, and Peter himself is the witness against them. Rome’s whole claim to authority rests on Peter. If Peter himself teaches the opposite of Trent, then no one is bound by Trent on Peter’s authority, and every reader is free to go to Peter’s own words and decide. And Peter vouches for Paul. He calls him “our beloved brother Paul,” who wrote “according to the wisdom given to him,” and sets his letters with “the rest of the scriptures,” which the untaught and unstable twist (2 Peter 3:15–16). Paul wrote: “to the one who does not work, but trusts in the One who justifies the ungodly, his trust is counted as righteousness” (Romans 4:5); “by grace you have been saved through trust, and this not from yourselves, it is God’s gift; not from works, so that no one may boast” (Ephesians 2:8–9), and the good works come after: “created in the Anointed Jesus for good works” (2:10). Peter’s own letter says the same: those who are guarded by God’s power “through trust for a salvation ready to be revealed” (1 Peter 1:5), “receiving the goal of your trust, the salvation of your souls” (1:9). The Council of Trent says: “If any one saith, that justifying faith is nothing else but confidence in the divine mercy which remits sins for Christ’s sake; or, that this confidence alone is that whereby we are justified; let him be anathema” (Session 6, canon 12, Waterworth’s 1848 translation). And canon 9: “If any one saith, that by faith alone the impious is justified; in such wise as to mean, that nothing else is required to co-operate in order to the obtaining the grace of Justification … let him be anathema.” The impious is Paul’s ungodly, ton asebē, from Romans 4:5. Scripture has an anathema too, and it is Paul’s: “even if we, or a messenger from heaven, should announce to you good news other than what we announced to you, let him be accursed (anathema estō). As we have said before, so now I say again: if anyone announces to you good news other than what you received, let him be accursed” (Galatians 1:8–9). That takes in Peter. The good news Paul preached is the one the leaders in Jerusalem recognised Peter had been entrusted with too: Paul “to the uncircumcised, just as Peter to the circumcised,” and James, Cephas and John gave him the right hand of fellowship (2:7–9). And when Peter himself drew back from eating with the nations at Antioch, Paul “opposed him to his face,” because they were “not walking straight toward the truth of the good news” (2:11, 2:14). The anathema covers anyone, the apostles included. Peter said: “everyone who trusts in Him receives forgiveness of sins through His name.” Rome’s answer points to what Peter did next, ordering them to be immersed (Acts 10:48), and to Acts 2:38; in Acts 10 the Spirit had already fallen on them before the water (10:44, 10:47): “who can forbid the water to these, who received the Holy Spirit just as we did?” And when Peter writes that “immersion … now saves you,” he says at once what he means: “not the removal of dirt from the flesh, but the appeal of a good conscience toward God, through the resurrection of Jesus the Anointed” (1 Peter 3:21).

Handed on once — Jon’s reading. Rome also says that it alone interprets the word: “The task of authentically interpreting the word of God, whether written or handed on, has been entrusted exclusively to the living teaching office of the Church.” The same paragraph says: “This teaching office is not above the word of God, but serves it, teaching only what has been handed on” (Dei Verbum 10, the Second Vatican Council, 1965). Scripture says what was handed on, and that it does not change: “the faith once for all handed on to God’s people” (Jude 3, hapax paradotheisē); good news “that lasts into the ages” (Revelation 14:6); “the word of the Lord remains into the age, and this is the word that was announced to you as good news” (1 Peter 1:25, quoting Isaiah 40:8, “the word of our God stands forever”); “Jesus the Anointed is the same yesterday and today and into the ages. Do not be carried away by varied and strange teachings, for it is good for the heart to be established by grace” (Hebrews 13:8–9). When a council condemns what Peter handed on, it puts the office above the word, which its own Dei Verbum 10 says it is not. Peter wrote that “no prophecy of scripture comes from one’s own interpretation” (2 Peter 1:20), and gave the reason in the next breath: “for prophecy was never brought by human will, but people spoke from God, carried by the Holy Spirit” (1:21). It is about where prophecy came from. The good news was handed on once for all, and it lasts into the ages. It does not change because a council met at Trent fifteen hundred years later and voted otherwise.

Only trust — Jon’s reading. Rome points to James: “a person is made right by works and not by faith alone” (James 2:24), the one place the words “faith alone” are in the New Testament. Jesus said “alone” first. When word came that Jairus’s daughter had died, He told her father: “Do not be afraid; only trust, and she will be saved” (Luke 8:50, monon pisteuson, kai sōthēsetai; Mark 5:36, “only trust”). It is the same word, monon. And when the crowd asked Him, “What must we do, to be doing the works of God?” He answered: “This is the work of God, that you trust in the one He sent” (John 6:28–29). The work God asks for is trust. James is asking to be shown it: “show me your trust apart from works, and I will show you my trust by my works” (2:18), and he quotes the same verse Paul builds on, “Abraham trusted God, and it was counted to him as righteousness” (2:23, Genesis 15:6). A trust that is real shows; a trust with nothing to show is dead (2:26). The trust is what saves, and Jesus said so in one word. And nothing is left to add, because it has been paid. On the cross He said one word, tetelestai, “it has been finished” (John 19:30). The verb, teleō, is the one the New Testament uses for paying what is owed: “does your teacher not pay (telei) the two drachmas?” (Matthew 17:24); “you pay (teleite) taxes” (Romans 13:6). The word carries both, finished and paid, and I read it as paid in full. Paul says what was paid: He wiped out “the record of debt that stood against us … and took it out of the way, nailing it to the cross” (Colossians 2:14). Hebrews draws the conclusion: “by one offering He has made complete forever those who are being made holy … and where these are forgiven, there is no longer an offering for sin” (10:14, 10:18).

What James means — Jon’s reading. Read the whole chapter and James explains himself. He gives two examples of the works he means, and Rome’s council quotes neither: Trent’s Decree on Justification quotes James 2:24 (chapter 10) and does not mention Abraham’s offering or Rahab. The first is Abraham offering Isaac (2:21). The second is Rahab the prostitute, who “received the messengers and sent them out by another way” (2:25). Hebrews names the same two deeds and calls both trust: “by trust Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac” (Hebrews 11:17); “by trust Rahab the prostitute did not perish with those who disobeyed, having received the spies in peace” (11:31). And Rahab says what her deed was: “because I have shown you mercy” (Joshua 2:12, ki asiti immakhem chesed), in the Greek, “I am doing mercy to you” (poiō hymin eleos). Scripture says nothing either way about the lie she told to hide them (2:4–5); what it praises is the mercy, done by trust, at the risk of her own life, and what she asked in return was her family’s lives (2:12–13). Now look at what comes before. The chapter opens with partiality: the rich man given the good seat and the poor man told to stand, and “have you not become judges with evil thoughts?” (James 2:1–4). Then the royal law, “you shall love your neighbour as yourself” (2:8), and then, “whoever keeps the whole law but stumbles in one point has become guilty of all” (2:10), which is Paul’s point too (Galatians 3:10). No one can claim to keep it. Then: “so speak and so act as those who are to be judged by the law of liberty. For judgment is without mercy to the one who has not done mercy; mercy triumphs over judgment” (2:12–13). “Done mercy” is poiēsanti eleos, Rahab’s own words in the Greek, and twelve verses later James names her. The faith he says cannot save is one a person only says he has (2:14), the kind the demons have too (2:19). So the works James is talking about are mercy, done because you trust Him, and mercy comes from knowing you are forgiven: “her sins, which are many, are forgiven, for she loved much” (Luke 7:47). Trent’s canon 12 pronounces anathema on anyone who says that justifying faith is “confidence in the divine mercy.” James says mercy triumphs over judgment.

Nothing added — Jon’s reading. This is why I am strict on this point. Jesus did it all, and adding anything to it says His sacrifice was not enough. Paul put it as seriously as it can be put: “I do not set aside the grace of God; for if righteousness is through law, then the Anointed died for nothing” (Galatians 2:21; dōrean, in vain). “If by grace, then no longer from works; otherwise grace is no longer grace” (Romans 11:6); “to the one who works, the pay is counted not as grace but as debt” (4:4); “if you are circumcised, the Anointed will profit you nothing” (Galatians 5:2). Even a human covenant, once ratified, “no one sets aside or adds to” (Galatians 3:15), and this one was ratified in His blood. Peter saw what adding looks like. When Simon offered the apostles money for the Spirit, Peter did not say, the gift is free, but we will take your money as well. He said: “May your silver perish with you, because you thought the gift of God could be obtained with money … your heart is not right before God” (Acts 8:18–21). The gift there is dōrea, the word behind dōrean, free, in Revelation 22:17. And Peter wrote later what the price had been: “not with perishable things, silver or gold … but with the precious blood of the Anointed, as of a lamb without blemish” (1 Peter 1:18–19). His work is finished. He “offered one sacrifice for sins for all time, and sat down at the right hand of God” (Hebrews 10:12); He “is able to save completely” (7:25); “you are made complete in Him” (Colossians 2:10); and “where these are forgiven, there is no longer an offering for sin” (Hebrews 10:18).

What Galatians calls another good news. Paul names the error in the same letter. It is a turning away “from the one who called you in grace” to “a different good news, which is not another” (1:6–7). Circumcision in this letter stands for that: not the cut itself but the covenant it entered a man into, as in Jerusalem where some said “unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved,” and “it is necessary to circumcise them and to command them to keep the law of Moses” (Acts 15:1, 15:5); Paul calls the two covenants Sinai and the promise (Galatians 4:24). It is being made right by works of law instead of by trust: “a person is not made right by works of law, but through trust in Jesus the Anointed … because by works of law no flesh will be made right” (2:16). It makes the cross pointless: “if righteousness is through law, then the Anointed died for nothing” (2:21), and the word for “for nothing” is dōrean, the word Revelation uses for the water of life given free (21:6; 22:17). It is finishing in the flesh what was begun in the Spirit: “did you receive the Spirit by works of law, or by hearing with trust? … Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being made complete by the flesh?” (3:2–3), which is what happened at Cornelius’s house, where they received the Spirit by hearing. And it cuts a person off: “you who are trying to be made right by law have been cut off from the Anointed; you have fallen out of grace” (5:4). What counts instead is “trust working through love” (5:6), and “the one who is right by trust will live” (3:11, from Habakkuk 2:4).

The covenants — Jon’s reading. The first three Gospels are a time of passage between the old covenant and the new. Jesus is there, so it is no longer simply the old; the new is at hand, ēngiken, “has come near” (Matthew 4:17; Mark 1:15); and Jesus moves freely between the two. He speaks of things that do not yet exist as though they already do, as Paul says God does, “calling the things that are not as though they were” (Romans 4:17). The new covenant could not begin in full until Jesus had risen and presented His offering, His own blood, to God as the payment for our forgiveness. A covenant takes force at a death (Hebrews 9:16–17); “this cup is the new covenant in my blood” (Luke 22:20); “through His own blood He entered once for all into the holy places, having obtained redemption that lasts into the ages” (Hebrews 9:12); He “was handed over for our wrongdoings and raised for our being made right” (Romans 4:25). Hebrews says where He took it: “into heaven itself, now to appear before the face of God for us” (9:24). On the morning He rose He said, “I have not yet gone up to the Father” (John 20:17), and Peter gives the order: it was after He was “exalted to the right hand of God” and had “received the promise of the Holy Spirit from the Father” that He poured it out (Acts 2:33). Then He told them to wait: “Look, I am sending the promise of my Father upon you; but you, stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high” (Luke 24:49); “do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the promise of the Father … you will be immersed in the Holy Spirit not many days from now” (Acts 1:4–5). I read it as beginning in full in Acts 2. Luke marks the day: “as the day of Pentecost was being fulfilled” (Acts 2:1, en tō symplērousthai). The verb is in the New Testament three times, all in Luke, and the only other time it is said of days is Luke 9:51, “as the days of His being taken up were being fulfilled,” when He set His face to go to Jerusalem. The law’s own Pentecost is counted the same way: seven sabbaths, “complete” (temimot) they shall be, fifty days, and then “a new grain offering to the LORD” (Leviticus 23:15–16), with the word for new that is in “new covenant” (Jeremiah 31:31). The sound “filled” the whole house, and “they were all filled with the Holy Spirit” (Acts 2:2, 2:4). Jesus had said where it would start, “beginning from Jerusalem” (Luke 24:47), and Peter later called that day the beginning: the Spirit fell on Cornelius’s house “just as on us at the beginning” (Acts 11:15). And the prophets say what the new covenant is. Jeremiah: “this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD: I will put my law within them, and on their hearts I will write it” (31:33). Ezekiel: “I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you … and my Spirit I will put within you” (36:26–27). Isaiah: “as for me, this is my covenant with them, says the LORD: my Spirit that is on you, and my words that I have put in your mouth, will not depart from your mouth … from now and forever” (59:21). Paul joins them: “our sufficiency is from God, who also made us sufficient as ministers of a new covenant, not of letter but of Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life” (2 Corinthians 3:5–6), and he calls it “the ministry of the Spirit” (3:8). Those it reaches are themselves “a letter of the Anointed”, written “with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of hearts of flesh” (3:3). And the promise Jesus told them to wait for is the covenant’s promise: “so that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through trust” (Galatians 3:14); “the promise is for you and for your children” (Acts 2:39). So the day the Spirit was poured out is the day the new covenant’s own gift arrived. Isaiah sets it beside Noah, straight after the servant who was pierced for our transgressions (53:5): “for this is like the waters of Noah to me: as I swore that the waters of Noah would never again pass over the earth, so I have sworn not to be angry with you … my steadfast love will not depart from you, and my covenant of peace will not be shaken” (54:9–10). Noah’s is the first covenant God names (Genesis 6:18; 9:11). The same chapter says “all your children will be taught by the LORD” (54:13), which Jesus quotes (John 6:45), and the next says “I will make with you a covenant that lasts forever, the sure mercies of David” (55:3), which Paul sets at the resurrection (Acts 13:34). That is when Peter preaches the good news to the Jews first, as was promised: “to you first, God raised up His servant and sent Him to bless you” (Acts 3:26), and the good news is God’s power for salvation “to the Jew first and also to the Greek” (Romans 1:16). John says the Spirit was not yet given, “because Jesus was not yet glorified” (John 7:39); at Pentecost Peter says that, exalted to the right hand of God and having received from the Father the promised Holy Spirit, “He poured out this, which you see and hear” (Acts 2:33).

John — Jon’s reading. John’s Gospel is not a life story but a book of signs, and the good news is in nearly every chapter. John tells us himself why he wrote it: “these are written so that you may trust that Jesus is the Anointed, the Son of God, and that trusting you may have life in His name” (20:31). Three times among many, Jesus says it outright. “For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, so that everyone who trusts in Him should not perish but have life that lasts into the ages. For God did not send His Son into the world to judge the world, but so that the world might be saved through Him” (3:16–17). “Truly, truly I tell you, the one who hears my word and trusts the one who sent me has life that lasts into the ages, and does not come into judgment, but has passed over from death into life” (5:24). “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who trusts in me will live, even if he dies, and everyone who lives and trusts in me will never die. Do you trust this?” (11:25–26). Each is said to “everyone” or to “the one who trusts,” and none adds a condition but trust. Life that lasts into the ages is the same adjective, aiōnios, as the good news at Revelation 14:6. The word for changing one’s mind, metanoeō or metanoia, is not in John’s Gospel at all, nor in his three letters, while pisteuō, to trust, is in the Gospel 98 times. Revelation has the verb twelve times in ten verses (2:5, 2:16, 2:21, 2:22, 3:3, 3:19, 9:20, 9:21, 16:9, 16:11).

Change your mind — Jon’s reading. The word usually translated “repent” is often misunderstood. Metanoeō means to change your mind, and that is how this translation renders it. Notice that the word is not in Peter’s sermon at Cornelius’s house at all (Acts 10:34–43). It was preached to the Jews in Jerusalem, who had rejected Jesus: “this Jesus whom you crucified” (Acts 2:36), and then, “change your minds, and let each of you be immersed in the name of Jesus the Anointed for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit” (2:38); “you denied the Holy and Righteous One … change your minds, then, and turn” (3:14, 3:19). Cornelius had not rejected Him; God sent Peter to him. Here is what I mean. The change of mind happens when you believe; it does not have to be preached to you as a demand for it to happen. Peter never said the word at Cornelius’s house, and yet when he told the believers in Jerusalem what happened, they said, “then to the nations too God has given the change of mind that leads to life” (Acts 11:18). They heard, they trusted, the Spirit fell, and that was their change of mind. Jesus did command it to be proclaimed to all the nations (Luke 24:47), and when Peter carried that command to the nations he preached trust, and Jerusalem called what happened the change of mind. You don’t have to say the word; by trusting Jesus you do change your mind. Where Acts puts it as a command, it is to people who had rejected Jesus, as in Jerusalem, or who trusted the works of their own hands, as at Athens, where Paul tells them God “does not live in temples made with hands, nor is He served by human hands,” and is not like “gold or silver or stone, an engraving of human art and thought,” and then that God “now announces to all people everywhere to change their minds” (Acts 17:24–25, 17:29–30). Those are the two Paul names: “seeking to establish their own righteousness, they did not submit to the righteousness of God” (Romans 10:3), and “not from trust, but as if from works” (9:32). Trusting Jesus is the turn from either. Think about what the word says. Trust is a decision, and it is made in the mind; Paul says “with the heart one trusts” (Romans 10:10), and in scripture the heart is where a person thinks, “every intent of the thoughts of his heart” (Genesis 6:5). If you did not trust Him before and you do now, your mind has changed. That is what metanoia is. Jesus said it Himself: “the tax collectors and the prostitutes trusted him; but you, even when you saw it, did not change your minds afterward so as to trust him” (Matthew 21:32, of John). The change of mind is the step that ends in trusting. Luke says the same at Antioch: “a great number who trusted turned to the Lord” (Acts 11:21), and Paul says John’s immersion was one “of a change of mind, telling the people to trust in the one coming after him, that is, in Jesus” (19:4). So when Hebrews 6:1 sets “a change of mind from dead works” beside “trust toward God,” and Paul preaches “the change of mind toward God and trust toward our Lord Jesus” (Acts 20:21), I read it as one turn named from both ends: the change of mind names what you turn from and toward, and trust names whom you now rely on. Two names for one decision are not two decisions. And in scripture it is God who gives it: He exalted Jesus “as Leader and Saviour, to give Israel a change of mind and forgiveness of sins” (Acts 5:31); “God’s kindness leads you to a change of mind” (Romans 2:4); “God may give them a change of mind” (2 Timothy 2:25). It is something God gives, not a price we pay. The only place I know of where scripture lays down what the change of mind is from is Hebrews 6:1: “a change of mind from dead works, and trust toward God.” Dead works could be called sin. But I don’t say “repent of your sins,” because “sin” has become a vague word that people don’t understand. Ask people what sin is, and almost nobody will say dead works.

What the change of mind is from. Checked across the New Testament, the words “change your mind from your sins” are never used. Where a word for changing the mind and the word “sins” stand in one verse, the sins are what is forgiven or wiped out (Mark 1:4; Luke 3:3, 24:47; Acts 2:38, 3:19, 5:31). Where a verse says what the change of mind is from, there are eight, and they name: dead works (Hebrews 6:1, the one place it is laid down as part of the foundation, and with 9:14 the only “dead works” in the New Testament); “this wickedness of yours,” said to Simon, who had thought to buy the gift of God with money (Acts 8:20–22); impurity and sexual unfaithfulness (2 Corinthians 12:21); and in Revelation, her sexual unfaithfulness (2:21), her works (2:22), the works of their hands (9:20), their murders, sorceries, sexual unfaithfulness and thefts (9:21), and their works (16:11). Four of the eight name works. In Revelation it is said to five of the seven assemblies (2:5, 2:16, 2:21–22, 3:3, 3:19), and of those who would not turn from the works of their hands (9:20–21; 16:9, 16:11).

Missed, and already settled — Jon’s reading. Many people, pastors and popes among them, have missed this. I can’t say they are all at fault, but I have been asked about it many times over the years. Rome’s own council wrote against it, in the canons quoted above. And it is not a new argument: it was argued in Acts and settled there. “After much debate” Peter stood up (Acts 15:7) and said that God, “who knows the heart, bore witness to them, giving them the Holy Spirit just as to us; and He made no distinction between us and them, cleansing their hearts by trust … why are you testing God by putting a yoke on the neck of the disciples? … we trust that we are saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, in the same way as they” (15:8–11). The letter the apostles sent out says: “it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to lay no greater burden on you” (15:28). Paul says what the cross costs the one who preaches it, in Galatians 5:11: “if I still preach circumcision, why am I still persecuted? Then the offence of the cross has been done away with.” When Paul says circumcision here, he is not talking about the physical act, which by itself counts for nothing either way (Galatians 5:6, 6:15; 1 Corinthians 7:19). He means entering the old covenant by it: “every man who is circumcised is obligated to do the whole law” (Galatians 5:3), the same thing as works of law. Good deeds and charity are easy for anyone to get behind; Jesus and His grace offend some. “We proclaim the Anointed crucified, to Jews an offence and to the nations foolishness” (1 Corinthians 1:23). That is why Paul says, “I am not ashamed of the good news, for it is God’s power for salvation to everyone who trusts” (Romans 1:16; Nestle’s text has “the good news,” and some later copies add “of the Anointed”).

What salvation is — Jon’s reading. Salvation is what Jesus’ name means, and it means all the good things of God: safety, life that lasts into the ages, healing, wholeness, peace. The word itself covers them. “You will call His name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins” (Matthew 1:21); in Hebrew the name is Yeshua, a form of Yehoshua, “YHWH saves,” and yeshu’ah is salvation. “Daughter, your trust has saved you; go in peace, and be healed of your affliction” (Mark 5:34); “your trust has saved you; go in peace” (Luke 7:50); “the prayer of trust will save the one who is sick” (James 5:15); and on the sinking ship Paul tells the crew to eat, “for this is for your sōtēria,” their safety, “not a hair of anyone’s head will be lost” (Acts 27:34).

Standing in the way of it — Jon’s reading. Think about it: Jesus went to the cross to give this gift. His name is salvation, and this is how salvation comes. To say it isn’t true, or to attack the people who proclaim it, is to stand against Him, and He will not be pleased with it. He said to the lawyers of His day, “you took away the key of knowledge; you did not go in yourselves, and you hindered those who were going in” (Luke 11:52; also Matthew 23:13). If you disagree, the wise course is Gamaliel’s: “keep away from these men and let them go; if this plan or this work is from people, it will come to nothing, but if it is from God, you will not be able to stop them, or you may even be found fighting against God” (Acts 5:38–39). And Paul said of those who preached the Anointed out of rivalry, “in every way, whether in pretence or in truth, the Anointed is proclaimed, and in this I rejoice” (Philippians 1:18).

The only qualification — Jon’s reading. The book ends with it twice, and the word both times is dōrean, free: “To the one who is thirsty I will give freely from the spring of the water of life” (21:6); “let the one who is thirsty come; let the one who wants it take the water of life free of charge” (22:17). The only qualification given is that you are thirsty for the water of life. Jesus Himself joins thirst and trust: “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. The one who trusts in me, as the scripture said, rivers of living water will flow from within him,” and John adds that He said this about the Spirit (John 7:37–39); “the one who trusts in me will never be thirsty” (6:35); and to the woman at the well, “If you knew the gift (dōrea) of God … you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water” (4:10), the gift word that dōrean, free, comes from. The call is the prophet’s first: “everyone who thirsts, come to the waters, and whoever has no money … without money and without price” (Isaiah 55:1); and “blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled” (Matthew 5:6). So thirst is the only qualification given, and Jesus says what drinking is: trusting Him. And there is an example straight from Jesus, on the cross. The man crucified beside Him said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom,” and Jesus answered, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise” (Luke 23:42–43). Paradise is the word of Revelation 2:7, where the tree of life is, which this translation renders “God’s garden.” Getting saved is simple. Jesus did everything: “It is finished” (tetelestai, John 19:30).

The good news here, and at Cornelius’s house. The messenger at 14:6–7 brings the good news Peter preached, because there is only one. Paul says that even “a messenger from heaven” who announced good news other than the apostles’ would be accursed (Galatians 1:8), and 14:6 is a messenger in mid-heaven announcing good news, the one time the noun is in this book. It is the good news that lasts: “that lasts into the ages” here, and in Peter’s words, “the word of the Lord remains into the age, and this is the word that was announced to you as good news” (1 Peter 1:25). Its words are the apostles’ words to the nations. At Lystra Paul and Barnabas said, “we announce good news to you, that you turn from these empty things to the living God, who made the sky and the earth and the sea and all that is in them” (Acts 14:15); here it is “bow to the one who made the sky and the earth and the sea and the springs of water” (14:7). With Peter it shares every nation and the one who fears Him (Acts 10:35; 14:6–7), and judgment, “judge of the living and the dead” (10:42; 14:7). God announced it as good news to His servants the prophets (10:7, the same verb), and to Him all the prophets testify (Acts 10:43). What 14:7 states is the call: fear God, give Him glory, the hour of judgment, the one who made all things. It does not name forgiveness, the cross or Jesus; Galatians 1:8 is why this note reads it as the same good news.

Where this stops. The verses are quoted where they stand, and the Greek of Acts and Revelation is rendered here from Nestle 1904. What the note adds is Jon’s definition and his reasons for it, each headed as his. It does not say who is saved and who is not, beyond the texts it quotes.

Rome’s answer, and mine — Jon’s reading. Rome does not say that Jesus’ work was not enough. It says that the sacraments, and the works that follow, are themselves His grace, and it answers from scripture. From Peter, to the Jews in Jerusalem who had crucified Jesus and so rejected Him: “change your minds, and let each of you be immersed … for the forgiveness of your sins” (Acts 2:38); and from Peter’s letters, “immersion … now saves you” (1 Peter 3:21), and “no prophecy of scripture comes from one’s own interpretation” (2 Peter 1:20). From James: “not by faith alone” (James 2:24). And from its own council, that the understanding of what was handed on grows (Dei Verbum 8). My answers are above. Peter told the crowd at Pentecost to change their minds because they had crucified Jesus, and so rejected Him: “this Jesus whom you crucified” (Acts 2:36), and when they heard it “they were cut to the heart” (2:37). He said the same at the temple: “you denied the Holy and Righteous One … you killed the Author of life … change your minds, then, and turn” (3:14–15, 3:19). At Cornelius’s house, to people who had not rejected Him, he never said it. The Spirit fell before the water (Acts 10:44–48). Peter says what saves in immersion is “not the removal of dirt from the flesh … through the resurrection” (1 Peter 3:21). 2 Peter 1:20 is about where prophecy came from (1:21). Jesus said “only trust” (Luke 8:50). And James, read through, is not against it. The faith he says cannot save is one a person only says he has, with nothing to show for it (2:14–17), the kind the demons have too (2:19). The works he means are the two he names. Abraham, whose trust “was working together with his works, and by the works the trust was made complete” (2:22), had already been counted righteous by trust years before he offered Isaac, and James quotes that very scripture (2:23, Genesis 15:6). Rahab’s deed was mercy, “doing mercy” in the Greek of Joshua 2:12, the phrase of James 2:13. Hebrews calls both deeds trust (11:17, 11:31). And the chapter is aimed at people who judge others by the law. Those who favour the rich have “become judges with evil thoughts” (2:4), and the law they judge by convicts them: “if you show partiality, you commit sin, and are convicted by the law as transgressors” (2:9), because “whoever keeps the whole law and stumbles in one point has become guilty of all” (2:10). That is the hypocrisy of accusing others by a law you cannot keep yourself, and Paul says the same: “in passing judgment on another you condemn yourself, for you who judge do the same things” (Romans 2:1). James sets the law of liberty against it: “so speak and so act as those who are to be judged by the law of liberty” (2:12), the “perfect law of liberty” of 1:25, and he ends: “judgment is without mercy to the one who has not done mercy; mercy triumphs over judgment” (2:13). He comes back to it later: “the one who judges his brother … is not a doer of the law but a judge. There is one lawgiver and judge … who are you to judge your neighbour?” (4:11–12). The faith was handed on once for all (Jude 3). And whatever it is called, if it is required, “grace is no longer grace” (Romans 11:6).

How sure I am — Jon. This is my best explanation of what I have studied here. If I learn otherwise, I will take it down, and my email is on the About page of this site if you want to show me.