So consequential is the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead to the Christian faith that the Apostle Paul says that were it not true, then we have believed a lie, our faith is worthless, we should be pitied, and we remain condemned in our sins, eternally unforgiven.[2] If the gospel is good news, absent the resurrection, it’s the worst news ever. “But in fact,” Paul goes on to say, “Christ has been raised from the dead” (1 Cor. 15:20), a witnessed fact in history and a glorious testimony to the power of God.
Category Archives: Easter
Resurrection Encouragement
Despite its certainty, as Western-culture moderns, we have a hard time thinking and talking about death. Such talk seems to our ears, well, morbid (which may make you wonder why I am talking about it today on Easter Sunday of all times!).
Judah’s Blessing
If such a description sounds unbelievable, it’s because it is unbelievable from our fallen human perspective. We only know life after Adam’s Fall into sin. We see only through the lens of how life is,…
The New Has Come
Like many catastrophes, the Fall came without warning, but unlike many catastrophes it came with deceptive subtlety. In the midst of the Garden, Satan in the form of a serpent deceived Eve, who sinned by eating the forbidden fruit and shared the temptation with Adam, who ate too. And so fell our ancestors, and the human race, “from their original righteousness and communion with God,” and as a result they “became dead in sin, and wholly defiled in all parts and faculties of soul and body,” as our Confession of Faith puts it.[2] In the history of human tragedies, the first was the worst.
As He Said
The bulk of Paul’s first epistle, chapter after chapter, deals with the problems of a dysfunctional church. And then, once he seemingly addressed every issue, he does something that may seem elementary: He preaches the gospel. Actually, to be precise, he reminds them of it. They have heard it before, but, like every church, they need it again.
The Necessity of Grace
As John Stott taught his study assistant, when we get our theology of grace right, then we see the necessity of grace in all things, which leads us to worship, whether it be the thin end of a cup of coffee or the wide end of the resurrection of Christ from the dead.
The Gospel of Resurrection
In Christ, paradise lost becomes paradise regained. And in Christ’s final act of subordination, he will submit the kingdom to God, that God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit may be “all in all.” As Calvin summarizes, “all things will be brought back to God, as their beginning and end.”
Planter, Pastor, Preacher 