The Resurrection

There are some parts of God’s salvation plan that ought to just make us sit in awe of God’s amazing plan. The resurrection of Jesus Christ is one of those times. Just take some time to read 1 Corinthians 15:1-11 and reflect on God’s incredible grace and mercy, and the sheer incredibleness of what it meant for the Son of God to have victory over the sin and death.

Lets unpack this for just a moment. In 1 Cor 15:1-2 Paul describes the gospel in four ways. It was preached to you. You received it. You now stand in it. And you are being saved by it. Amazing! The good news of Jesus Christ has been preached to us. At some point or other, we heard the story of God’s love for us; think back to the first time you heard it. Not just a story going into one ear and out the other, but you allowed the truth of the good news to sink in. Do you remember that day? And then sometime after hearing the good news you received it. You accepted it as truth and reality. And this is what Paul is telling us, right now, this very moment, you are standing in that good news. It’d be easy for us to think that we by our own ability make ourselves stand for truth, but what Paul really means here is that it’s the Gospel that causes us to stand. To stand against sin, to stand in a depraved world for the truth of the Gospel, and to stand for Christ who went to the cross and died for us. That should be a relief, to have the full power of the good news of Jesus Christ bracing you in your weakness. And finally, Paul says that we are being saved by this good news. Paul doesn’t mean that we have to fear that our salvation is not at this moment secure, but rather, the salvation process which started at our acceptance by faith of God’s grace continues until Jesus comes again and we stand before the God of the universe. The reality is that the Gospel begins the salvation process when we were saved from the penalty of sin, continues to save us now from the power of sin, and finally will save us from the presence of sin.

So all this in that simple word. The Gospel. The Good news of Jesus Christ. The story of the birth, death, and resurrection of the Son of God. Paul in 1 Cor 15:3-11 reminds us of what that story was all about. Sometimes it seems that just vs. 3-5 are the good news, why does he include all the people that Jesus appeared to? Paul was verifying the absolute certainty and reality of what Jesus had done. With all these eye witnesses to His resurrection there could be no doubt that this story was the truth. And why did it matter that the early church was absolutely certain what they believed was the truth? Unlike us, they had to know it was the truth because for many of them, standing for the truth meant dying for the truth. Paul was telling them, this is what we are willing to die for, to tell the story of what Jesus has done. And it is absolutely worth dying for.

Read 1 Corinthians 15:1-11. There is some amazing truth in this passage. It is a reminder of the Gospel that we believe and hold fast to. The Gospel that is saving us and causing us to stand. Are we willing to give all of our lives for the sake of this good news?