Resurrection Of Christ

Resurrection Of Christ

(1 Co. 15:3,4;12-20)

Verses 3 and 4 are the foundation of Christianity.  The death and resurrection of Jesus, it is our hope and the reason and ground of all we believe.  We looked at the crucifixion and death of Jesus in my post on the crucifixion.  We saw that our salvation and cleansing from sin was because of the suffering and death of Jesus on the cross at Calvary.  But what about the resurrection, what does it mean to us.  Well, we know that it means everything for the Christian.  Because He lives we have salvation and assurance of eternal life.  

I. It Ensures Salvation From Sin

(1 Cor 15:17 KJV)  And if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins.

   If Jesus had not rose again bodily from the grave we would not had the salvation from sins.  If Jesus did not rise from the dead, then sin won the victory over Him and continues to be victorious over you too. If Jesus remained in the grave, then, when you die you would also stay dead. Furthermore, since "the wages of sin is death" (Romans 6:23), were you to remain dead, death and eternal punishment would be your future. The purpose of trusting in Christ is for forgiveness of sins, because it is from sin that we need to be saved. "Christ died for our sins" and "was buried, and ... raised on the third day" (1 Corinthians 15:3-4). If Christ was not raised, His death was in vain, your faith in Him would be pointless, and your sins would still be counted against you with no hope of spiritual life.  It is Jesus who gives us spiritual life to us who are spiritually dead.   

   It says in Col.1:13,14 - 13  For He delivered us from the domain of darkness, and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son,  14  in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.  By the power of our resurrected Lord and Savior we have been delivered from sin and our sinful nature.  Because He rose from the dead, we know that Jesus is victorious over sin and we who by faith receive Jesus as Savior, knows that He gives us that victory over sin also.  

   Eph. 2:1-5 shows us exactly what Jesus has done for us and our sinful condition, “2:1  And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins: 2  Wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience: 3  Among whom also we all had our conversation in times past in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind; and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others. 4  But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, 5  Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved;)”;  we see in the first 3 verses that Paul describes just how Jesus has made us alive spiritually from our condemned state of our soul.  He says Jesus has made us alive from our trespasses and sins, from our spiritual bondage to worldliness, to the devil, and to our own sinful fallen state (spiritually dead).  Jesus defeated and destroyed the powerful affect of sin, destroyed the works of the devil, and has given us life for our death sentence.  

   Verse 4 & 5 shows us through God’s mercy and love He has made us, who are dead in our sins, alive in Christ.  If Jesus is to be called the Lord of Life, then He cannot be held down and defeated by death.  Jesus himself told Mary and Martha that He was the ‘resurrection and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live’; Jesus came not to make bad people into good people but to bring us out of our spiritual death into spiritual life.  That’s why Jesus said that He was ‘the Way, the Truth, and the Life…’,  we were blind and could not see the way, we were living in our life of lies and didn’t know the truth, and we were spiritually dead and lifeless and incapable of having life till Jesus came, died, and resurrected to give us the Way to the Father, the Truth that only He could cleanse us from sin, and Eternal Life is found only by putting our faith into Jesus who is the Lord of Life, victorious over sin, Satan, death, Hell, and the grave.  If He was not victorious over death then our faith, our hope, our salvation would have been in vain.  If He had not risen from the dead we would have been trapped forever in the bondage of our sins and forever condemned to eternal death.  

II. It Ensures Our Eternal Life and Resurrection.

1 Co. 15:18-19; 18  Then they also which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished. 19  If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable.

   If Jesus had not victorious over death then death would be victorious over us all.  Every Old and New Testament saint, and all the faithful and prayerful saints you've known--every other believer in every age also would be in hell. Their faith would have been in vain, their sins would not have been forgiven, and their destiny would be damnation.   But because He is our Living and Risen Lord, we can rest assured in the peace of knowing that we have a ‘blessed hope’ and a resurrection from the dead.  Death is not the end for the child of God because Jesus has rose victoriously from the dead.  The grave, the power of death could not hold Him.  Jesus the creator of life is the Lord of Life and death could not hold Him bound up in the grave.  

   Without Christ's resurrection, and the salvation and blessings it brings, Christianity would be pointless and pitiable. Without the resurrection we would have no Savior, no forgiveness, no gospel, no meaningful faith, no eternal life, and we could never have hope for any of those things. 

   To have hoped in Christ alone in this life would be to teach, preach, suffer, sacrifice, and work entirely for nothing. If Christ is still dead, then He not only has no ability to save you in the future, but He can't help you now either. If He were not alive, where would be your source of peace, joy, or satisfaction now? The Christian life would be a mockery, a charade, a tragic and cruel joke. Christians who suffer and even die for the faith would be just as blind and pathetic as those "believers" who followed Jim Jones and the People's Temple, David Koresh and the Branch Davidians, and Marshall Applewhite and the Heaven's Gate cult. 

   Since a Christian has no Savior but Christ, no Redeemer but Christ, and no Lord but Christ, if Christ is not raised, He is not alive, and our Christian life is lifeless. We would have nothing to justify our faith, our Bible study, our preaching or witnessing, our service for Him or our worship of Him, and nothing to justify our hope in this life or the next. We would deserve nothing but the compassion reserved for fools. 

BUT, God did raise "Jesus our Lord from the dead, He who was delivered up because of our transgressions, and was raised because of our justification" (Romans 4:24-25).  “Because Christ lives, we too shall live” (John 14:19). "The God of our fathers raised up Jesus, whom you had put to death by hanging Him on a cross. He is the one whom God exalted to His right hand as a Prince and a Savior, to grant repentance to Israel, and forgiveness of sins" (Acts 5:30-31). 

   We are NOT to be pitied, for Paul immediately ends the dreadful "what if" section by saying, "But now Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who are asleep" (1 Corinthians 15:20). As Paul said at the end of his life, "I know whom I have believed and I am convinced that He is able to guard what I have entrusted to Him until that day" (2 Timothy 1:12). 

   Those who do not hope in Christ alone for salvation are the real fools; they are the ones who need to hear your compassionate testimony about the triumph of Christ's resurrection. So don't forget the resurrection; rejoice in it and glory in it, for He is risen indeed.   

I want to end with this verse; (1 Cor 15:57 KJV) “But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”

Crucifixion of Christ

The Crucifixion Of Christ

(Matt. 27:26b-37)

We often are thankful for Good Friday to be off from work but are we thankful for the meaning of Good Friday? The crucifixion and resurrection of Christ is the foundation of our faith and we must be worshipful to remember the great work of salvation achieved only by the person and work of Christ not just on Good Friday and Easter but everyday of our lives. It shows the great love, grace, and mercy God has shown to us through Christ. The horror, the suffering, the blood shed, the cruelty, and death Christ endured to cleanse us from sin shows the great depravity that man had to be saved from. For all of us that have received Christ by faith as Lord, we must remember it was for us He died and rose again. Let's look with fresh eyes again at the crucifixion of the Lord Jesus Christ.

I. Before the Crucifixion

A. The Garden (Matt. 26:36-46)- we see here in passage in Mt. 26 that Jesus has come to the Garden of Gethsemane (means ‘Olive Press’) with the disciples. He has come to pray and enters further in the garden with Peter, James, and John. This passage mentions in verse 37 that Jesus is ‘sorrowful and very heavy’, this means that he is grieved and distressed and even verbalizes that fact to these three. He is feeling the immense stress and when He prays, He asks the Father, ‘O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt’ and later prays in v. 42, ‘O my Father, if this cup may not pass away from me, except I drink it, thy will be done’. Jesus is not fearing death, the cup is not the cup of death but it represents the wrath of God against sin. In that moment, the sin of the world was being ‘poured’ on Jesus. He was going to bear our sins on that cross and die for our sins in our place; He took the punishment and penalty for our sin for us. 2 Co. 5:21 says that, ‘For he hath made him to be sin for us’, Jesus took our place and took the wrath of God for us.

   The taking on of the overwhelming weight of the sin of the world was a great stress on our Lord because we see that in Luke 22:34 it tells us that, ‘And being in an agony he prayed more earnestly: and his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground.’; now this is actually a known medical condition called hematidrosis. It is caused by great psychological stress which causes a release of chemicals that breaks down the capillaries in sweat glands which results in a small amount of bleeding in the glands and when sweat is released it is tinged with blood. We see our sinless Lamb taking our sins on Himself and the great weight causes our Lord great stress. He was the only One who could do it.

B. The betrayal and arrest (vv.47-68)- we all know the Judas betrayed Jesus for 30 pieces of silver and they came and arrested Jesus and took to the High Priest Caiaphas. The disciples had fled away into the night and Jesus was before the Sanhedrin council and they charged Him with blasphemy for they rejected Jesus as the Messiah. They also pronounced a death sentence, beat, and mocked Him.

C. Before Pilate, the crowd, and the scourging (Mt. 27:11-31)- in chapter 27:11, we see Jesus has now been brought to Pilate. He is questioned by Pilate and Pilate says in the passage from John that he could find no fault in Him. When the crowd was given a choice to release a prisoner by Pilate, he gave them a choice between Jesus and a criminal named Barabbas. The crowd there cried out they wanted Barabbas and when Pilate asked what they wanted to do with Jesus and the crowd cried out ‘crucify him!’. This was probably a lot of the same crowd that had cried out only days before ‘Hosanna’ and ‘Blessed is He that comes in the name of the Lord’ when Christ rode in on that donkey when He entered Jerusalem.

   When Pilate expressed that he felt Jesus was innocent it says in v. 23 that the crowd cried out even more, ‘Let Him be crucified’. Pilate washes his hands before them and says that he is innocent of this man’s blood and the crowd answers and says, ‘His blood be on us, and on our children’; the fact of the matter is that we are all guilty of the death of Jesus Christ and none of us are innocent of His shed blood, it is because of our sins that He came, suffered, and died on that cross. Barabbas is released and Jesus is then scourged and delivered over to the Roman soldiers to be crucified.

   Scourging was a practice used by the Romans that involved a whip of braided leather thongs with metal balls and sharp pieces of bone woven into them. It was usually consisted of 39 lashes but depending upon the mood of the soldier chosen to give the lashes it most likely was more. Needless to say the flogging would be from the shoulders down the back and buttocks to the back of the legs. It would rip and tear skin and muscle down to even exposure of the spine and bowel. It was a horrible thing to be scourged and many would die just from being scourged and the loss of blood. Then the soldiers mocked him, spit on him, and drove a crown of thorns upon His head.

II. Crucifixion (vv.32-44)

   We now come to the place of the crucifixion; as horrible as the scourging was crucifixion was even more horrible. When one was crucified, they had to carry the cross beam part of the cross called the patibulum to the place where the execution was to be carried out. When they would arrive the vertical part of the cross would already be placed in the ground. They would take the condemned and nail him to part he carried. The 5-7 inch spikes and nailed him to through the wrists. Note that the wrist was considered part of the hand in the language of the day. If it was through the palms, the skin would have torn and would have fallen off the cross; the spike through the wrists lock the hands in place and was a solid place to secure the condemned. Part of the torture involved in nailing through the wrists is that the nail would go through the place where the median nerve runs to the hand. It would crush the nerve and cause intense pain; it like the feeling of hitting your funny bone but this pain is constant and it would be like taking a pair of pliers and squeezing and crushing that nerve. The pain would be unbearable and Jesus was feeling that pain. The pain was literally beyond words to describe; in fact they invented a new word for it and that word: excruciating. Excruciating means ‘out of the cross’. They had to make a new word for that intense anguish and suffering felt on the cross.

   The cross beam was raised and attached to the vertical beam and then a spike was driven through the feet also hitting a nerve with a similar intense pain as the others. Upon being raised on the cross the arms would be stretched at least 6 inches and the shoulders would become dislocated. Once hanging in that vertical position, crucifixion was a slow painful death caused by asphyxiation. Because of the position of crucifixion, Christ had to push Himself up by His feet to exhale and relax back down to inhale. Eventually a person would die do to being to exhausted to push themselves up to keep breathing. This is the great physical pain and agony endured by Christ out of His love for lost and sinful mankind. And we see in the Garden and at the cross the great psychological and physical suffering Jesus faced for our sins.

III. His Death (vv.45-53)

   It talks in v.45 that there was a great darkness over all the land. This was not an eclipse, because they knew what an eclipse was and there is no record of any eclipse at this time period. This was a supernatural occurrence performed by God the Father. But what was the reason? At His death there is darkness from the sixth hour until the ninth hour. The Jews begin to measure their day from 6 A.M., the sixth hour is noon. From noon to three it was dark. Mark 15:25 says, “He was crucified at the third hour,” 9 A.M. So the first three hours He was hanging there visible, naked before the watching people in the light. Those three hours passed. Soldiers had nailed Him there. They had placed the sign over His head. He is suspended there in the horrific indignity as the passers-by, the soldiers, the curious, the religious leaders watched and mocked and insulted Him.

   During that three hours He only broke the silence three times. Once He said to the soldiers, of the soldiers to the Father, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.” The second time He spoke to a penitent thief at His side and said, “Verily, this day you will be with Me in paradise.” Once more He broke the three-hour silence looking down at Mary and John, He said to His mother, “Woman, behold your son,” pointing to John. And to John, “Behold your mother,” thus giving her into the care of John. In the light He said three things. All three of them were demonstrations of mercy, mercy toward the soldiers, mercy toward the thief, mercy toward Mary. Each was a revelation of the light of His grace, the shining beauty of His compassion. Darkness in the Scripture is a symbol of judgment; God’s salvation is always seen as light. God’s judgment is always seen as darkness and God was saying by the darkness that the cross was a place of judgment. This is not an indication of a judgment to come in the future, this is a judgment in itself right then and there. And God only judges one thing, what is it? Sin. God turned out the lights because this was a judgment on sin. And yet, the One receiving the judgment was sinless, a Lamb without blemish and without spot, holy, harmless, undefiled and separate from sinners, Hebrews 7:26 says. “In all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin”. Second Corinthians 5, “Him who knew no sin.”

   What is happening there then is a judgment on sin being borne by an innocent sacrifice. Isaiah 53 verse 4, “Surely our griefs He Himself bore and our sorrows He carried, yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken, smitten by God and afflicted. He was pierced through for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. The chastening for our well being fell on Him and by His scourging we are healed. The Lord caused the iniquity of us all to fall on Him.” It further says, “The Lord was pleased to crush Him, putting Him to grief, rendering Him a guilt offering He will bear their iniquities and justify many.” Paul put it this way. Romans 4:25, “He was delivered for our offenses.” First Corinthians 15:3, “He died for our sins.” First Peter 2:24, “Who in His own self bore our sins in His body on the tree.” First Peter 3:18, “He died the just for the unjust.” First John 4:10, “God sent His Son to be the atonement for our sins.” Galatians 3, "He was made a curse for us.” And in Matthew 20:28 it says, “He came to give His life a ransom for many.”

   Mt. 25:46, “And about the ninth hour, three o’clock in the afternoon, Jesus cried out with a loud voice saying, ‘Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?’ that is, ‘My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?’” As the darkness came to an end, as the darkness reached three o’clock from noon, the life of Jesus is almost at an end. The fury of God is almost spent. Judgment is almost over. But Jesus can contain the pain no longer and it’s not the pain of nails and it’s not the pain of a crown, and it’s not the pain of wounds of scourges rubbing against a ragged wooden beam, it is the pain of separation from the Father. And with great strength, He cries out where the real agony comes from, and it doesn’t come from the physical pain, the real agony comes from His soul, the realization, the reality, the agony that He is separated from His Father. I don’t think Jesus in the garden was agonizing over the physical pain that He was about to suffer, He was agonizing over the reality of the sin-bearing and feeling the wrath of God because Christ came to be "a ransom for many" which means He had to come and die in our place, and He knew He would feel the fury of God’s wrath. This is a supernatural separation, impossible and yet it happened. And while Jesus was not separated from the Father by nature, He was separated from the Father by fellowship. As a sinful child does not cease to be the essence of his father, but by his sin loses the intimate fellowship with his father, so Christ did not cease to be God but lost the intimacy of fellowship with His Father which He had eternally known. He had never been anything but loved by His Father. In fact, it was His Father’s perfect love for Him that caused the Father to put the whole redemptive plan in motion and to redeem lost humanity. It was the Father’s perfect love for the Son that made it all happen. And now, having been loved by His Father perfectly for all eternity, He is treated as if His Father hates Him and His Father turns His back on Him. Why does He do that? Because "He is of purer eyes than to behold evil and cannot look upon iniquity", Hab. 1:12, 13.   2 Co. 5:21 says it in a nutshell, ‘21 For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him’. He took upon Himself the penalty for my sins and your sins and suffered and died in our place. What great love and mercy that He has shown to us the undeserving. As we read that He cried out, like it says in John 19:30, ‘it is finished’, He said that not because He was dying but because the work of salvation was finished and complete. Heb 10:10, ‘…we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all’. The salvation of our souls that we receive through faith in Christ is an eternal salvation because Jesus gives us a complete work of salvation that was accomplished by the suffering and death on the cross for those who are the sons and daughters of God, once for all. There is nothing else to do, no good works, no religious effort on our part because it is only through the redemptive work of our Lord Jesus on the cross.

   Because of the suffering and death on the cross by our sinless Lord Jesus, we are now partakers of His salvation. It is only through Jesus we have salvation, the forgiveness of all our sins. Let us, this week especially remember and give God thanks for the awesome work of redemption by King Jesus.