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First
things first
"For
what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ
died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried,
that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures."
(I
Corinthians 15:3-4)
There it is, “the
Gospel” in a sentence. In these two verses we find themes
that reveal God through the
scriptures. What are
they?
- Christ
- His
death
- He
died for our sins
- According
to the Scriptures
- He
was buried
- He
was raised
Who
is the Christ?
God
has many names in the Bible. Christ
is the Anointed One of God, sent to do what only God could do.
In Genesis, the Bible begins with God.
The Bible assumes the existence of God.
God is Creator. In
John 1, the Bible says that God is “The Word”, and that all things
we made by Him. From this
we see that “The Word” is not a thing, it’s a “Him”.
In this awesome passage (John 1:1-14), we learn that
- “The Word” was
God, and made all things (vs.1-3) Again, we see that God is creator, but here God is called “The
Word.” The Word was
with God, and was God. Whoever
the Word is, the Word is God.
The Word made all things.
Looking at the Genesis account, we can see the power of God
in creation. In each
event of creation, God spoke and then the created appeared.
It was the power of The Word of God that causes creation to
exist. Romans 1:20
says that God’s invisible qualities are seen through what he has
made. From His creation we can see His divine power and
eternal nature. We
see the evidence every time we open our eyes.
No one has an excuse.
- Light and life of
men are in Him (vs.4-9) The
Bible speaks of “darkness” when describing our condition
without Him. In the
same way that God began His creation shattering the darkness
speaking light into existence, he speaks light into the darkness
of un-regenerated souls. 1 John 1:5 says that God is light, and there is no
darkness at all in Him. Light
and darkness do not “co-exist” in God.
There is no darkness in Him.
When the light shows up, darkness is gone.
Darkness is absence of light.
Light is absence of darkness.
In the same way, the darkness that is brought upon us by
sin is shattered when the light of God reveals truth.
Also the Bible says In Him was life.
The Bible says, “the wages of sin is death, but the gift
of God is eternal life”. (Romans 6:23) Jesus
said, “I am the way, the truth and the life.
No one comes to the Father but through me.” (John 14:6)
Without Jesus there is no way, no truth, and only death.
Without Jesus, there would be no life, for He is the creator of
all life. When we accept
Jesus, we accept all the He is. When we reject Him, we accept the absence of life and light.
That is, we accept death and darkness.
Do you ever feel like you are groping
around in a maze of blackness? Do
you feel like your life is out of control?
Do you feel that there are forces at work that are carrying you
on a fast moving wave over which you have no power?
Do you say and do things and wonder what ever possessed you
to act like that? Do you
lay awake at night wondering what is going to become of you in this
life? Are there secret
latent sins that only you know of?
Jesus invites you to come out of the darkness and into the
light.
- He came to His own
people and was rejected (vs.10-11) Jesus came to the ones He created and they rejected Him.
He was the King of the Jews.
God had His hand on the children of Abraham and promised
that all the nations of the world would be blessed through
Abraham’s descendants. (Genesis 12:2-4, Genesis 17).
Throughout the Old Testament this Promised One was
prophesied. There are
over 350 direct Messianic prophesies in the Old Testament that
that were fulfilled when Jesus appeared.
The Messiah came as prophesied, but the leaders of His
people (The children of Abraham) rejected Him.
As is true with all who rejected Christ, His people who
rejected Him have been walking in darkness ever since. Their Messiah was prophesied, and He came.
They still are awaiting something that has already been.
- He gives power
to those who receive him to become His children (vs. 12-13) This
is an awesome truth. For
those of us who receive (literally to take what has been
offered) him, He gives power to become His children.
That word “power” in the Greek is exousia. When
interpreted literally it means, for those of us who receive what
He has offered, he gives the ability; privilege, force,
capacity, competency, freedom, mastery,
superhuman potential, influence, authority,
jurisdiction, liberty, power, right, strength to become his heirs.
We become His children, not born of blood, or the will of
the flesh, or the will of any man, but born of God.
ATONEMENT
What
does it mean to be born of God? When
God created Man, that is Adam and Eve, there was no sin in the world.
There was nothing to hinder fellowship with His creation.
In fact, that is what we were created for – fellowship with
God. The Lord, because He
desires real love and fellowship, not mechanical dictatorial love,
gave Adam and Eve a choice. It
was a choice between obedience and disobedience.
It was a choice between innocence and the knowledge of good and
evil. Really, the
knowledge of good and evil is something they would have been better
off doing without. But
when they disobeyed God, instantly they were aware of their guilt,
nakedness and shame. They
had known no fear, and now they feared the one who created them and
they hid. Ever since
then, through the blood of Adam, from generation to generation sin has
been in the world. Everyone
who is born into this world has Adam’s blood flowing through our
veins. What we need is a
Divine transfusion.
In
the Old Testament blood sacrifices of Lambs were required to atone
(pay for) the sin of the people. It had to be an unblemished perfect Lamb.
When Jesus came, he was called “The Lamb of God who
takes away the sin of the world.” (John 1:29)
Jesus’ blood, because He is God, was untainted by Adam’s
sin. When he died on that
cross, His blood became the atoning sacrifice for our sins.
When we receive what He has offered (His blood sacrifice), we
receive that transfusion we so desperately need.
The old blood we had in us from birth is covered and replaced
by the blood of the Lamb of God. We are reborn, with new blood, which is the perfect
unblemished blood of the Lamb. That
is the place of exousia power.
We are now God’s children, and no longer sons of Adam.
Jesus is the second, and in truth the last Adam.
That is why Jesus is the only place where we can receive that
power. There is no other.
- “The Word”
became flesh and lived among us (Jesus) (vs.14)This continues the previous thought. John 1:1-2 says that The Word was in the Beginning, and
the Word was God. Here
it says that the Word became flesh and lived among us.
In other words, the Word, who is God became flesh and made
His dwelling place among us.
That this is a reference to Jesus is obvious.
In other words, Jesus is God.
Jesus is the same one who made all things.
Jesus is life and light.
Jesus is the Anointed One, the Christ, and the Messiah.
He left all that was His in heaven, was conceived of the
Holy Spirit to a virgin named Mary, put on a sack of skin and
walked on this planet. This
truth is central to Judeo-Christian truth.
To deny the virgin birth of Jesus is to deny the divinity
of Christ. There was
a time and place in the history of this world when God came and
lived with us. He
knows what it is to live in a body, to laugh, cry, dance, play,
suffer, weep and die. When
we suffer, He understands because He was there.
When we are tempted, He understands because He was there.
When we are betrayed, He understands because He was there.
If we have been abused, he understands.
He was abused too.
- We saw His glory
(vs. 14) We see the
glory of God in Jesus. Literally
this means that his dignity, honor, and visibly see the object of
the One who deserves praise and worship. The more you study the
life of Jesus and those who followed Him, the more of His glory is
revealed. The Bible
says we need to know Him. We
are invited to study Him, and His glory is unveiled as we see Him
for who He is. There
is no one else who deserves our worship.
- He was full of
grace and truth. (vs. 14) The
Bible says that Jesus was full of grace and truth.
We live in a day when we seem to see very little grace and
few seem willing to admit that there could be real truth.
When Jesus stood before Herod, Herod asked the question
“What is truth?” This statement is probably the most ironic statement of
ignorance ever recorded. Jesus
claimed to be the embodiment of all that is truth and Herod did
not recognize it. But
he was not the only one that made that mistake.
Jesus came to His own and His own did not receive Him.
He claimed to be the promised Messiah, the Anointed One,
and the Christ. But
He was despised and rejected and crucified by the ones He came to
save. Yet this verse
says The Word became flesh and lived among us and we saw His
glory, the glory of the only begotten of the Father full of grace
and truth. What was it about Jesus?
That caused some to give up their lives and follow after
him and others to look right at Him, talk with Him, look into His
eyes and miss it. In
the same way that grace and truth are so elusive in these days,
they were equally elusive then.
What is grace? What
is truth? This will
be the focus of our next study.
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