Weekly Reflection: 4/12/23

“The Gospel is the most important information.” Gospel Reflection to go along with the message on 4/9/23

In 1 Corinthians 15 Paul says “This is the most important information…”

 “For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve.” 1 Corinthians 15:3-5 ESV

• What makes this most important? Why does Paul say that the gospel is the most important information?

• What makes it most important is the implications, this isn’t just information about something that happened out there, or back then, and it doesn’t really impact you now.

• This information is most important because it demands a response from each one of us and our response or how we interpret this information directly impacts how we live each and every moment of our life and also our life for all of eternity.

Paying the price for sin, Jesus died and rose again.

Jesus died – Mark 15:16-39

 “If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross.”

• The chief priests and the scribes and the elders mock, “He saved others; He cannot save Himself.”

• They view him as a fraud and a failure. 

•  If He was to save others, then He could not save Himself from suffering divine punishment for their sin. 

• It was because He refused to save Himself that He was able to save others. 

•  It isn’t the nails that keep Him there.

• What keeps Him there is the very thing that placed Him there – His passion to do the will of His Father, and His love for sinners like you and me.

• At midday a darkness comes over the land (Mark 15:33-34)- not from an eclipse or overcast skies, but a supernatural darkness.

• Even the sky reflects what is happening to the Son of God.

• Jesus is drinking the cup which He had asked at Gethsemane to be removed.

• He’s experiencing the full fury of the wrath of God -the intense, righteous hatred for sin, a wrath that has been stored up beginning with Adam’s sin and extending to all of your sin and mine, and to all the sin to the end of this world’s history.

• In this strange, unnatural darkness, Jesus cries out, “My God, my God. Why have you forsaken me?”

• He’s experiencing on the cross what no one in human history ever has or ever will experience.

• He’s receiving what you and I and all humans who have ever existed or will exist deserve and He’s receiving it all at once.

• He’s alone so that we might never be alone.

• He cries out to God, “Why have you forsaken Me?” So that you and I will never have to make a similar cry. 

• He was cut off from His Father so that we can boldly say, “Nothing shall separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.”

•  He’s forsaken so that we might be forgiven.

Jesus rose again – 1 Corinthians 15:1-20

• If Jesus has not been raised, then there is no hope. We are still in our sins. Jesus is just a false messiah. Jesus’ disciples are false witnesses. (Vs 16-19)

• Our salvation was not provided only by Jesus’ cross.  Jesus’ resurrection was absolutely necessary. 

• It wasn’t enough for Jesus to die. He had to defeat the final enemy, death itself.

• If Jesus did not rise from the grave than it means that the punishment for sin has not been paid.

• The wages of sin is death, the punishment for sin against a holy perfect God is death.

“But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.” 1 Corinthians15:20 ESV

• The full payment for my sin has been made!

• Jesus’ resurrection shows us what is to come for us all. He was the first to be raised from the dead (“firstfruits,” 1 Corinthians 15:20). His resurrection teaches us that God is going to raise us each individually as well.

• The resurrection shows us that Jesus is really alive right now. 

•  At this very moment, the God-man Jesus of Nazareth—the same Person who was born in Bethlehem and who died on that Roman cross outside of Jerusalem—is alive. 

• He’s real. He died. He was raised. He is—present tense—alive (Romans 8:34).