First Corinthians chapter 15,
the day on the calendar that is called Easter is coming up,
and of course that's the day when most religious groups celebrate
the resurrection of Christ. The gospel teaches us to live
upon the Lord Jesus Christ who rose from the dead every day.
So it's not just one day out of the year, but every day. And
that's why we're taking time to go through this chapter in
1 Corinthians 15. This is really the second part
of last week's message, which is called the final triumph.
But I want to focus today, especially on the verses beginning with
verse 54. And I'll read from verse 45. If I were to entitle today's
message, I would say, the sting of death and the strength of
the law, both removed by Christ. From verse 45, it says, and so
it is written, The first man, Adam, was made a living soul. The last, Adam, was made a quickening
spirit. Quickening is not a word that
we use in our everyday language, but it means life-giving. So
he says here that Adam was made a living soul. That would be
when the Lord created Adam. A soul is what God created in
animals and in men. But the soul of man is different
than the soul in animals in that in our soul we are enabled to
understand things as people. Animals don't understand as people. And the other difference is not
only do we think, but our soul will live forever. But that soul
is given to us to allow our body to live. When our soul is taken
from our body, our body dies. So in that sense, the soul is
the life of the body. When God made Adam, He made him
a soul, a living soul. He breathed into his nostrils
the breath of life. He made him from the dust of
the ground, that's his body. And then he breathed his soul
into him, and that soul then became the life of his body.
Okay, but the body that God made Adam was not a body designed
to live forever in that state. It was subject to sin and it
was subject to death. And that's what happened. In
his body, Adam sinned and he, according to God's word, in the
day you eat, you shall surely die. He died in that day. And
that gets us to this third part of man that God creates, and
that's called the spirit, the spirit in man. And the spirit
enables us to worship God. But because of sin, we have a
dead spirit. He says in Ephesians chapter
two, you who were dead in trespasses and sins. So in our spirit, we're
dead to God. We cannot worship God. We don't
know God. A natural man, a man who is just
flesh and blood and a soul, cannot know the things of the Spirit
of God. It says in 1 Corinthians 2 and
verse 14, you can't know the things of God because they're
spiritually discerned. And as we are, as we were born
into this world, we don't have a spirit that's alive. We have
a dead spirit. And so that's our condition. And how did we get into this
condition? Well, God didn't create sin when he created the world.
Adam wasn't created a sinner. It says in Romans 5, verse 12,
that through one man, sin entered into the world. The world didn't
have sin in it until Adam sinned. Ecclesiastes 7.29 says, God made
man upright, and they have sought out every invention, every evil
invention. And so even though God created
man without sin, he created him merely a body and soul that was
capable of sinning and capable of dying. And that's why when
God said, in the day you eat thereof, you shall surely die,
because he was mortal. He was able to die. And though
he didn't have sin when he was created, by his disobedience,
he became a sinner. Now, Adam here, as you can see,
if you look back at verse 22, he says, as in Adam, all die. So there was no sin in the world,
but by one man, sin entered into the world and death came by sin.
It was Adam's disobedience to God. God said, don't eat of that
tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And he ate of it. He
took from that and he ate it. That was disobedience. He did
what God told him not to do. When we do what God says not
to do, that's disobedience. When we don't do what God tells
us to do, that's disobedience. And disobedience to God is sin
against God. And the wages of sin is death. That means that what God brings
upon us because of our sin is a penalty, and that penalty is
death. So by one man, sin entered into
the world, and death by sin. In other words, because of sin,
death came in also. So through Adam, two things came
into the world that weren't there before. When God created the
world, there was no sin, there was no death. But by Adam's disobedience,
God said he had sinned against God, and he therefore died. His
spirit died. His soul was still alive so that
his body was still alive, but it was condemned to death. His
body was condemned to death. Because when Adam disobeyed,
God held a judgment. And in that judgment, God pronounced
Adam to be guilty. You're a sinner. And the consequences
of guilt before God is death. So God judged Adam and condemned
him to death. And that's why Adam died. He
was 950 years old when he died, but he still died in his body.
Now, we, all of us, there's not a person alive or dead, for that
matter, who came into this world the way Adam came. God created
him from the dust of the ground. And God took a rib from Adam's
side and made Eve, the woman, and brought her to Adam. But
everyone else was born to Adam and to Eve. And therefore we
received from our father, Adam, this same nature that he had,
which was a body and a soul and a dead spirit. And our soul,
even though our soul gives life to our body, it goes on living
forever, but it's not a soul that can enter into the presence
of God in that state. Our body has to die because God
pronounced that the soul that sinneth, it shall die, and we
sinned in Adam. Our father sinned. We weren't
alive then, but we were in him because he was our father. And
so just as all of the people who would be born into the world
were in Adam, so when he took the fruit God told him not to
eat, and he disobeyed God in taking that fruit, and he died,
he didn't disobey God as only one man. All of his children
to be born also disobeyed in that disobedience. And that disobedience
was sin against God, so we all sinned in Adam. As in Adam all
died, so in Christ all shall be made alive. We all died in
Adam. He didn't die alone, he died
with all of his children. In the same way he died, we die.
And sin has a power over us. We were born with a nature, shapen
in iniquity. David said in Psalm 51, he says,
I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive
me. So that we were all born with
this nature, just like Adam's nature, which was fallen. It
was a sinful and a corrupt nature. And it means that our nature,
being sinful, is dead in sins. Our body is going to die. We
can no more resist death than we can resist sin. Can we stop
sinning? No. Have you tried? I'm sure
you have. And you're frustrated that you
are so prone to do the things you don't want to do. That's
because sin has dominion over us and we can't break free. And
so that sin brings us, it leaves us without the ability to know
spiritual things and without the ability to worship God. And
we can't enter into His presence as sinners. God cannot allow
sinners to come to Him. This is our condition in Adam.
And that's the first thing that's so important in this chapter. If you look back in verses 3
and 4, notice 1 Corinthians chapter 15, he says, In verse 3, Paul
telling the Corinthians, I delivered to you first of all that which
I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to
the scriptures, that he was buried and that he rose again the third
day according to the scriptures. Now, Adam was our father. There's no question about that.
We're all born to Adam. And we receive from our Father
the nature of our Father and the same sinful condition, the
same guilt. We committed that sin according
to God. Now, according to God, when Adam
sinned, we sinned in him. Let me read a verse to you from
Romans 5. He says this, not as by one that
sinned, the gift, for the judgment was by one to condemnation."
In other words, one sinned, condemnation by one, but the free gift of
many offenses to justification. If by one man's offense death
reigned, in other words, one man's sin, what was the rule
over all men because of that? Death. He says, if by one man's
offense death reigned, much more they which receive abundance
of grace and the gift of righteousness shall reign in life by one Jesus
Christ. So he's showing us here that
God has treated all men in two men. He's treated all of us in
Adam, and he's treated his people in the Lord Jesus Christ. Sin
entered the world by Adam and death came by sin. And that's
what 1 Corinthians 15 is using here. The gospel is telling us
that God has done something. He did this in his son, the Lord
Jesus Christ. just as we were born to Adam,
and Adam was our father, and we disobeyed in Adam, and sinned
in that disobedience, and God condemned us to death in Adam
in the same way. Now, this was set up beforehand. God knew this. He designed it
this way. This is what the gospel reveals,
that in the same way, only not to sin and death, but to life,
the Lord Jesus Christ became the head of his people. In Isaiah
chapter 9 verse 6 and 7, he says he's called the everlasting father. Because everything Christ did,
he did as our father, only Adam was just a shadow of what Christ
did. He's the glorious fulfillment
of what God designed Adam to portray to us. Sin came to us
and death came to us through Adam. Now, the Lord Jesus Christ
didn't sin. In fact, He laid His life down
in obedience. And that obedience of laying
His life down as a sacrifice to God for our sins, that obedience
wasn't a disobedience, but it was an obedience. And it wasn't
disobedience to sin, but obedience unto righteousness. And so, by
the Lord Jesus Christ, Obedience unto righteousness came, and
God's judgment of His righteousness was justification, not condemnation. Justification. In Adam, it was
a condemnation to death. In Christ, that judgment was
a justification unto life. Now, in Adam, in our conception
from Adam, we receive a soul and a body. a dead spirit, but
a soul and a body. But in the Lord Jesus Christ,
notice he says here in 1 Corinthians 15 and verse 45, so it is written,
the first Adam was made a living soul, the last Adam was made
what? A life-giving spirit. The Lord
Jesus Christ is a life-giving spirit. Now, This is something
that we don't understand, do we? Spirit, we can't touch it,
we can't put a boundary around it. We don't know much about
the Spirit, but here we see that life comes by a Spirit, the Lord
Jesus Christ, the Spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ. And why would
this Spirit be giving us life? The only way that we can be given
life by the Spirit of Christ is if the righteousness of Christ
is given to us. Because life comes because of
righteousness. Just as death comes because of
disobedience in sin, life only comes by obedience unto righteousness. But the problem is, is that with
us, the problem is with us. And the problem with us is that
we cannot do what's necessary to obey and produce righteousness. We can't do it. God's law places
requirements on us. But every one of us have failed
to keep those requirements. And it began by the disobedience
of our father Adam. And we can't keep the law. We
can't keep the requirements God has placed on us. And everything
God says in his word places requirements on us. And we can't fulfill it
for righteousness. But the Lord Jesus Christ, now,
this is the wonder of the Gospel. The Lord Jesus Christ as the
Son of God took our nature, our human nature, a body and a soul,
but He also is God over all. He has the Spirit of God. And
He was given the Spirit without measure. And He says in John
chapter 5 that He gives life to whom He will. He's able to
give life to the dead. In fact, he says in John 5, the
hour is coming and now is when the dead shall hear the voice
of the Son of God and they that hear shall live. And whoever
believes on the Lord Jesus Christ, he said, has already passed from
death to life. They possess everlasting life
and they cannot die because the Spirit of God, Christ himself,
lives in them because he fulfilled the requirements God placed on
us through his law. We couldn't do it. We failed.
We were sinful against God. We were condemned. Death was
our sentence. We couldn't escape it. But God
came in His Son, in the person of His Son, took our nature,
and in our nature fulfilled His own requirements, the law of
God. And He fulfilled it in obedience
unto righteousness. And not only that, but that obedience
was the taking away of our sins by giving to God a sacrifice
that was pleasing to God and satisfied God in His justice.
So the death of Christ was simultaneously a satisfaction to God's justice
and a fulfillment of his obedience unto righteousness. The precept
he fulfilled, the penalty he endured, and that is our salvation. And that's what the gospel teaches.
And so Adam then is significant because he acted as our father
in our place. We sinned in Adam, we received
the sentence of death upon ourselves, and we can't escape it. But then,
God had designed that arrangement so that what Adam did, we did
in him, so that he could bring in a saving and an eternal arrangement
in the Lord Jesus Christ for his people, so that what Christ
did, they did in him. When he obeyed, they obeyed.
And when he died, they died to sin. And when he rose, than they
rose to eternal life. And that's why the beginning
of this chapter begins with the gospel, because the gospel explains
all these things. And the great error that some
people in Corinth, the church they were making, is they denied
the resurrection. And he tells them, look, if you
deny the resurrection, what are you believing? You're believing
something false, and that's not a true faith. That's an empty
faith. Your faith is in vain. If you
don't believe the truth of God, then you're believing a lie,
and believing a lie doesn't help. You can imagine all sorts of
things, and that's what happens in our lives. We grow up as children
with an imagination. We like to invent characters,
and we imagine ourselves to be capable of flying or overcoming
strong and powerful enemies, but it's all just a thought process,
isn't it? It's not true. Our condition
is miserable and helpless and we need a savior. And so God
tells us the truth. He tells us the truth about the
way he thinks and what he did and his word and his promises.
And so the Lord Jesus Christ is the quickening spirit. Look
at John chapter six. I'll take you to a couple of
verses because this is very important to lay this foundation in this
verse because of what follows here. John chapter 6 and verse
63, it is the spirit that quickeneth, okay? That word quickeneth means
to give life. It is the spirit, the spirit
of God, that gives life. And then he says, the flesh profits
nothing. You can't get this life by doing
something. You're just flesh. You're only
a natural, born from Adam, body, inhabited by a soul that gives
life to your body. But that's as far as it goes.
Your body's going to die and your soul is going to return
to God who gave it. And unless you have life from
the Spirit of God, then your soul will have to endure an eternal
death. apart from God, separated forever
from Him, no life, only the penalty of sin. But here he says, the
Spirit gives life, the flesh, your flesh profits nothing, the
words, notice, the words that I speak to you, they are Spirit
and they are life. The words of Christ. The words,
the truth. They're the words of God about
Christ, who is the life and the truth, the way to the Father.
It's about how Christ died for our sins, according to the scriptures.
Was buried and rose again the third day, according to the scriptures,
that he overcame sin and death. And so he says that message,
the words of Christ, come to us and give us life. His words
are applied to us by His Spirit, and that gives us life. A spiritual
life. Life by His Spirit. Look back
at John chapter 4 and verse 22. The woman at the well, Jesus
had been telling her things she didn't know, and He is speaking
His words. He's giving her life. And He
says in verse 22 of John chapter 4, you worship, you know not
what. You don't know what to worship. You worship the wrong
things. We know what we worship for salvation. Notice, this is
the truth that gives life, the message from God about Christ
and His salvation. We know what we worship for salvation
is of the Jews. In other words, Christ came through
them. But the hour cometh and now is, notice, when the true
worshipers, not the outward worshipers, not people who assemble in buildings
and sing or raise hands or bow down on the floor or do any number
of things. That's not true worship. What
true worship is, he says, the true worshipers are worship the
Father. How? In spirit. But we don't have a spirit. Right.
God has to create Christ in you. Christ has to come in you and
dwell in you. And he has to enable you to know
and be persuaded of the truth about what he did and who he
is as God and man. to save His people from their
sins. That enables us, that life from God, which is His Spirit
in us, Christ in us, gives us faith in the truth revealed that
is in Christ. You see, I remember, I've told
you this before, I was at a church a long time ago, and I asked
the pastor, what does it mean to worship God in spirit and
truth? He said, it means to Oh, worship God. You know, like it's
some kind of intensity of sincerity or spiritual mumbo-jumbo. It has nothing to do with worship.
Worship of God is in truth believed by the Spirit of God given to
us that produces spiritual life. You see, that's the quickening.
Now, look over, I can't exhaust this subject, but look over at
Romans chapter 8. Romans chapter 8. And I want
you to see how the life of God given to us from Christ is by
His Spirit. And that this is the life in
us now, even before we die in our body. And it's because of
this life given to us from Christ that we shall be raised in our
bodies. He says in Romans chapter 8,
In verse 1, there is therefore now no condemnation. Remember
the condemnation? Why did it come upon us? Because
of our sin. God judged us guilty. He condemned
us in Adam by our sin. Someone might say, well, I don't
like it that way. I don't like that because of
what Adam did, I was called a sinner by God. Well, you've got two
problems. with that. Number one, this is
God's three problems. Number one, this is the way God
sees it, so this is the way that it is. Number two, if you don't
like it that way, how do you want to go by yourself? Do you
really want to live before God and be judged by your own performance? It's as certain to fail as Adam's.
He was created without sin. How have you been doing? And
the third reason is, this is the groundwork. This is the principle
upon which God saves his people. Because we fell in one man, we
are saved by another, you see. Upon a life I did not live, upon
a death I did not die. Another's death, another's life,
I stake my whole eternity. And so he says here, there is
therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus. How did we fall in sin? In Adam. How do we obey God unto righteousness
and life? In Christ. You see, that's what
he's saying here. There's no condemnation in Christ.
And then he's going to explain, who walked not after the flesh,
but after what? The Spirit. We have the Spirit
of God. We who believe on the Lord Jesus
Christ have passed from death to life. He's made us alive through
his word applied by his Spirit. John 6.63, we just read. So he
says, we walk not after the flesh, but after. We don't rely on our
sinful flesh, like Jesus said, the flesh profits nothing. We
don't rely on our sinful flesh to produce spiritual life. What
do we rely on? We rely on the grace of God,
whose grace, God's grace in Christ has fulfilled His law to righteousness
unto eternal life. We rely on Christ. We look to
Him, not to Adam, not to ourselves. So that's what walking in the
Spirit does. We rely, we look to Christ. And the Gospel teaches us that.
He says in verse 2, Romans 8, 2, For the law of the spirit
of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and
death. Okay? For what the law could
not do, when God's requirements were given me, what happened?
The law couldn't produce life. It couldn't produce righteousness.
In that it was weak through what? My flesh, my sinfulness, what
I received from Adam, what I am in myself naturally. What that
law could not do because of my flesh was sinful. God, notice,
not in me, but God sending his own son in the likeness of sinful
flesh and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh, in his flesh,
in Christ's flesh. But because I was in Christ when
God did this, then what God did in Christ then is also done for
me in him. by him for me. He didn't act
alone, just like Adam didn't act alone. The Lord Jesus Christ
didn't act alone. He acted for his people. His
obedience is our righteousness, his justification, our justification,
and his life, our life. And therefore his spirit is given
to us to live by Christ living in us and therefore knowing these
things and believing these things. Faith comes by Christ in us,
given to us. Notice now in verse 4 he says
that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us.
What is the result of a righteousness fulfilled? It's life. How is
the righteousness of the law fulfilled in us then? It's fulfilled
by God giving us life from the dead, spiritually. We're given
a spiritual life. So the law is fulfilled by Christ
for us and therefore the spirit of God is given to us in spiritual
life. Now look at verse 10. Verse 10
of Romans 8, he says, if Christ be in you, that's if Christ is
in you by His Spirit. Notice, the body, this body that
you now see is dead because of sin. But the Spirit is life. The Spirit of God is life. Christ
is life in us because of His righteousness. God has counted
His righteousness as our righteousness and given us life by His Spirit.
Where does the life come from? From Christ. How is that life
given to us? It's given to us by grace because
of Christ who died for us. In verse 11, if the Spirit of
Him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, Okay,
so our present condition is, according to Jesus, we've passed
from death to life. God's spirit dwells in us. Now,
he says, if the spirit of Christ dwells in us, he that raised
up Christ from the dead will do what? Shall also quicken,
shall give life to your mortal bodies by his spirit that dwells
in you. When will this happen? It doesn't happen the moment
we believe, does it? Does it happen as soon as we
believe Christ? No. When does it happen? It happens
on the resurrection of the last day. When the Lord raises the
bodies of his people. And so that's what he's saying
back in 1 Corinthians 15. The first Adam was made a living
soul, the last Adam a quickening spirit. How be it, verse 46 of
1 Corinthians 15. That was not first which is spiritual,
but that which is natural, and afterward that which is spiritual.
We weren't first born again, we were not first born from above,
we were first born in Adam. We received a natural body with
a soul that gave life to that body. And we were born in Adam,
therefore we were born as sinners, and we were subject to death,
the death because of our sin. That was first. Then came our
spiritual birth. Verse 47, the first man, Adam,
is of the earth, earthy. The second man is who? The Lord
from heaven. You see, that's why we have this
life. It's the Lord from heaven. As
we have borne the image of the earthy, we look like Adam. We
have a nature like Adam. We shall also bear the image
of the heavenly. We're going to be made like Christ in a new
body. Now this I say, brethren, that
flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God. Neither does
corruption inherit incorruption. What are we? We're flesh and
blood. And what is this flesh and blood? It's corruption. It's
corrupt because of sin. We can't inherit the kingdom
of God. We can't inherit incorruption in this body. Verse 51, behold,
I show you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we
shall all be changed. To sleep means to die in our
body. We who live because the Spirit
of Christ lives in us, we still live in a body subject to death.
And when this body dies, because we have the Spirit of God in
us, the body barely sleeps. It's like you're laid down to
sleep and the resurrection is an awakening out of that sleep.
For the believer, death is but sleep. It's not to be feared
any more than laying down at night is to be feared when you
go to sleep. You actually look forward to it, don't you? I'm
tired. How many times have I gone to
sleep and said, Lord, I'm tired. I'm just so tired. Thank you.
I can lay down and sleep. And when the Lord finally takes
our life from this body and he brings our soul into his presence
in glory, then our body is just going to go to sleep and our
eyes are going to close in death. And that's called a transition
that's necessary for us to go through in order for us to be
given life like a seed. It goes into the ground, it corrupts,
and then the plant comes out of that. And that's what he talked
about before. He says, I show you a mystery.
We shall not all sleep. Not every believer is going to
die in their body, but we shall all be changed. The body still
has to change because it cannot inherit the kingdom of God. In
verse 52, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last
trump, for the trumpet shall sound. Now this is the voice
of the Son of God. He's sending forth, he's issuing
his command to the bodies of his people to rise. And this
command is so powerful that it's going to happen So that every
believer on earth who has ever died in their body, their body
is going to hear his voice. And their bodies will be raised
up by the power of his command. All of them together. Whatever
form their bodies have decayed in, and that corruption, and
that dishonor, and everything about dying that has happened,
when he commands them by that trumpet sound, they're going
to rise. That's power, isn't it? Because
He's a life-giving Spirit. By the same Spirit that Christ
raised Himself from the dead, that same Spirit will give life
to all of the bodies of all of His people. He's not talking
about everybody here, He's talking about His people, those for whom
Christ died. He goes on, not everybody's going
to die in sleep, not all believers, but in a moment, in the twinkling
of an eye. You know how when you go to sleep,
what happens? Your eyes close. It feels so good to close them,
doesn't it? But for some of God's people, they're going to be alive
then. They won't, will not have died. And their eyes won't have
time to shut in sleep of death. It'll just be like, an immeasurably
short moment of time, where the eye doesn't actually fully close,
bam, God's gonna change it. The Lord Jesus Christ is going
to transform the corruption of their body and the dishonor and
weakness of that body into incorruptible, immortal, glorious power by His
Spirit. By His Spirit. The Spirit of
Christ in us will give life to that body. He says in verse 53,
for this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal
must put on immortality. So then, when this corruptible,
this body that's corrupted, shall have put on incorruption, and
this mortal, this body that can die, shall have put on immortality,
it's like putting it on Putting it on. It means that the body
we now have is the body we shall have, except it's going to be
clothed with incorruption and immortality and honor. Not weakness,
power. Because of the Spirit of Christ,
because Christ is in us. Look at 2 Corinthians chapter
5. This seems mysterious, doesn't it? Well, that's why God is telling
us. We can't know it unless he tells us. He says in 2 Corinthians
chapter 5 verse 1, For we know that if our earthly house, that's
this body, of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building
of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.
God has a place for us. It's in the Lord Jesus Christ.
He's our eternal dwelling place. Verse two, for in this, in this
hope, this anticipation, this expectation, but in this body,
we groan earnestly desiring to be clothed upon, you see, clothed
upon with our house, which is from heaven. If so be that being
clothed, we shall not be found naked. We don't want to be found
without a body. You know that the Lord Jesus
Christ actually purchased our bodies? It says in 1 Corinthians
6 that you were redeemed, you were purchased. Your bodies are
the temple of Christ. Our bodies are the members of
Christ. Don't take your body and use
it for sinful purposes. That's taking Christ's purchased
body. You see, that's what he's telling
them in 1 Corinthians 6. So this tabernacle, in this tabernacle
now, this one we now live in, this one that's subject to death
because of sin, being burdened, not that we should be unclothed,
but clothed upon, that mortality might be swallowed up of life.
Isn't that amazing? What a description. Now, He that
wrought us, who did this for us, the self, same thing as God,
who also has given to us, what? The earnest of His Spirit. The
earnest is that down payment, that guarantee, that seal that
God has placed on us, the redemption of our body. because His Spirit
is now given to us. And how do we know that we will
be raised? Because we believe Christ, who
died for us and rose again, and in His resurrection, His people
rise with Him. All right, now back in 1 Corinthians
15. So when this corruptible, verse 54, when this corruptible
shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put
on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that
is written, death is swallowed up in victory. Complete, total
victory will be ours in our experience when our body is given to us
by the quickening power of the Spirit of God, of Christ, given
to us to have now a body that's not animated by a soul, but is
given life by this very Spirit of Christ, who is eternal. And so our body will be eternal,
it will be immortal, and without sin, no thought of sin, no remorse,
no dependence on the things of this world, absolutely only dependent
on the all-sufficiency of Christ. Look at Colossians chapter 3,
I want to see this now, because these things don't happen right
as soon as we believe, do they? And you might wonder, well, if
the Spirit of God is in us, why can't I see it? Why isn't our
body immediately transformed? Well, there's a reason. Colossians
3, he says, verse 1 of Colossians 3, if you then be risen with
Christ, seek those things which are above. Now, that rising with
Christ means that we've been given the spirit of Christ to
live in us. He's given us life from the dead. We've passed from
death to life. If you then be risen with Christ,
seek those things which are above, where Christ sits on the right
hand of God. Set your affections on things above, not on things
on the earth. Notice in verse 3, For you are dead. You are dead. How did you die?
You died with Christ. When he was crucified, I'm crucified
with Christ. I died to sin in the death of
Christ. The body of my sins was put to
death on the cross and buried in the grave and my sins were
put away. I was washed from my sins and
God remembers them no more. in the death of Christ. He died
for our sins, remember? For you are dead and, notice,
your life is where? It's hid with Christ in God. It's hid now. But notice verse
4. When Christ, who is our life,
shall appear, then shall you also appear with Him in glory.
This is the resurrection, right? When will it happen? When He
appears. When we see Him, then we'll be like Him. Because we'll
see Him as He is. And by His Spirit, by God's Spirit,
by the power of God in us, He's going to give us life. The life
of Christ then will give us life in our body and it will be eternal
because it's the Spirit of God who gives that life. It won't
depend on food or water or air. We'll be able to do things as
a spiritually enlivened body. And I don't know what it's going
to look like. I know that the Lord says we're just like a seed
now, what we shall be doesn't appear, but when Christ appears,
then it will become apparent. Then our life in Christ will
be made gloriously manifested. The children of God are now not
known by visual inspection. You can't tell who they are,
can you? Because this life is in us and it causes us to believe
on Christ and it's that faith, the result of spiritual life,
that is the evidence of things not seen. Faith is the substance
of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. Okay, verse
55 in 1 Corinthians 15. swallowing up. Remember when
those rebels against Moses and God, Korah, Dathan, and Abiram,
remember what happened to them? The earth opened its mouth, they
fell, and then the earth closed up again. It swallowed them up.
And they couldn't be seen. Everything they had was gone. It says, when this corruption
puts on incorruption, death is going to get swallowed up. the
victory of Christ, the life of Christ is going to swallow up
death. And then he goes on, he says,
this is what is going to be heard now. This is the cry of the Lord
Jesus Christ as a triumphant cry when he entered into Jerusalem
on that donkey and the people were laying the palm branches
of the way and they were crying, oh save, oh save the king, oh
save. And here, here's the victory.
The Lord Jesus Christ with his people who in themselves had
no strength now are given this resurrected body and in that
body they're going to cry with him, oh death, where is thy sting,
oh grave, Where is thy victory? It's been emptied out. The sting
of death, what is that? Well, death comes because of
sin. And the sting of death is being
guilty before God and facing the wrath of God in our sins,
facing the judgment of God in our sins with no covering. We have to bear it. And this
shows us that when the Lord Jesus Christ bore the sins of his people,
he bore the sting of death. He bore the curse of God's holy
law. And that curse has been removed
from us. Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law,
himself being made a curse, stung, bearing our sins and God's penalty
for our sins. He bore all that God required
against our sins and took it out of the way. Oh, death, where's
thy sting? It was stung in the Lord Jesus
Christ, taken from us, and death has no sting left for us. Oh,
grave, where's thy victory? The sting of death is sin, the
strength of sin is the law. The strength of sin is the law?
I thought God's law was to keep us from sinning. It doesn't,
does it? You would think that, you know,
if you nailed the Ten Commandments on the courthouse, that would
help suppress sin, wouldn't it? It doesn't. It actually declares
everyone there to be guilty. We've hung our own condemnation
right there. God requires this of us. There's
nothing wrong with it. But I'm a sinner, therefore it
exposes me as guilty and subject to death. And so the law is the
strength of sin because it charges us with the guilt and the condemnation
and holds us under the curse of it. But it does something
else too. It gives us this false view of things. Because we hold
out this expectation that we can actually fulfill the law.
So we walk around looking at others. What's that person doing
over there? Look, what a sinner. And I'm not like that, I'm not
that bad. I mean, if something terrible
happens in the world, we draw attention to it in order to divert
attention from ourselves. Those people, can you believe
they're so wicked? I can't believe it. I'm such
a not wicked person. Wow. You see what the law does? It causes us to have a high opinion
of ourselves, so high that we think God has to reward us with
life, and we begin to think of ourselves as worthy of God's
life and benefits and honor, so that we worship ourselves
instead of God. And we're covetousness because
we live for ourselves. So the law holds this strength
over us because of the deception of our sin. And we think of others
as less than ourselves, and we think of ourselves as acceptable
by God, and we walk around with this religious self-righteousness,
which is the very epitome of spiritual blindness. So that
what we find is that when we are in religion and we begin
to gain some confidence because we're doing better, we're actually
under the complete dominion of sin because the law has produced
this false view of ourselves in us, this arrogant, this foolishness,
this self-righteousness, and this critical judgmental attitude
towards others who are sinners like us. We'll hold other people
to a standard we won't hold ourselves to. That's what the law does,
it's a strength of sin. But the Lord Jesus Christ fulfilled
the requirements of God upon us in both death and in righteousness. And that's why he says here,
O death, where is thy sting? The sting of death is sin, the
strength of sin is the law. But thanks be unto God, who giveth
us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Not Adam, not ourselves,
Him. And therefore the conclusion
is, my beloved brethren, be steadfast in the gospel, unmovable, always
abounding in the work of the Lord, for as much as you know
that your labor is not in vain in the Lord. If there was no
resurrection, we might as well eat, drink, for tomorrow we die.
But because there is a resurrection, because Christ is in us, that
even what we do by faith for the Lord Jesus Christ will endure
for eternity. It will be eternal. The Lord
raises it from the dead. Remember what Jesus said, the
people there in John 4, the Samaritans. He said, now you're gonna go
out and preach the gospel, you're gonna be reaping, and you're
gonna be gathering what? Fruit unto life eternal. When we preach the gospel, when
God applies it by His Spirit to our hearts, and gives us faith
in Christ alone as everything in our salvation, and we abandon
all hope in ourselves, then look to Christ only by that work of
God in us, then it's proof that we've been given life by the
Spirit of Christ, because Christ died for us. And when the gospel
is preached, that labor of God's people brings forth fruit, and
by God's resurrecting power, He produces an eternal life by
that labor. Our labor is not in vain. Why
would we say such things? Only because we don't believe
the gospel. Why would we live with our bodies as the primary
reason for all that we do? only because we don't believe
of the resurrection of our body. So the Lord concludes all this
with His glorious conclusion that because Christ rose, we'll
rise and our labors, our labors now, the faith we believe, the
truth of God we believe is not false, it's true. And the Lord
will return and we will declare this glorious victory and praise
to Him. Let's pray. Father, thank you for such a
glorious salvation. You determined before time to
save a people who were sinful in themselves by the Lord Jesus,
who was not sinful, who could fulfill your law and overcome
sin and death for our eternal salvation. What a glorious, glorious
Savior. Such power to be able to raise
all your people from bodily death and spiritual death. by your
own spirit. It's unbelievable, and only by
your spirit could we believe it. Because you said it, we know
it's true. Help us to expect and look forward
to this, and live not for the things of our flesh, but for
the spirit of God. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.