I want to turn to the book of 1 Corinthians in chapter 15. I want to bring a message today which I've entitled, Resurrection and Christ, or simply Resurrection and the Gospel. And I want to look at this chapter with you today. Today I brought my glasses and my Bible. It's very helpful. First Corinthians chapter 15. You probably think of First Corinthians 15 as the chapter on the resurrection and you would be right. That's why I want to look at this today.

Last week we talked about, had a message on, if you then be risen with Christ. And there were many things we said there. But if I could just state it in a single sentence to summarize last week's message, I would say this. Live like you are already at God's right hand in the Lord Jesus Christ. That's the message. That's the conclusion of the gospel.

Live. as those who now are seated with Christ at God's right hand, accepted in Him. And when God the Father looks upon His Son, He sees so much that He delights in, and He sees His people. And when He looks for His people, He looks to His Son for them, and He finds them there, and He is fully satisfied, delighted because of His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, our great Savior. And so 1 Corinthians 15 is a chapter on the resurrection, and the resurrection is very important.

And I want to go through this chapter with you. I'm going to do it at an overview. At an overview level, obviously, we won't be able to get to the details of the chapter. We've done that in the past. But I want to go through it with you at an overview level so that you feel the victory of the message in light of the opposition to that message, the victory of the truth of the resurrection of Christ and his people in him. in opposition to all that opposes him, all that would try to rob him of his glory. Okay, so in this chapter, the first thing we see is in verse one, he says, moreover, brethren, I declare unto you the gospel.

Now, God led the apostle Paul by his spirit. Every word is scripture. Everything Paul says in this chapter and throughout the epistles is God speaking. That should put us in such a frame of mind that we stand in awe that God would speak to us and that he would speak to us in such gracious words as this.

But the Corinthian church had some there who doubted, who denied, in fact, the resurrection. And so in that sense, the opposition to the truth here serves as actually the context from which God would show his overcoming victory. Because this chapter is given to us because of the opposition. But the chapter unfolds to us truths that are phenomenal.

So that what you see here is a principle throughout scripture that there's never anything that is lost, even in the fall, even in our sin against God. Everything in Christ is recovered, more than recovered. And that's what the resurrection is about. God's victory to his great honor over our great enemy, our own sin against God, and the consequences of that sin, which is death, and the grave, and destruction, and hell, and everything that goes with it. So I want you to see that here, that this chapter is defense, it's a defense of the resurrection. And that defense is given in such a way that it proves God's victory over all of the opposition to his truth in such a powerful way that we see God's glory more brightly than we would have if there was no opposition.

And so that's one of the things that resurrection proves, doesn't it? that the Lord Jesus Christ has so overcome our sin and death and the grave that God's glory shines in the resurrection far brighter than we would ever have thought possible had there not been a resurrection. In fact, when Jesus spoke to Martha and Mary in John chapter 11, and he said to Martha, I am the resurrection and the life, those words carry such great weight, don't they?

Because in order for Christ to be the resurrection, what does it mean? It means he had to rise from the dead. And not only that, but he had to give life from the dead to his people. And that shows that the Lord Jesus Christ, in order to be the resurrection, had to first die. And so when The Apostle Paul is led by the Spirit of God to defend the resurrection. How does he begin?

How does he proceed to so silence the opposition that the victory of God's truth brightly shines far more than it would have had there been no opposition? Because anything that attempts to detract from God's glory is so squashed that in the squashing of it, God's glory shines even brighter. It's just like we have noted before that when Haman in the book of Esther tried to kill all the Jews, Haman himself was hung on his own gallows and the Jews prospered even more. So the victory was much greater because of the opposition. All right, so how is the apostle led here by the Spirit of God? He defends the truth. by laying the foundation on which all of the truth rests, which is the word of God in the gospel concerning Christ. And this is very, very important.

If you remember in the gospel of John in chapter 20 and verse 31, the apostle John draws the entire book to a close and he says, now these things were written that you might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you might have life through His name. His name, all that He is as Christ, as the Son of God. So the gospel was written that God's people might believe and that sinners believing Christ might have life in believing Him. And this is amazing, isn't it? And so what the apostle does is, in order to combat the error, in order to overcome it, and in order for God's glory to shine brightly, he lays the foundation, which is the gospel. And this is so significant here.

He says, moreover, brethren, I declare unto you the gospel. Because it's the gospel that proves, that informs us of and proves the resurrection and what it means. So he says, I declare unto you the gospel which I preached to you. I preached to you this gospel. Christ sent me to preach this gospel. This gospel that I preached to you, which also you have received, you heard it. It was granted to you by God to receive it. He gave you that grace, and wherein you stand, you stand in the gospel. So the gospel from first to last is your life from first to last.

And he says, by which also you're saved, because the gospel is the only way, in believing the gospel is the only way you can be saved, because the gospel is the message of Christ, our Savior, and what he did to save us. And believing Him is God's way, it's by God's design, and it's God's gift to us. It's the light that shines into our darkness in order to give us life in believing Christ. So salvation is God's work. The gospel tells us how He does that. And believing the gospel is the application of that truth to us personally so that we then draw from Christ this life from the dead. And this life from the dead we discover from the gospel is our life, Him in us, Christ for us. And so that's what the gospel is. This is the foundation. If we deviate from the gospel, we've lost our way. If we don't believe the gospel, we are lost. We don't know God. We can't know God unless we believe Christ according to the gospel. So is the gospel new? Is it something that wasn't ever spoken before?

Let's read on. He says in verse two, by which also you're saved if you keep in memory that which I preach to you unless you have believed in vain. So they believed, but if they didn't retain the gospel, the truth of the gospel, if they didn't hold fast to Christ, whom the gospel reveals to us in His saving work, if the gospel and the truth of God from heaven isn't a continuous, ongoing, grace in our life as our only hope. If we don't, in other words, as the Lord Jesus said, if we don't take of Him, if we don't draw from Him salvation and life and all things, if we don't look to Him for these things that we need as sinners, then we've forgotten. It's like when I was in college, I would hear things I didn't understand and I couldn't remember them because I didn't understand them. And how could I believe what I didn't understand?

So the gospel has to come to us with a power that gives us light from God and understanding, and with that understanding, the persuasion from God that this is the truth of heaven. This is God's truth, it's holy, it's unfailing, it's certain, and it's secure. So now, this is the gospel, this is what we're talking about here, God's word written and declared to us and believed and in believing it's the evidence that God has given us this grace of life from the dead.

So he goes on, he says, for I delivered unto you, verse three. Now the gospel is very condensed here in these two verses. He says, for I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received. I didn't come up with this. It was given to me how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures and that he was buried and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures.

And that's a declaration, a condensed declaration of the gospel. It's the gospel. It's objective. It's something that is true regardless of anything you know. This is what God did. This is what happened. This is what God did. This is what God performed in order to save his people.

Christ died. Christ was buried. Christ rose. and this accomplished salvation is declared to us in the gospel, and with that declaration then comes life from Christ to believe Him, to draw from Him this life, the virtue of His death and His burial and His resurrection. It says here, very simply, Christ died for our sins. What is death? Death is payback. Death is the penalty brought by God because of our sins. It says Christ died.

The Lord Jesus Christ did no sin. If sin is the wages, I mean, if death is the wages for sin, then how could Christ die if he had no sin? Well, because he died for our sin. He died as a substitute. He had no sin, therefore he could offer himself as a spotless sacrifice. He could give himself an offering to God for our sins. And that offering that he made to God of himself in blood for our sins was the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ for us. He died as our substitute, taking our sins, and with our sins on Him before God, He received the penalty our sins deserved. and he was buried.

And this is according to scripture. This is not something Paul invented. This is not something that God thought of at the last minute at some point in history. This is something God spoke from the very beginning. He died for our sins. This has to do with our standing before God. God is judge.

God, his own character, his own word, all of his precepts, everything about God requires sin must be punished. The sinner, the soul that sinneth, it shall die, he shall die, he must die. All have sinned and the wages of sin is death, therefore we must all die. And yet here we read these amazingly wonderful words glad tidings to the worst of sinners, the chief of sinners, Christ died for our sins.

He died for our sins. He himself as our substitute took the penalty we deserved and gave an answer to God that satisfied his justice. And because of that answer of himself, the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ for our sins, God smelled a sweet smelling savor. God was so satisfied. And this was by God's design.

The high priest in Leviticus chapter 16 would enter into the holiest of all and sprinkle the blood on the mercy seat. And the cherubim would look down on that blood, that mercy seat that covered the broken law and the broken authority and the manna that God provided that were all rejected. that were all representative of Christ. And the Lord Jesus Christ sprinkled his own blood in his own sacrifice to God as our high priest. And God looked upon the sacrifice of his son given in blood for our sins against his law, against his authority, against the manner that he provided.

And he said, that's enough. And propitiation was made to God in that sacrifice. Satisfaction. God's wrath was fully appeased. But more than that, something else was done. An obedience in doing that. The obedience of the Lord Jesus Christ in submitting himself to bear our sins before God and fulfill the will of God in that answer that he gave of himself in sacrifice. That sacrifice of himself. in the humiliation of the Son of God in our nature, bearing our sins as a servant and sacrifice to God in obedience, that is the everlasting righteousness of God fulfilled. The law of God in its requirements was magnified in the obedience of Christ unto death and the satisfaction to that law was also magnified. So God Himself stepped out of His reputation as God and the Son of God and He laid down His life in order to honor God, in order to bring to God what would honor Him so that God could justify His people for the righteousness of His Son.

The gospel has to do with our justification in the Lord Jesus Christ. And that justification is proved by the resurrection of Christ from the dead. When God promised Abraham, in thee all nations shall be blessed, he says in Galatians 3 verse 8 that it spoke of how Christ would justify his people. That promise of God to Abraham concerning Christ justifying the heathen was fulfilled when Christ bore our sins on the cross and endured the curse and removed the curse from us in his redeeming death on the cross. This is what Galatians 3 unfolds to us. And Romans 10 does the same thing when it declares to us that Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone that believes.

And then he goes on to show that he descended, and then having descended into the lower parts of the earth in order to die, that he might taste death for every one of God's children, he delivered us from death and brought many sons to glory by his death. And this is the gospel according to Romans 10 that Isaiah spoke of in Isaiah 53, how he would bear our sins. He was stricken for the sins of my people, he says in Isaiah 53.

And the Lord looked upon his offering and his soul was satisfied. It pleased the Lord to bruise him. And it received from Christ in that substitutionary death full answer to all of his law. What a wonderful thing this is. Christ died for our sins. This is the way God destroyed our enemy. He stepped as God. to the lowest place in order to answer all of His perfections that we had dishonored in our sin, in order to overthrow our sins and to snatch us and to bring us to Himself as His children, holy and without blame before Him in love by the death of the Lord Jesus Christ. That's sin atoning death, that wrath bearing, wrath removing, God propitiating death of the Lord Jesus Christ.

It says then, this was according to scripture. And verse four, and that he was buried. Why was he buried? Because he really died. But why does it mention it here? Because burial is the grave. All of us will be buried one day. In order for God to have the victory in all things, He had to overcome the grave. So He was buried.

And here we see again the rising up of God's victory over our enemies in the death of His Son. In every way, so much so that our enemies are so removed It's more than as if they were not there. It's that they were silenced to the glory of God. Triumph, victory, honor, majesty, glory to God in all these things according to the scriptures.

He was buried. And here it is, he rose again the third day according to the scriptures. What is that saying? Well, remember, He died in order to remove our sins from us. And He was buried in order to enter into that captivity that He would have to overcome in order to bring us out of that captivity. And His resurrection is that. It's the victory over all that our sins brought upon us, all that God in His justice required and demanded from us. It was given by the Lord Jesus Christ in His death and in His burial and in His resurrection.

God says that sin is gone and life is now given to the sinner. Death is the wages of sin. Life is the reward of righteousness. Justification is God's declaration that in the obedience of Christ unto death we are justified. And therefore He raised Him from the dead because He died for our sins, therefore He rose again for our justification. This is the gospel, and this is what the apostle Paul does in order to prove the resurrection. He lays it down again.

We're prone to forget. We're very prone to forget. We're prone to lose the edge of these things. And so the Lord reminds us. We won't forget if God holds it in our memory. It's true that our minds, our physical minds are incapable of retaining things as we grow older and sometimes we fall into this lapse where we can't remember basic things, even the name of the people we love, the faces of the people we love.

That's not the forgetfulness he's talking about here. He's not talking about the decline that occurs with age. He's talking about a neglect of truth declared and once received. And you say. I don't know. Yeah, it wasn't important. It was never important because you never believed it. You didn't receive the light of God's life-giving light in your soul. And so he's saying, now, if you prove yourself to cast these things aside and neglect, then you can't be saved. But he that believeth on the Son has everlasting life, as we just sang and is stated in John 3, verse 36. Whoever believes on the Son has everlasting life. Okay, so he goes on. He says he was buried, he rose again the third day according to the scriptures. Then he goes on, he says in verse six, and now he's telling us he was seen.

So for to those who deny the resurrection, you also are denying the eyewitness account of those who saw him after he rose from the dead. And he lists them. He begins with the apostles. What you're saying then, you who have heard the gospel, you claim to believe it, and yet you deny the resurrection, you're saying that I don't take the words of the apostles as truth. In fact, I call them lies. And not only that, he goes on, he says he was seen of the apostles. He was seen of me, Paul said. You're denying that I'm bringing you the truth. And he also says he was seen of over 500 brethren.

All those eyewitnesses, they're worth nothing. It's my arrogant refusal to acknowledge the truth of the gospel that Christ rose from the dead that supersedes all those eyewitness accounts. That's pride, isn't it? That's ignorance. That is obdurate, steadfast opposition in ignorance. And so the apostle graciously uses this to show the foolishness of that.

And then he goes on, he says in verse nine, after verse eight, he says, last of all, he was seen of me also as one born out of due time. Verse nine, he says, I'm the least of the apostles. I'm not worthy. I'm not meet to be called an apostle because I persecuted the church of God. Those for whom Christ died, I was trying to put to death. I hated, I opposed Christ. I was hostile to him and to his gospel.

But notice. Verse 10, but by the grace of God, I am what I am. You see what the resurrection he's teaching here? Is that the resurrection of Christ so powerfully brought the gospel to me that in my hostility, in my ignorance of my unbelief, Christ appeared to me. And he quickened me, he gave me life. That's the result of the resurrection of Christ, life in our souls. And how is that life seen? By faith. He says, by the grace of God, I am what I am.

And his grace, which was bestowed upon me, and that grace was a resurrecting grace, wasn't it? Was not in vain. It didn't prove to be empty or ineffectual or incapable of doing anything meaningful. It wasn't in vain, but I labored more abundantly than they all. Yet not I, but the grace of God, which was with me." And what the apostle is doing here is he's anticipating the conclusion of all that he says at the end of the chapter. Look at the end of chapter 15.

Because to deny the resurrection, to deny the gospel, it changes our behavior. What we believe is going to influence everything that we think and say and do. But if we believe falsehood, If we serve an idol, then we're going to say things that are false and we're gonna act contrary to the honor of God. It's only in believing the truth of the gospel that in our minds and in our words and in our actions, we can honor God.

And so he says at the end, verse 57, but thanks be to God, which gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, here it is, my beloved brethren, Be ye steadfast, 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."

Paul is saying, I was opposing. I was hostile to Christ, to his people, to his gospel. Christ appeared to me. He quickened me, He gave me life, and now by His grace I labor more abundantly than they all. I was so far further into opposing Christ than the Apostles, and He brought me back so much more than they, that I then labored more abundantly than they all, and it is in believing the gospel of Christ and His resurrection and what He accomplished in that, our justification and obtaining for us an eternal redemption with eternal life and eternal glory, it is in believing that that we are going to labor then, and that labor is by the grace of God, and God will accomplish His will and His work through that faith which moves us to do what we do. We do everything we do, don't you? Here you are listening to God's Word read, expounded, and in prayer. Why? Because you believe these things. You see, faith moves us to do things.

And what he's saying here in this chapter, if you look at the end of it, in the beginning of it, he's saying, wrong doctrine leads to bad life. But good doctrine believed, the truth of Christ believed, leads to honoring God with your life, you see. If you then be risen with Christ, live like you are seated at God's right hand. It's only right doctrine that produces true belief, and only true belief glorifies God. Because true faith puts us in agreement with the truth of God, and Him, and the truth of heaven. Only by faith in the gospel will our behavior in our life align with the truth.

Three men appeared at my door Thursday evening before the Bible study. They were bringing error. They had labels on their lapels. And I didn't have time to talk to them, so I just told them simply, you're a cult. They were offended. I walked away. Because bad doctrine is believing an idol. Bad doctrine, believed, produces bad teaching and bad lifestyle, and these all dishonor God.

But believing Christ as all of my salvation, that honors God. Trusting Him as my righteousness and coming to God and drawing life from Him because of what He did. All the grace of God is in Him. All fullness is in that. That attitude, that mind, that thought, that thanksgiving, that praise, that is honoring to God. And God gives this to us by grace. Not I, but the grace of God in me. In verse 11, he says, therefore, whether it were I or they, so we preach and so you believe. You see the preaching? What is it? The gospel. And so you believe. These were believers.

Now he says in verse 12, and he's going to show them the senselessness or the irrationality, if you will, of denying the resurrection. First, the first few verses, he shows that believing the gospel necessarily requires believing in the resurrection of Christ and his people. And the next few, he said, denying the resurrection makes all the apostles liars and all those 500 eyewitnesses to be liars. And then in 9 and 10, he shows that his own ministry was a result of the resurrection of Christ and his power of grace that caused him to labor. and to suffer, and to be persecuted, and to be exposed to death multiple times, and hunger, and nakedness, and all sorts of trouble for the gospel's sake because of the resurrection. And then in these next verses here, in 1115, they had believed the gospel, and yet by denying the resurrection, they were contradicting the message that they believed.

And so undoing that then is going to make the gospel and Christ and God's glory just burst forth in great glory and shining out. And so he says here that if you don't believe the resurrection, you're not only contradicting the message that you receive, the gospel, but you're contradicting the preacher and you're contradicting the fact of your own faith.

What you believed is false, is what you're saying. You're a walking contradiction. You see how the truth discovers our wrong-headedness? And then in the same way, it also discovers God's glory in His truth. And so he tells them in verse 11, therefore, whether it were I or they, so we preach.

So you believe if Christ be preached that he rose from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead? For if there be no resurrection of the dead, then Christ is not risen. You see the contradiction? If Christ is not risen, the gospel is not true. But you believe the gospel, therefore you're a walking contradiction. That's irrational. Verse 14. And if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain. We're doing this for nothing. And your faith is also vain. You believed something that you're denying to be true. It's worthless.

But verse 15, and verse 15, and yea, we are found false witnesses of God because, and this is weighty, this is grave, isn't it? To claim God has said something, and yet that be false. You're standing up lying about God. And he's saying, it would be to claim God is, to say there's a resurrection, if there was a resurrection, would be saying God said this when he didn't. And so he says, because we testify of God that he raised up Christ, in verse 15, whom he raised not up, if so be that the dead rise not. Now he's going to turn to a different aspect here. He's going to say in verse 16 through 19, unless Christ rose, which is what the gospel preaches, unless Christ rose, you are lost.

You are in your sins. You are still under the wrath of God and all the sufferings that you experience in claiming the gospel to be true, all the temptations from Satan that you that afflict your soul and all the awareness of your own inner sinful corruptions. and your desire to be free from your sin, and the hope of eternal life and eternal glory with Christ.

All those things are cast down by denying the resurrection. And yet in believing it, they're all upheld. He says in verse 16, if the dead rise not, then is Christ not raised. And if Christ be not raised, your faith is dead. Worthless, it's vain, and you are yet in your sins. The only reason we're not in our sins, the proof that we're not in our sins, is that Christ was raised. You see how essential this is? The objective truth, the objective accomplishments of the Lord Jesus Christ is the only thing that determines whether our sins are forgiven or not.

Faith is God's means by which he enlightens us to what he has accomplished. Faith is not something that we use as a lever to make God do things or to acquire things from God. It's entering into in alignment and agreement and admiration of what God has accomplished, what's true. Faith is believing what is true, not believing in order to make it true.

And so he says this in verse 17, if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain, you're yet in your sins. And then they also which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished. If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable. The apostle is a premier example of this.

Why am I suffering? Why am I exposed to death, hunger, nakedness? Why am I suffering reproach from all these people? And at my own personal expense, doing everything I do, why do I do this if there's no resurrection? I might as well eat, drink, and be merry.

I'm the most miserable of all, especially since we now recognize our sinfulness and helplessness, and yet there's no justification from God because Christ is not raised. And that's why he says in verse 19, if in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable. And then he moves on in verse 20. He says that Christ did rise from the dead and not for himself, but for his people. Look at verse 20. Now is Christ risen from the dead and become the first fruits of them that slept. You see, his resurrection, his death was for his people, his burial, His resurrection was not as a private person.

It was as a representative man. He was a substitute with our sins under the wrath of God and answered as our surety, and He fulfilled our obedience as our surety in representation, as us before God. He did what he did for his people and his his doings, his actions, his obedience, his his life, his his attitude, his faith. Everything about him was given to God, not because he needed it, but because we needed it. And he so joined himself to us that what he did, God received from him as from us. And what God gave to him, he gave to him for us. He's the firstfruits, that's what verse 20 says. Now is Christ risen from the dead and become the firstfruits of them that slept.

Slept in death. That's what the death of the believer, the sting of sin has been removed from death, so our death is just a falling asleep. Our body falls asleep. He says in verse 20, 21, for since by man came death. Now he's talking about Adam. by man also came the resurrection from the dead. Why death? Why do people die? Because of sin. How did we die? Because of sin. How? By a one man, Adam. Adam's sin, God counted what he did, our sin against him, and we died in that sin.

So in Adam, he says in verse 22, all die. Even so, that was just a foreshadowing of what Christ would do in the reverse, much more gloriously, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. You see, we're made alive in Christ because Christ fully magnified God's law in precept and in penalty, in justice and in obedience by his death. And in his resurrection, he proved that he lives He's the resurrection and the life, and he is our life, and his resurrection is ours, and so in him we live. All in Adam died, all in Christ are made alive. And that life is given to us when we hear the gospel, and the light of the gospel makes us alive.

In Psalm 119 it says, I will never forget thy precepts, for with them thou hast quickened me. And look at John chapter five, I wanna read this with you in John chapter five, and we'll have to close here because of time. But he says this, glorious, glorious truth in John chapter five. He says in verse 24 of John chapter five, verily, verily, I say unto you, I say unto you, I like what Todd Nyberg said one time. Jesus, he never says so and so said it. He says, I say unto you, this is the Lord himself speaking. He that hears my word. And believes on him that sent me has everlasting life and shall not come into condemnation, but is past already from death to life.

That's resurrection, isn't it? Who are raised? Who are quickened with Christ? Who were justified in his resurrection with him? Who died? Whose sins did he die for? And who was buried with him? And for whom did he overcome the grave in his resurrection?

Those who hear his word and because they've passed from death to life, believe him. Faith in Christ is the result of a resurrection in our souls. Verse 25 affirms this. He says, verily, verily, I say to you, 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. You see how effective how unstoppable the grace of God is in resurrection.

The dead sinner contributes nothing. He doesn't have a response. He doesn't have a decision. He doesn't make up what's lacking. He doesn't meet God halfway on the bridge of salvation. God does everything. We are recipients only. Faith is God's work in us to believe Christ for us. It's the evidence of life. The result of Christ's resurrection is that life is given to us through His Word. And hearing His Word by the application of the Spirit of God, because we're joined to Him, we're given life. We're given life because of righteousness. His righteousness counted ours. He gives us life from the dead.

You can think about this, you can argue yourself until you're blue in the face, but there's no way that you can deny that salvation is for those who cannot help themselves, who are under the condemnation of death. This is this is a victory, isn't it? This is a victory. And when our body does die, because Christ has raised us in life and given us faith in him and we're joined to him, therefore, because we're one with him, our body is his body. These members are his. They're not mine. We've been bought with a price. Therefore, when he appears in glory, we shall appear with him also. Then it will be revealed that our life is hid with Christ in God, and then it will be made known.

And he says that in John 6, on the last day, I will raise him up at the last day. And this is what the rest of 1 Corinthians 15 is talking about, the glorious deliverance of his people from their corruptions to incorruption, from their mortality to immortality, from their weakness to glory, from death to life in their body. And they will be transformed from a physical body into a spiritual body.

He has so put away sin by his by the offering of himself that the Lord Jesus Christ has has brought life and immortality, everlasting life. Sin cannot bring us into death or condemnation. Christ has answered it. He has established everlasting righteousness. There's no possibility that we can be removed from this life. If Christ died for us, God said in his word, no one can condemn you. Death will not hold you. Jesus said, whoever believes on me, though he were dead, dead in body, yet shall he live. And whoever lives and believes in me shall never die, never be separated from him in eternal death, but always with the Lord, who is our life.

Let's pray. Father, thank you for the great gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, our great God and Savior, who overcame our great enemy, our sins against you in this wicked heart, raised us from spiritual death to spiritual life to know Christ by the light of your word, by the power of your spirit, and given us this faith to lay hold on him and draw our life and to see our righteousness and the forgiveness of our sins that come to you through his blood alone. Thank you for this grace, Lord, for this accomplishment of our Lord Jesus, for his greatness and his grace that he would, out of his poverty, make us rich by taking our sins and conquering our sins and death and the grave and hell and everything that would oppose us and keep us from you. What a glorious name you've taken to yourself to show your glory in your power, even over us in our sinfulness, to bring us to yourselves as your children, heirs of God, joint heirs with Christ. Help us, dear Lord, to see the magnitude of your saving work and the glory of your grace. and never think for a moment about what we're going to do in order to make these things happen, but do all that we do by the grace of God in honor of your name, because of your resurrecting power. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.