mgpcpastor's blog

The Gospel is a never ending source of wonder. We return to it again and again only to be even more deeply amazed and awed at God’s redeeming love.
On Easter Sunday 2009 at mgpc we recalled the Scriptural teaching about the resurrection contained in 1 Corinthians 15.
Some outstanding points:
The Gospel was a fixed body of facts for the New Testament Church. When Paul writes that he wished to remind the brethren of the Gospel, which he had preached to them, which they received, in which they stood and by which they were saved, he is calling to mind a set of facts that can be summarised, explained, understood and believed. Some facts about Christ is its substance and other misinformation and conjecture were rejected. Christianity is not complicated, and neither was it an ill-defined grab bag of confused philosophy.
The essence of that Gospel as understood by the New Testament Church hinged around substitutionary atonement, Jesus’ complete physical death and his physical resurrection.
Many will argue that there are numerous teachings of what Jesus death achieves and some will even use the word atonement to describe this outcome. Amazingly, about the only thing most of these critics agree on is that Jesus death could not have achieved penal substitutionary atonement, which is to say that he died receiving the punishment that God measured out for our sins. Yet, oddly enough, that is the most clearly taught outcome of Jesus’ death found in the Bible.
His physical death was complete, he did not swoon or play-act his demise. The women went to the tomb on Sunday expecting to handle a dead body, and were actually quite distressed not to find one. Given that the wages of sin is death we should expect nothing less.
His resurrection was physical too. We could fall into the trap of thinking that people two thousand years ago were primitive and stupid and believed that dead people could just get up and walk around as a matter of course. The number of witnesses that Paul stacks up here is an indication that even back then people did not believe folk came back from the dead. The Gospel writes indicate this too, recording Jesus invitation to Thomas to touch the wounds or indicating that Jesus shared a fish breakfast with the disciples. This was not a philosophical idea continuing on, this was their friend, once dead, now living again in their midst. None of them expected it, but they certainly experienced it.
The arrogance of those who recast Christianity, who tell us the apostles meant one thing (Jesus died, is gone, and we are carrying on his legacy) when they so clearly stress the opposite (Jesus is alive again, trust him as your saviour) is as unattractive as it is immense. If these people want to start a new religion, go and do so, stop trying to hijack the Christian faith.
Paul stresses that as a philosophy, without the resurrection, Christianity would be bankrupt. He’s right. If Jesus did not die for people’s sins, telling people that this is God’s plan of salvation is a lie and a libel against God. This is a combination of wasting your time and further ticking off your creator. The emptying liberal churches demonstrate that their adherents are more consistent than their leaders. If Christ is not raised then there’s no point gathering to worship him, everyone should just get out and do their best.
No, New Testament Christians placed all their eggs in one basket. They trusted that Jesus’ death achieved their atonement and they ceased striving to win God’s approval, believing that God approved of them because of what Jesus had done.
The resurrection is God’s guarantee that Jesus’ death had achieved our forgiveness. This is what the Scriptures teach. This is the content of the Gospel. Believe it and be saved.
He is risen!