Tuesday, April 26, 2016
1 Corinthians 15:3-4 For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: 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...
THESE ARE THE FACTS: THIS IS THE BASIS OF ALL OUR PREACHING!
The facts regarding Jesus Christ show that, though He was dead, He did not stay dead. He rose from the dead according to the Scriptures. The Scriptures were fulfilled in the fact of Christ's Resurrection. Again, all of this had been prophesied in the Old Testament, as Paul records, "...Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and...He was buried, and...He rose again according to the Scriptures..."
The first recorded prophecy of His resurrection can be found in Genesis 3:15, in what is often called the Protevangel, or the first Gospel. It had been foretold by God that the Seed of the woman, that Seed being Jesus, would crush the head of the serpent Satan. The devil, on the other hand, would only bruise Christ's heel. That is to say, in crushing the serpent's head, the Savior would be wounded, but His wound would not be fatal. He would recover. The prophet Isaiah records, "Yet it pleased the LORD to bruise Him; He has put Him to grief. When You make His soul an offering for sin, He shall see His seed, He shall prolong His days, and the pleasure of the LORD shall prosper in His hand" (Isaiah 53:10).
Christ accomplished this crushing blow to the serpent upon the cross, where Jesus paid for sin by offering up Himself in our place and thus defeated the devil. Though He died, He rose again three days later, as the Scriptures had said He would. Christ's death was not fatal!
And the fact is, because Jesus rose from the dead, we may rest assured that God has accepted Christ's payment for sin and has forgiven all of our iniquities for Jesus' sake. For according to the Scriptures, "[Christ] was delivered up for our iniquities and was raised again for our justification" (Romans 4:25). Christ's payment for sin is completely satisfactory. We are declared not guilty of sin through the blood of Jesus Christ. His resurrection proves it!
