Our theme for this month: “Life on this side of the cross”
Our Bible verse for today: “Why are you looking for the living among the dead?” asked the men. “He is not here, but he has risen! Remember how he spoke to you when he was still in Galilee, saying, ‘It is necessary that the Son of Man be betrayed into the hands of sinful men, be crucified, and rise on the third day’? And they remembered his words.” Luke 24:5-8 (CSB)
Our thought for today: “Jesus defeated the curse of death.”
All this month we’ve been considering how it is that Jesus changed everything with respect to the manner in which people are able to relate to God. We’ve seen first that Jesus was God in a human body. While He was here, He spoke the words of God to us and He showed us who God is and what He is like, and He did it in ways that we can understand and relate to.
We also learned that when He died upon the cross, He took upon Himself all of our sins, and in exchange He gives us all of His righteousness (2 Corinthians 5:21). Because of that great act of substitution, we can now enter into God’s holy, pure, and perfect heaven. Then, next in the sequence of changes that had to occur in order to usher mankind into the final age of human history, Jesus defeated death.
The resurrection of Christ has rightly been called the greatest event in all of human history. Ever since Adam and Eve sinned in the Garden of Eden, humans have had to contend with a steadily deteriorating physical condition that ultimately results in physical death. Death is often referred to as a curse, and it is something humans fear. But when Jesus arose from the dead, He defeated death. When He demonstrated His power over death, He made it possible for those who have faith in Him to defeat death as well. That doesn’t mean that we will never die physically, even Jesus suffered physical death. But it does mean that just as Jesus had life after death, so will we (Mark 16:16; John 3:16; 3:36; 5:24: 6:47).
So at this point in the sequence of events, with the resurrection an accomplished fact, the groundwork had all been laid – all but two of the pieces were in place. All that was left before the last era of human history was fully inaugurated was for Jesus to ascend back into heaven, and for the Holy Spirit to come on the day of Pentecost. We will consider those two events next.
Oak Hill Baptist Church