The Gospel

“Jesus told her, ‘I am the resurrection and the life. Anyone who believes in Me will live, even after dying. Everyone who lives in Me and believes in Me will never ever die. Do you believe this, Martha?’” (John 11:25-26 NLT)

These powerful words to Martha should resonate in our heart and life as we seek to honor the Lord with our whole beings.

Martha’s brother had died, and she was upset with Jesus because He didn’t come in time to heal him. Her faith was strong in Jesus’ ability to heal but was missing when it came to His power to resurrect. How about your faith and mine? We surely have less problems believing He can heal someone, but bring them back from the dead? But why would we doubt or question?

Isn’t the Gospel at its core the declaration that in Christ those who were dead in their sin can be resurrected to new life in Him? Isn’t that the picture painted in Baptism? We die to self and sin and are raised to new life in Jesus. Perhaps we’re not clear in our understanding of the Resurrection.

The Resurrection of Jesus was remarkable and an essential element in our salvation but simply believing that Jesus rose from the dead isn’t enough. How the power of God was illustrated in and through the resurrection of our Savior is only the beginning, not the end. Jesus’ resurrection is only the foretaste of what was to come.

Yes, of course, we’ll be resurrected in our new, glorious, heavenly bodies when He returns, but isn’t salvation, at its core, a resurrection from the death-grip of sin – not only for us as believers, but for those who are encapsulated in their “tomb” of unbelief? Is it any easier at times to see Martha in her inability to understand that the King of Creation could call her brother forth from the tomb, than it is to see ourselves as we struggle to see how our loved ones and friends will ever be “resurrected” from their sin?

Michael Ramsay was on to something when he wrote: “The Gospel without the Resurrection is not merely a Gospel without its final chapter; it is not a gospel at all.” Yes, of course, the Gospel is empty if Jesus hadn’t burst forth from the grave, but the Gospel is also empty if we don’t have full confidence that the Lord is able to break the bonds of sin and death in our own lives and the lives of those for whom we pray.

The Gospel is powerless without believing prayer and prayer is powerless unless and until we fill it with full confidence that the same God who rolled the stone from the entrance of Jesus’ tomb, who rolled the “stones” from the “tombs” of those of us who are redeemed, will also roll the stones away that entomb our loved ones and friends in their sin.

One day we will all literally die. Our bodies that today are filled with air and we can move and think and live as we please will one day breathe our last. If we aren’t delivered from our “tombs” of selfishness and sin we’ll simply be transferred from one state of misery to another.

In this life everyone, even unbelievers, is given access to God’s presence – His air, sunshine, nature, plus His people filled with His life, but when an unsaved sinner leaves this life they will be completely cut off from any hint of God’s holy presence.

God is light, so, apart from Him is darkness. He is love, compassion, care, forgiveness, and a thousand other things we take for granted, but they’ll all be gone forever once a person leaves this life without Him.

Please don’t let that happen to you or to someone you love. Please pray for yourself, if you don’t yet know Jesus as Lord of your life, and pray for others as though their lives depended upon your prayers.

Let’s believe the Gospel so fully that we will pray with confidence the Lord will hear and answer us as surely as He heard Jesus when He asked His Father to raise His friend Lazarus from the dead.

Food for thought.

Blessings, Ed 😊