When Jesus suffered and died on the cross When Jesus suffered and died on the cross and rose from a borrowed tomb, he proclaimed the dawn of a new world for mankind Read Story. We live in a very religious nation, and this is not a bad thing. Not always. Because of our freedom to choos Because of our freedom to choose to believe in something or nothing, religion has flourished in our democracy.
NewSpring Church. Facebook Twitter Pinterest. Three things the resurrection changes eternity resurrection salvation jesus For many, this Easter was like every other. Three things the resurrection changes. Why the resurrection matters to you resurrection salvation jesus easter Jesus endured pain and suffering on the cross.
Why the resurrection matters to you. How Jesus rescued me from a religious cult. I was the leader of a prison mosque. We can never make it—do enough spiritual, moral, or social good to impress God. Much less love him with all our soul, mind, and strength.
We all fail to love and serve the infinitely admirable and lovable God. The sentence for our crime must be carried out. When Jesus takes the arduous hike for us he goes down into the valley where the criminals die. He hikes down into our sin, our rebellion, our failures and he heaps them all on his back and climbs on a cross, where he is punished for our crime, a bloody gruesome death.
The innocent punished for the guilty. If you reject Jesus, then you will pay the infinite consequences. However, if you embrace Jesus in his sin-absorbing death you get forgiveness, and Jesus hikes not only through the valley but up the mountain to carry your forgiveness to God, where he pleads our innocence Hebrews This is what it means for Jesus to be the way. He hikes into the valley of our just punishment and up the mountain for our forgiveness.
He is the redemptive way. He takes our place. This understanding of Jesus as the way should make us incredibly humble not arrogant. We realize how undeserving we are and how much mercy we have been shown. Jesus is also the Truth. What does that mean? In John chapter 1, we are told that God became flesh and was full of grace and truth in Jesus.
The truth is that God is Jesus. Christianity is the only religion where God is born as a man, becomes fully human. This is the height of enlightenment. All other religions teach that humans must work their way toward divinity. The truth is Jesus. The truth is a person who dies in our place, for our crimes, and in turn gives us his life. The truth is that God works his way down to humanity and dies for us. In Christianity, the truth is essentially revealed in a Person, Jesus, full of grace and humility.
All other religions God is impersonal, but in Christianity we meet God in Jesus. The truth is a Person who dies for us. Wonderfully enlightened, moving. Finally, Jesus is the Life. What life? Later on in John, Jesus says he is the resurrection and the life, and that whoever believes in him, though he die yet he will live He goes down into the valley to take our death, and rises up from the dead to up the other side of the valley where he prepares a new place for us to enjoy life with him forever.
We tolerantly extend people the dignity of their own beliefs. We honor them. The life of Christ produces in us true humility. But it also produces in us true enlightenment. If this is true, we must lovingly, humbly try to persuade others to believe in Jesus—who alone offers the wonderful promise of the way to God, the truth of God, and life of God.
Either we must be rejected or we turn to Jesus who was rejected for us. This is the heart of the gospel. Why would we reject such a man? Christianity delivers where pluralism cannot. Instead of being unenlightened, Jesus is truly enlightening.
He is God—full of grace and truth. Instead of being arrogant, Jesus should make us incredibly humble. He created the way to God for us at the expense of his own death. Finally, instead of being intolerant, Jesus should make us persuasively tolerant, granting people the dignity of unbelief but pleading with them to accept true life! We all have a choice—where to place our faith. Will we place it in unenlightened, dogmatic, and intolerant pluralism?
Or will we place it in Jesus, who is the incredibly humbling way, the enlightening truth, and the persuasively tolerant life? Both require faith. We can doubt Jesus and trust pluralism, or we can trust Jesus and doubt pluralism.
Or, will you place your faith in religious pluralism? This is a guest post from Jonathan Dodson M. Div, Th. In light of this universal human predicament, God has made a way for us to be forgiven of our sins and reconciled to God. As I was sharing these points he was nodding his head in agreement. Yet the conversation would shift on what I said next. I then said that Jesus is the only way to God John At this point he politely said to me that he did not mean to be rude but he wanted to know what I thought about Buddhism.
I said, "Honestly, I don't know a lot about Buddhism but any belief system that lays out any other path to God apart from trusting in Jesus Christ is false. I came to the gym for a workout. The first thing that came to mind and out of my mouth was "the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.
I then began to share with him why the resurrection of Christ from the dead is reasonable to believe. What follows is what God used me to share as we spoke that night. Some have argued that the disciples stole the body and hid it. I told him I think that this is highly unlikely.
When Jesus was arrested by those sent from the Jewish leaders and turned over to the Roman authorities to be crucified his disciples scattered from Him Mark and the ring leader Peter denied that he had been with Him Mark They were utter cowards who scattered, hid and did not want to be associated with Jesus in His death.
Yet seven weeks later we find Peter preaching, along with the other disciples, that Jesus who had been crucified was raised by God from the dead in the very city Jerusalem where Jesus was condemned to die Acts What changed for these men? What turned them from cowards to courageous? The fact that they had hidden a corpse? Or that these men had seen Jesus after He had risen from the dead Acts ? It is reported that 11 of the 12 apostles suffered violent deaths for their preaching of Jesus Christ and not one of them recanted or renounced their faith.
But how many have died for a lie knowing that it was a lie? If the disciples had stolen the body, then they would have known that the resurrection was a lie. And you would think if that were the case, at least one of them would have recanted their testimony in the face of extreme torture and violent death. Persecution and death for preaching Christ was true not only for the 12 apostles but for those who received their teaching. It is difficult to believe that these people would willingly die for Jesus Christ if they knew and believed it was a lie.
The martyrdom of thousands of these Christians was based on the fact that they believed the truth of the statements in the Gospels about Jesus and were willing to die as martyrs rather than deny their faith in Him.
In the face of Jewish and Roman opposition and persecution, Christianity had spread all throughout the Roman Empire in short years and it has not stopped. I also mentioned that if the Romans and Jews had known where the body of Jesus was all they had to do was wheel it down the street on a cart and Christianity would have died in its inception.
In addition to the resurrection of Jesus, I began to talk with my new friend about the claims of Jesus Christ about Himself. Some people will say that Jesus never claimed to be God that is only something that others have made up. I mentioned to him that Jesus did not come to a culture of people that were ignorant about God.
Jesus did and said things that clearly alluded to His deity which was not missed by the religious leaders He interacted with. Here are four examples of this:. I mentioned that these are just a few of many examples and that Jesus did not leave it open to debate who He is. I reminded him again that Jesus actually said, "I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me" John At this point, I said to my friend that it is not because people proclaim Jesus to be the only way that has the world so messed up.
It is messed up because we have a world full of people who are determining for themselves what is right or wrong with no regard for God. We have denied that there is such a thing as truth which in and of itself is a truth claim , we have ignored who Jesus claims to be, and have become our own gods.
With that being the case, we look at every belief system as being equally valid and right as any other. We act like everything is okay until what someone else believes contradicts what I believe. At this point he interrupted me, saying that he enjoyed our conversation and would like to hear more but he realized that he was running late to meet a friend.
With that we shook hands and said goodbye. So when it comes to the real identity of Jesus, we need to ask ourselves, "Who is Jesus? Lewis about the only real options that we have when we answer the question.
That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell.
0コメント