The Resurrection News

Dear Weekly Readers!

May God grant each of you a most Blessed Holy Week and Easter Sunday.  May the knowledge of what Jesus has done and accomplished during this time, be our very Life as we continue onward in Him through eternity!

Please enjoy the article below!

God’s Peace!  John R.

THE RESURRECTION NEWS IS THE most glorious and far- reaching word that has been uttered by mortal tongue. It offers blessings of inestimable worth. There is no greater joy than to have risen with Christ, and to possess living, victorious faith in Him.

The resurrection message does not consist only in a teaching or a doctrine about which we learn and to which we give mere intellectual assent. It is not just a subject that we should be able to discuss theologically in an intelligent manner. Neither is its essence something that is seen fulfilled regularly in nature when it awakens from the dormant, death-like sleep of winter and puts on the fresh, new beauty of spring.

Concerned about the true understanding of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, Martin Luther wrote: How is a dead man profited, however much life may be preached to him, if that preaching does not make him alive? Or of what use is it to preach righteousness to a sinner if he remains in sin? Or to an erring, factious individual, if he forsakes not his error and his darkness?

Even so, it is not only useless, but detrimental, to listen to the glorious, comforting, and saving doctrine of the resurrection if the heart has no experience of its truth; if it means naught but a sound in the ears, a transitory word upon the tongue, with no more effect upon the hearer as if he had never heard.

The key to the resurrection experience lies in the personal realization that Jesus was delivered to death for our offences, and was raised again for our justification. (Romans 4:25) Its effectiveness is found in the individual awareness of our sinfulness, and of our need for grace. When I spoke of personal salvation with Christian friends in Latvia, they often emphasized their belief in the basic Biblical truth that the knowledge of sin must precede the knowledge of grace.

The word 'death' is used in Scripture as a means to identify the condition of those who are not in fellowship with God. It is referred to as being dead in trespasses and sins. (Ephesians 2:1) Of himself and his experience, Paul said, For I was alive without the law once: but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died. And the Commandment, which was ordained to life, I found to be unto death. (Romans 7:9-10)

Now we know that what things soever the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law: that every mouth  may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God. (Romans 3:19)

The Gospel message provides the foundation upon which rests the hope of our salvation. Our Saviour Jesus Christ...hath abolished death, and hath brought life and immortality to light through the gospel. (2 Timothy 1:10)

How can this simple message do such great things? How can this Word even raise the dead? The power is that of the Holy Spirit, which calls, gathers, enlightens, sanctifies the whole Christian Church on earth, and preserves it in union with Jesus Christ in the one true faith. In His instructions to the disciples, the Lord told them that the means by which His ministry is made known and available is through the preaching of repentance and the forgiveness of sins in His name. In many ministries today, this order no longer exists. The invitation to embrace Jesus as Savior has been replaced by the familiar, commonly used injunction to "make Him the Lord of your life by submitting your life in service to Him."

If it is in this way that citizens are enlisted into His kingdom, we are in danger of depriving them—and the Lord Himself—of His primary purpose for coming into this world. Jesus explained His mission by saying that the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many. (Matthew 20:28)

Our relationship to Jesus is not established upon our service to Him, but upon our being the beneficiaries of His sacrificial service to us. The primary emphasis in ministry must have as its foundation the order of grace that the Bible established. Otherwise, we will never truly know the joy of being risen with Christ, or of living in victorious faith through Him. When the grace of God, which brings salvation, appears to a convicted sinner, he finds that he is no longer his own, but the Lord’s, possession. It is then that he rises with Christ; and the new man, who has been created within him, seeks those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. (Colossians 3:1)  All that Christ is, and all that He has done, become ours through faith. We can rest in the assurance that, because He lives, we, too, shall live.

Through Him, we are victorious by the power of faith—and that faith is a gift of God. His love has won the love of our hearts. He is our Savior, the blessed and only Potentate, the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords. “Crown Him the Lord of life, Who triumphed o’er the grave, And rose victorious in the strife For those He came to save;  His glories now we sing, Who died, and rose on high, Who died eternal life to bring, And lives, that death may die.”

The late Pastor Alvin Holmgren