Sermon 1 — September 12, 2010
“Therefore if any man is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come.” 2 Cor 5:17
Back in 1989, I listened to Charles Stanley on the radio while I worked. One day he promised that if anyone would listen to the two week long series he was beginning on the Identity of the Believer they would never be the same. This sounded really good to me because at the time I was rather desperately seeking to grow nearer to God. I took Stanley’s challenge and, I must say, he was right! How I view my relationship to God was forever altered. I went from striving to be good enough unto knowing my righteousness was in Him. In the next few weeks I plan to present the theology of the Christian that was opened to me through those radio programs.
A Christian begins with a born again experience based on belief in who God is and what He has done. We ask Jesus to forgive our sins and come into our lives to save us and then, if someone asks, “Are you a Christian?” we can say yes. This is in line with what Paul says in his letter to the Romans. (All underlined emphases and comments in parentheses in the NASB quotations within are mine.)
9 if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved; 10for with the heart a person believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation. Rom 10:9,10
This is a very simple verse but there are many terms listed in this verse that need to be considered if we are going to be able to say that this is what we truly believe. These terms begin to make up the world view of the believer; they are foundational to how we are to look at everything in our new reality as God’s new creations. If we don’t understand and consider the meanings of these terms as the basis of our existence as born again Christians, we are left hoping that by some ‘magic’ the words have made us different. It is the truth behind the words, the authority of what God said, that changes someone into a believer in Christ.
1. Confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord
What are we to speak out loud? What we believe about Jesus. Confess: to declare faith in or adherence to or Profess : to receive formally into a religious community following a novitiate by acceptance of the required vows. We have been born into His family and are committed to and believe this is true: that Jesus is Lord. His is the Name above all other names. We are to know and proclaim Him as King of Kings and Lord of Lords, the Word of God.
14 that you keep the commandment without stain or reproach until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ, 15which He will bring about at the proper time— He who is the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords, 16who alone possesses immortality and dwells in unapproachable light, whom no man has seen or can see. To Him be honor and eternal dominion! Amen. 1 Tim 6:15,16, Rev 19:16
We are agreeing with the eternal God who has exalted Jesus to this position as Lord, and to Him every knee will bow. This is what we are saying when we say Jesus is Lord and as we confess this God gets the glory because this is part of His plan.
8Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. 9For this reason also, God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, 10so that at the name of Jesus EVERY KNEE WILL BOW, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. Phil 2:8-10
2. We believe in our hearts that God raised Him from the dead
This is a hard thing for modern man to accept. We are to believe that God actually raised Christ from the dead. We really can’t be a Christian if we don’t believe this. Right here, we are beyond the material world. This is something only God can do. This is the witness of the scripture. Is this really necessary? Christianity would be so much easier if it weren’t for the spiritual world, the eternal. It would be so much easier to accept without hell and angels and the devil but then it would just be about man being good and trying to appease the gods or get good karma by living well with other people. But it is not. Christianity is about death and resurrection. It is about a sacrifice for sin, the sin of the world. The next day he (John the Baptist) saw Jesus coming to him and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! John 1:29 This is part of what we profess as a Christian, this is what we believe and stake our eternal existence on, that Jesus is the sacrifice provided by God to take away the sin of the world. There is no other way under heaven by which men might be saved. This is what Peter proclaimed before the elders of the Jews after they had been arrested for healing a lame man in Acts 4.
Let it be known to all of you and to all the people of Israel, that by the name of Jesus Christ the Nazarene, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead—by this name this man stands here before you in good health. 11“He is the STONE WHICH WAS REJECTED by you, THE BUILDERS, but WHICH BECAME THE CHIEF CORNER stone. 12“And there is salvation in no one else; for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men by which we must be saved.” Acts 4:10-12
Peter was a witness to the resurrection and though we were not there we believe the testimony of these faithful witnesses.
3. We will be saved
You will be saved; 10 for with the heart a person believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation. Rom 10:9,10
We are told here that the believer will be saved. Saved from what? Saved from the wrath of God against the sin of man.
16For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. 17For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, “BUT THE RIGHTEOUS man SHALL LIVE BY FAITH.”
18For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, 19because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them. 20For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse. Rom 1:16-20
Paul says here the he is not ashamed of the gospel, the good news, because it is the expression of God’s power to save man from his sin. What are we saved from is the wrath of God, the judgement of a good and righteous God, upon the sin of His creation.
22even the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all those who believe; for there is no distinction; 23for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24being justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus; 25whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation in His blood through faith. This was to demonstrate His righteousness, because in the forbearance of God He passed over the sins previously committed; 26for the demonstration, I say, of His righteousness at the present time, so that He would be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. Rom 3:22-26
There is an very important statement in the passage, all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,
Man needs to be saved because man has sinned. But this is not just that we have done individual bad things, things that violate the righteousness of God. More than this, we have a sin nature. It is from the results of this sin nature that we must be saved. We have a sinful nature as a result of the fall of Adam and Eve.
This is the Gospel of the New Creation and we will continue to build on this.
Christians often mistakenly feel that accepting Christ gets us right with God and then He is to strengthen our lives. We fail to meditate on, consider intently, Paul’s description of the believer, “if any man is in Christ he is a new creation, all things have passed behold all things have become new.” 2 Cor 5:17 We must be in continuous and constant recollection of the reality and truths of the gospel. Christ is in us and the life we live in the flesh, our earthly bodies, we live by the power of God by placing our faith in the Son of God. “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.” Gal 2:20 Christ lives in us and gives us the confidence assurance that our relationship with God has been restored and we can now live in His Spirit. By the power and enabling of His Holy Spirit we live a new life that is born of God.
No comments:
Post a Comment