What Believeth Thou?

John 11:25-26  “Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, and the life: he

that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live:  And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. Believest thou this?”

Although this is written when Lazarus was raised from the dead by Christ, it also speaks to the fact that Jesus got up out of the grave!

First let’s understand what we hear all the time: “He died so that we might live.”  This is simple. The bible says that Christ was born in the flesh. He was born a man to be a bloody sacrifice for all.  Before the Cross, mankind sacrificed goats and bulls and shed blood before God in the hopes that their sins and transgressions would be forgiven.  Christ, a man without sin, became sin. ("Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows..." Isaiah 53 KJV)  He was tortured beyond anything we can imagine and nailed to the cross as the ultimate sacrifice for all of us.  “ye were bought with a price.”  1 Corinthians 6:20

Christ fulfilled a prophesy clearly stated in the Old Testament concerning the purpose of the coming Messiah. “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to his abundant mercy hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.” 1Peter 1:3  Through our faith we are born again. Through the spilling of his blood, we are washed clean.  This was not a onetime event.  We are renewed and refreshed and given new mercies each and every day of our lives because of his love, his grace and his mercy and his sacrifice on the cross.  This is salvation.  One of the best things about it is that we can have a one on one relationship with Jesus Christ.  We do not need a holy man, a priest or an evangelist to get to him.  We have been given direct access to the throne of grace.  Because we believe that He is, we believe that He hears our petitions and prayers and because He hears , we believe that He answers.  This is faith.

It is important to know without a doubt that Jesus is real.  He did die on the cross for the forgiveness of our sins and he did, indeed rise (in his flesh) from the grave on the third day. He defeated death and he is yet alive.  As we wonder about the future of mankind, let us look to John 5:24 “Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life.”  Belief in the resurrection was the faith of the Early Church and is the foundation that the church of today must stand.

Putting it simply: Mohammed, Confucius and the Buddha died and are still dead.  Jesus got up and is still ALIVE.  If Christ had not risen, many of us that are living and breathing today would still be dead to sin.  Some of us  would still be drunken dope addicts, pimps, prostitutes, thieves and the like - physically, mentally and spiritually dead. Because of the one and only living God who died on the cross and rose again. We are alive because He is alive.

Because of our faith that He yet lives we also know that he is coming back for his church “without spot or wrinkle”.  He gives us chance after chance to live right, to talk right, walk right and just be right.  Man’s future lies in this fact alone.  This is our hope. This is our reason for living. We are all just trying to make it in.  This what we mean when we say that we are saved.

Yep. He got up.  Be glad about it!

(c) Debi Mason, 2014, USA
#whatithoughtwassojustaint
@DebiOak