Pastor Colin Smith continues his Christmas season devotional to help you reflect on Jesus’ glory by taking a broad look at all that God has promised and accomplished in Him. The readings follow the pattern of his sermon series, “The Plan: God’s Design For the Universe and Your Place In It.” You can read, hear or watch these sermons as they are posted at Unlocking the Bible.
On the third day, a group of women went to the tomb, and it was empty. They heard the good news: He is not here. He has risen! (Luke 24:6)
The good news is that “Christ is risen.” That says more than “Jesus is alive.” The Son of God was alive in heaven before He took human flesh. He could have returned to heaven, leaving His crucified body in the tomb. The angels could have said, “His body is in the tomb, but do not fear, His Spirit is with the Father in heaven.” But that would not have fulfilled God’s plan of redemption for us.
God has made you in a wonderful way. He created angels as souls without bodies, and animals as bodies without souls. But He created you as a unique integration of body and soul together. Death separates what God has joined. It is the undoing of our nature, and that is why it is such a terrible enemy.
But Christ went through death, triumphed over death, and came out of death. He came to redeem your life—soul and body—and to present you without fault, and with great joy, to your Father in heaven (Jude 24).
Christ opened the minds of the disciples to allow them to see that everything in the Bible leads to and flows from the death and resurrection of Jesus. “He told them…The Christ will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, and repentance and forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations” (Luke 24:46-47).
Repentance means that you completely change your mind, your stance, your whole position towards Jesus Christ. You separate yourself from the world’s opinion of Jesus and take your stand with Him.
You may want to come to Christ today and tell Him, “I’ve been wrong about You. I thought that You were hard and demanding, but now I see that You are full of grace and truth. I thought You were out to condemn me, but now I see that You came into the world to redeem me. I thought my life was for me to live as I wanted, but now I see that You gave me this life. So I give it back to You, and by Your help, I will walk in Your ways.”
Forgiveness means that Jesus Christ embraces you in love. He cleanses your guilt, reconciles you to God the Father, and enters your life through His Spirit, giving you power to live the new life of faith and obedience into which He now calls you, until faith is turned to sight and you enter the joy of His presence forever.
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In Tim Keller’s short ebook, The Freedom of Self-Forgetfulness: The Path To True Christian Joy, he explains how to overcome the toxic tendencies of our age一not by diluting biblical truth or denying our differences一but by rooting our identity in Christ.
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