INTRODUCTION
On Sundays we will be going through a sermon series from the book of Colossians that will consist of 23 messages (Lord willing) starting with next Sunday and ending this November.
Over the next 24 Thursdays I have planned the Lord has given me 16 messages leaving just 8 Thursdays open for whatever the Lord directs later.
If you don’t already have a copy of the schedules you can get one later. Having a schedule of sermon may be different for you but it may serve you in the following ways:
1. It will be known in advance what we’ll address and when
2. You may read, study texts ahead of time to help you prepare
3. It may aid you in memorizing and meditating upon large texts one part at a time
So, with that introduction to our vision, mission and preaching ministry aside, let us move to this evening’s message. Please turn in your Bibles to 1 Corinthians 15. We’ll be concentrating on verses 3-4 this morning but we’ll read verses 1-5 for context. So let’s do that and then I will pray.
READ 1 CORINTHIANS 15:1-5
PRAY
The apostle Paul wrote many things to the churches in his letters. He taught on many doctrinal matters and on many matters of practical Christian living. But of all that he wrote, he only called one thing “of first importance.” The gospel. “I would remind you brothers, of the gospel I preached to you …I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received.” And so the gospel is of first importance for all believers, and so it is of first importance to Warrior Gospel Chapel.
What is the gospel? We can describe it this way:
The gospel is the good news of God’s saving activity in the person and work of Christ.
We’re going to talk about that saving activity this morning.
It has been said of God’s word, and I believe it applies to the gospel as well, that it is like the ocean: so deep that no one can fully dive to its depths, and yet shallow enough that even a child can wade in it.
If God’s saving activity through Christ were to be explained in its full ocean depths, we would have to say what the apostle John said of Jesus’ works in John 21:25, “Were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.” No one can really get to the end of explaining all that God has done through Jesus Christ.
And yet the gospel, the saving activity of God in Jesus Christ has been written down for us. We have 4 versions of it in our Bibles that we call the gospel according to Matthew, Mark, Luke or John. They contain a record of Jesus’ birth, life, ministry, death, resurrection, ascension and the promise of his coming return. That is all part of the gospel, part of the good news of the saving activity of God.
But those versions of the gospel are many chapters long, too long for us to cover in one message. Can we condense the essence of the gospel down to a shorter description?
Well Paul condensed the ocean of God’s saving activity down to one sentence in our text. The gospel is that “Christ died for our sins …he was buried … he was raised on the third day.” That’s of first importance.
And in that summary of the gospel, there is one phrase that is the very center. It’s those five words, Christ died for our sins. We know that’s the very center of the center, because Paul called the gospel “the word of the cross” in 1 Corinthians 1:18 is the power of God. Not the word of the resurrection, though that is part of the good news, but the word of the cross. The cross of Christ is the center of the saving activity of God.
So our focus this morning is on the phrase Christ died for our sins. That’s the gospel ocean distilled down to a phrase that even a child can wade in and be saved by.
Here’s how we’ll proceed. First we’re going to look at the bad news that the gospel addresses. And then we’ll look at the good news of the gospel itself. We’ll answer two question each for the good and the bad.
So let’s begin with…
THE BAD NEWS
The first part of the bad news is that…
1. The problem is our sins
Christ died for our sins. Our sins are the problem and the occasion for the saving activity of God. Without an understanding of our sin, there is no understanding the cross.
J.C. Ryle wrote in his book Holiness, that “A right knowledge of sin lies at the root of all saving Christianity. …If a man does not realize the dangerous nature of his soul’s disease, you cannot wonder if he is content with false or imperfect remedies.”
In other words, if you think you only have a cold, you will look for cold remedies. But if you find out you have cancer and not a cold, you will not be content with cold remedies, but will look for a cure far more potent.
Well, sin is not a cold, but a cancer, and one that only the potency of the gospel can cure. So let’s look at the nature of our soul’s disease. If we would love the gospel, we must see our need for the gospel.
What is sin? A brief tour of the Scriptures will show us.
1 John 3:4 says this: Everyone who makes a practice of sinning also practices lawlessness; sin is lawlessness. Lawlessness is living as if we are under no laws, that there is no authority over us that we must obey, and no standards for our behavior to conform to. Lawlessness is doing what is right in your own eyes. You want to run a red light; you do it. You want to take your neighbor’s wallet; no one can say that’s wrong. No one is over the sovereign you.
In other words, lawlessness does not acknowledge the existence of God. It is not conforming to the law of God. All sin is lawlessness.
So what kinds of things count as sin? How do we know if we’re doing it?
1 John 5:17 says, All wrongdoing is sin… This has in mind particularly our actions, the doing of wrong things. And anything is wrong if God says it’s wrong in his word. You shall have no other Gods before me. You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain. You shall not murder or steal or bear false witness. These and many other things that we do that God forbids that are not in compliance with his standards, are all sin. They are all lawlessness.
And yet sin is not only doing what God forbids, but sin is not doing what God commands. It’s not just acting, but failing to act.
James 4:17 says, “So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.” We call those sins of omission. God says to love your neighbor as yourself, but we may show no concern for them at all. God says to honor your father and mother, but we may take their care and provision for granted. God says “pray without ceasing” (1 Thess. 5:17), but we may pray very little. These are not just mistakes or oversights. Failing to do what God calls us to do is sin. It is lawlessness. It acknowledges no God over us.
And yet sin is more than actions and failing to act. Sin is also our thoughts and attitudes that are not in line with God’s word.
Jesus said in Matthew 5:27-28 "You have heard that it was said, ’You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”
There is a mindset that as long as you don’t do something really bad, but only think about it, then it’s not sin. “If you’ve never cheated on your wife, then you’re morally upright. Or if you never robbed a bank, then you’re an upstanding citizen, etc.” Jesus comes against that mindset and says, “Oh, no. Sin starts in the heart. Sin isn’t just the outward action. Sin is the cravings of the heart that lead to the outward actions.”
The lustful intent, the desire for the woman who is not your wife, that is cut from the same cloth as physical adultery. That is the origin of adultery, for from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery… (Mark 7:21). Sin isn’t just stealing your neighbor’s wallet, it’s coveting his money. Sin isn’t just not serving others, it’s the lack of care about others. Sin happens in the heart first before it happens externally. It happens in our thoughts and attitudes.
Have we sinned? Have you sinned? Yes, we have. We all have, many times, and we will continue to sin many times, because none of us conforms perfectly to God’s law for even 10 minutes in our actions, thoughts and attitudes. None of us can say that we obey every minute of the day God’s command to “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself. (Luke 10:27)
As Romans 3:23 says, “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”
Sin is our soul’s disease. This is the problem that the gospel addresses. Christ died for our sins. The cross deals with our sin, with our breaking God’s laws.
Now this rules out many modern interpretations of why Jesus died on the cross. Some modern “gospels” have nothing to do with our sin. Some would say that Jesus went to the cross only …
• To provide a role model for fighting injustice even if it costs your life
• To show us that God loves human beings by identifying with our suffering, even to the point of death
• Or even that Jesus was a revolutionary who sought to do good but who died in disillusionment when he cried, “My God, my God why have you forsaken me?”
Well the cross does deal with injustice; and the cross does show us God’s love and that he identifies with our suffering, and Jesus was forsaken by God the Father on the cross. But the reason for these things is because he was addressing our sins. Christ died for our sins.
The problem is our sins. That’s the first part of the bad news. The second part is that…
2. The judgment for our sin is death.
Even in our culture, fallen as it is, we know that lawbreaking carries with it a penalty for breaking the law, a sentence. It may be a light sentence or penalty if the crime wasn’t too bad. Or it may be a severe penalty if the crime was very bad. You’ll get a ticket for running a red light, but you’ll get a prison sentence for armed robbery.
And a just judge, a judge that upholds the law and deals rightly cannot just dismiss lawlessness without any penalty, especially if the crime is very bad indeed.
Well, God is a just judge. Nahum 1:3 says The LORD is slow to anger and great in power and the LORD will by no means clear the guilty. If God cleared the guilty, he would not be just. He would be flawed. He could not be counted on to address evil and to do what was right. He would not be a holy God. But he doesn’t clear the guilty. And we’re guilty of lawlessness against him.
What’s the penalty for that?
Christ died for our sins. There is a death involved in Christ’s dealing with our sin. The Scriptures everywhere point to death as the appropriate penalty for sin against God.
In the Garden of Eden, God said to the man, “…of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die." That was the first warning that death is the appropriate punishment for sin. Adam and Eve died a spiritual death in the day they sinned. Their natures became corrupt and they became separated from God. And this eventually worked its way out into physical death.
In the book of Leviticus, we read about how Israel’s sins were to be answered for if they were to dwell in the presence of the holy God who made his presence known in the Most Holy Place of the tabernacle. Particularly, on the Day of Atonement, Leviticus 16:15, 34 says what the high priest was to do before coming into the Most Holy Place.
"Then he shall kill the goat of the sin offering that is for the people and bring its blood inside the veil and do with its blood as he did with the blood of the bull, sprinkling it over the mercy seat and in front of the mercy seat. …And this shall be a statute forever for you, that atonement may be made for the people of Israel once in the year because of all their sins."
The atonement for sin, the way of making it right with God for sin, was death. And Paul, looking back at the cross in Romans 6:23 reaffirms this by saying that the wages of sin is death, meaning that death is the punishment that fits the crime of our lawlessness toward God in our actions or thoughts or attitudes.
And it is not just a physical death that is the penalty that is due us. It’s an eternal death. For Paul went on to describe that death in more detail in 2 Thessalonians 1:9, They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might. The place where that happens is called hell.
The judgment for our sin is death, an eternal death.
That’s really bad news isn’t it? In fact, it’s so bad that many people, including some theologians, say that’s not true, that God would never do that to someone. It seems severe, excessive, even cruel. It seems like the punishment doesn’t fit the crime, that a person who lived a fairly decent life without doing anything really bad should be tormented in hell.
Well it is severe, but it isn’t inappropriate or excessive or cruel. Here’s one reason why. We underestimate the seriousness of our sins against God. We don’t see how great an injustice it is to be lawless toward the God of the universe.
An illustration might help get some idea of this. Even in our fallen world we know that the degree of injustice of a crime depends on who is the victim of the crime. If the victim is highly esteemed because of their virtue or position, a crime against them is considered more serious than the same crime against a victim who was doing something sinful themselves to provoke the crime.
For example, on November 22, 1963, Lee Harvey Oswald shot and killed John F. Kennedy, the president of the United States. The world was shocked and outraged at the sheer magnitude of Oswald’s crime, and the nation mourned. People who lived through that can still remember where they were the moment they heard about it. It was the height of injustice. But two days later, as Oswald was being lead out of his jail to another location, a man named Jack Ruby shot and killed Oswald. It was shocking, yes, but people don’t remember where they were when they heard about that. There wasn’t the same sense of outrage.
His crime was the same as Oswald’s. In both cases it was murder. But the sense of outrage and injustice was not as great when Oswald was killed as when Kennedy was killed. Why not? Because there was a sense that Oswald wasn’t an innocent victim, that he brought it on himself. It was still murder, but the sense of injustice was much less.
Our sins against God are more like Oswald’s murder of the President than Ruby’s murder of Oswald. God is infinitely greater, infinitely more to be honored, loved, and obeyed than any president or any person on earth no matter how noble. If we could see God in his glory right now, in his holiness, his goodness, his mercy, his beauty, and see his sustaining power giving us life and breath and all things, we would see our lawlessness against him as a great injustice indeed. And hell would make more sense.
J.C. Ryle wrote,
“We…born in sin, surrounded by sinners, living in a constant atmosphere of weakness, infirmity and imperfection, can form none but the most inadequate conceptions of the hideousness of evil. …The very animals whose smell is most offensive to us have no idea that they are offensive and are not offensive to one another. And man, fallen man, I believe, can have no just idea what a vile thing sin is in the sight of that God whose handiwork is absolutely perfect.”
Eternal destruction and hell seem excessive penalty for sin only because we have inadequate conceptions of the hideousness of evil to a holy God. We’re too steeped in it to see it for what it really is.
Our sin is the problem and death is the judgment. That’s the bad news. And it’s really, really bad. But God has also given us good news. God did something so we would never have to experience this bad news. And the good news is really, really good.
So let’s turn to the good news.
THE GOOD NEWS
How can we be saved from the penalty for our sins, from the righteous wrath of God?
The answer is the gospel.
By grace – by God’s undeserved favor to sinners who deserve only wrath - God sent a Savior to rescue us from sin’s penalty and to give us the riches of relationship with him. Christ died for our sins.
Let’s examine that good news by answering two questions.
1. Who is Christ?
Well, he is both God and man.
Matthew 1:20-23 shows us both of these truths. The angel said to Joseph, "Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins." All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet: "Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel" (which means, God with us).
Our Savior Jesus Christ was born fully human, and yet he was not only human, he was fully God as well, God in the flesh, God with us, miraculously born of a virgin with no earthly father, conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit.
2. What did he do?
To begin with, he lived a perfect sinless life from the moment he was born until the moment of his death.
Hebrews 4:15 says “we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our
weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.”
He never yielded to temptation, he was never lawless, he never did anything against God’s will in actions or attitudes or thoughts. He always did what pleased the Father. He was obedient to God in all things at all times and with his entire person. In fact, he was obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. (Phil. 2:8)
For that is ultimately what he came for. He came to die for our sins. He came to carry out God’s desire to save sinners. He came to take the blame for our sins and to take the punishment for our sins himself.
1 John 4:10 says, In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Propitiation means turning away anger; it means satisfying wrath, satisfying the justice due to the one whom we have sinned against, due to God.
Jesus’ death on the cross is the death that satisfies God’s justice for our sins and turns his righteous anger away from us. Because of his death, God says to those he saves, “I’m not going to make you pay for your sin. You aren’t going to see destruction. I’m going to save you from it and show you my love.”
Now we might ask at this point, how does that work? If God is just and he doesn’t clear the guilty, and I’m guilty, then how is it that I can ever go free? How can God punish someone else for my sin? Am I not the one who must be punished for it? Isn’t it wrong for God to punish someone else for my sin, especially Jesus, who was sinless?
Is that not an injustice of the greatest magnitude in the history of the world, to have the perfect Son of God insulted and lashed and condemned as a criminal and sent to be executed by being nailed to a piece of wood and left to hang there without mercy until death?
And really, that’s the right question to ask about Jesus’ death, though it wasn’t the question that came to my mind as an unbeliever. The more common question that people ask is, “If God is a loving God, how could he ever send people to hell?” But if we understand rightly our soul’s disease, if we understand rightly the extent of our lawlessness and that we’ve never lived sinlessly like Jesus did for even 10 minutes, then we have to ask, “If God is just, how can he allow anyone to escape his wrath and punish Jesus for our sins instead?”
Well, God is a loving God and a just God, and so he made a way for us to escape judgment that fulfills his love, and which also fulfills his justice. Before the foundation of the world, God established a principle by which a sinner could be counted sinless in his sight, and by which a sinless person could be counted a sinner in his sight. That principle is called imputation.
And we see it in 2 Corinthians 5:21. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. On the cross, God imputed our sin onto Christ. That is, he considered it as belonging to Christ. He charged all the sins of all the people he would save for all time to Christ’s account. On the cross, Christ became sin for us, meaning that he was regarded by God as our sin personified, the very concentration of our evil, though he was personally sinless. And God condemned him for our evil.
God in his justice did what justice demands. As Isaiah wrote, he crushed his Son. And as David wrote, he forsook him and removed his grace from him, the very picture of hell.
But at the same time, on the cross, God imputed Christ’s sinlessness to us. That is, he considered it as belonging to us. He charged Christ’s perfect record of obedience to the account of all the people that he would save for all time. Because of the cross, we become the righteousness of God, meaning that God regards us as sinlessness personified, though we are personally sinful. And God approves of us for Christ’s perfection.
And God in his love does what love demands. As Psalm 11:7 says, For the LORD is righteous; he loves righteous deeds; the upright shall behold his face. In Christ, those whom God saves are loved and will behold his face, the very picture of heaven.
God does not clear the guilty or condemn the innocent. He made a way for Christ to be counted as guilty and for us to be counted as innocent. It’s by imputation.
Christ died for our sins. That is the heart of the gospel.
More can be said about the saving activity of God. To fill out the gospel picture somewhat, Paul mentions that Christ was raised on the third day. The resurrection proves that Jesus’ death did in fact satisfy the wrath of God. He no longer needed to remain dead. He had paid the penalty, he had satisfied the wages of sin. And to prove it God raised him from the dead, showing us that sin has been overcome. Those who are in Christ will not see the eternal destruction but will be raised to life.
And Jesus also ascended to heaven where he rules with power to save. In Matthew 28:18-19 he said, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of call nations.” Jesus is reigning in heaven, building his church, gathering in his people, saved by his blood.
And he will come again to bring his people to himself forever in heaven. In John 14:3 he said, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also. Heaven in the presence of Jesus is the promise for all who are saved.
CONCLUSION
To sum up, the gospel is The gospel is the marvelous message of God’s saving activity in the person and work of Christ.
It includes all that God does through Jesus Christ to save us. And the heart of it is the
cross; the truth that Christ died for our sins. That’s the gospel. A world full of books couldn’t describe it completely, and yet it can be said in five words such that even a child can know it and be saved by it.
So I want to end with this question. Do you believe the gospel?
Jesus said in Mark 1:15, the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel. To repent means to agree that sin is your soul’s disease and you want to turn from it. And to believe means you agree that Jesus’ death on the cross is your only hope of acceptance before God, of forgiveness for your sins. And you trust in him for forgiveness.
None of the benefits of the good news that I’ve described belong to you unless you repent and believe this gospel. All of them belong to you if you do repent and believe. It’s in him, that is, in Christ that we become the righteousness of God and are accepted by God as righteous. And we are not in Christ unless we trust in the person and work of Christ.
Are you saved from paying the eternal penalty for your sin? If you haven’t trusted Jesus, then don’t delay to do what the apostle Paul said in Acts 16:31, "Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved”… saved from judgment and saved to be with Jesus where he is.
I pray no one will leave this morning without doing that. And I pray that those who have already will rest in knowing that God’s saving activity in the person and work of Christ was for you, and proves his love for you.
PRAY
