Alive in Christ!
A sermon based on Romans 1:1-7
Sunday, April 1st, 2018 – Easter Day
"How come atheists don't get an annual holiday when Christians get so many?" an atheist asked his Christian friend.
"You do get an annual holiday!" his friend replied. "Every April 1st! You get April fool's day!" And he quoted Psalm 14:1, "The fool says in his heart, 'There is no God.'"
It doesn't happen too often that Easter coincides with April fool's day. And today, the unbelievers of the world would have us think that we're fools for believing that a man died and came back to life nearly 2,000 years ago and that it means anything at all for us today.
And if Jesus is still dead, they're right. The apostle Paul admits as much in 1 Corinthians 15:13-14: "If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith."
"But," Paul continues, "Christ has indeed been raised from the dead!" And Paul would echo Psalm 14 and tell us that the real fool is the one who denies God and what he's done.
This Easter season we're going to be looking at the resurrection theme that the apostle wove into his letter to the Romans. We'll see that, "Christ has indeed been raised from the dead!" and we'll see what that means for eternity someday and for each day of our lives right now. Today, we begin with the introduction to the letter found in Romans 1:1-7 and we rejoice that Christ is alive! And we rejoice that we are alive in Christ. Romans 1:1-7…
Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle and set apart for the gospel of God— 2 the gospel he promised beforehand through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures 3 regarding his Son, who as to his human nature was a descendant of David, 4 and who through the Spirit of holiness was declared with power to be the Son of God by his resurrection from the dead: Jesus Christ our Lord. 5 Through him and for his name's sake, we received grace and apostleship to call people from among all the Gentiles to the obedience that comes from faith. 6 And you also are among those who are called to belong to Jesus Christ.
7 To all in Rome who are loved by God and called to be saints:
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
I. Christ Is Alive!
A. The Prophecies Predicted It
Christ is alive! And there are lots of proofs of that fact. Two big ones show up in our text this morning. The first Paul highlights in verse two: "…the gospel he promised beforehand through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures…" thousands of years before they took place, the events that we've celebrated this weekend, even the resurrection itself, were predicted.
The prophets described with 100% accuracy where Jesus would be born (and to a virgin!), where he would do most of his ministry, the miracles that he would perform, the unconventional way that he would die, that no bones would be broken, and countless other details of Jesus' life and death.
Psalm 22 describes how Jesus would be forsaken by God, insulted by men (almost quoting how the rulers taunted Jesus on the cross), how his tongue would stick to his mouth and he would thirst, how his hands and feet would be pierced, and how his clothes gambled over.
Isaiah 53 describes the way that Jesus would remain silent when on trial, how he would be pierced (not stoned), how he would somehow be assigned a grave with the wicked and the rich.
But the prophecies go on. They predict the resurrection too! Isaiah 53 goes how to explain that "though the Lord makes his life a guilt offering, he will see his offspring and prolong his days." (v. 10) Psalm 16 predicted that God would not "abandon [the Messiah] to the grave nor… let [his] Holy One see decay." (V.10)
And even Jesus himself predicted his own resurrection!
In Mark 8(:31), "He then began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, chief priests and teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and after three days rise again." He told the Pharisees that if they wanted a sign proving his divinity, he'd give them the sign of Jonah: "For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth." (Matthew 12:40) And to prove his authority, he told the Jews, "Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days." (John 2:19)
And guess what? Surprise, surprise! Every prophecy written by the Old Testament prophets, every prediction spoken by our Savior, Jesus… they all came true! Every one of them! John 2:21-22 say, "But the temple [Jesus] had spoken of was his body. After he was raised from the dead, his disciples recalled what he had said. Then they believed the Scripture and the words that Jesus had spoken."
Prophecy and fulfillment leave a mountain of evidence for the authenticity of Jesus' resurrection from the dead and the authority of the Scriptures. But that's not the only proof we find in Romans 1.
B. The Apostles Confirmed It
The next proof of Jesus' resurrection is found in the very existence of the book of Romans itself. That Paul, once called Saul, once persecuting Christians, doing all he could to eradicate this sect—now writes to defend the faith is nothing short of a miracle. Nothing can explain his conversion better than an appearance of the risen Savior to Saul on the Road to Damascus.
Saul was an important guy from an important family in an important city. He studied at the feet of one of the most highly-regarded rabbis in the history of Judaism, on his way to becoming a prominent religious leader who enjoyed Sabbath, walks on the beach, and overseeing the detainment, imprisonment, and occasional killing of the pesky new Jesus-people for their awful blasphemies. Saul had everything a guy at that time and place could've wanted.
Then, suddenly, he decided to change his name to Paul, join his enemies, throw away his reputation, authority, wealth, social standing, and every other thing he had worked for his entire life, in favor of traveling thousands of brutal miles and willingly subjecting himself to lashings, beatings to the brink of death, to stonings, shipwrecks, starvation, dehydration, and years of imprisonment… all so he could tell people that Jesus is the risen Son of God and Savior of the world.
And he did all this because he was bored with his super-nice life. OR… He did it because, as he told everyone who would listen to him until the moment that his head was lopped off for doing so, that he met the resurrected Jesus.
Paul and all the other apostles were willing to die for this truth. With the exception of one (John), all of the other disciples had similar fates (according to tradition): James: Executed by Sword; Thomas: Speared to Death; Matthew: Speared to Death; Philip: Tortured, Crucified Upside-Down; Bartholomew: Skinned Alive, Crucified Upside-Down; Andrew: Crucified; James: Crucified; Thaddeus: Crucified; Simon: Crucified; Paul: Beheaded in Rome.
All of these men claimed to have interacted with the bodily-risen Jesus, after his death. Would all of these men (without one, single exception!) fearlessly proclaim this, all the way to their unimaginable deaths, knowing it was actually just something they made up as some fun April Fool's joke?!
No way! There was no motive for lying. They didn't get rich for this. They didn't get powerful for this. What they got was tortured to death for this. And who dies for a lie?
No, the proof is there. It's undeniable! "Christ has indeed been raised from the dead!"
C. Thank God for It
And thank God that it is true! Because, "If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith." And Jesus didn't really rise from the dead, there is no Christianity.
But if he really did rise from the dead, the implications for you and me are mind-blowing and more important than anything else in this life! If he really did rise from the dead, the resurrection is a proof in and of itself. If he really did rise from the dead, then it's proof that Jesus is who he claimed to be: God.
Paul says, "Through the Spirit of holiness [Jesus] was declared with power to be the Son of God by his resurrection from the dead." One commentary puts it this way: "Of the many miracles the God-man did while here on earth, the crowning miracle was his resurrection after he had died as our substitute." (The People's Bible, Romans 1)
You see, if Jesus is true God which all the miracles prove, and his resurrection proves best, then he can pay for our sins. As true man ("who as to his human nature was a descendant of David") he could die. But that death on the cross could only pay for mankind's sin as true God.
And make no mistake: That's what our sin demands: Death. Fools that we are, we rebel against God time and time again. We think we're wiser than God and choose to do things our way instead of his. We gossip and lie. We're lazy and unambitious. We're lustful and proud and arrogant. We do things we know are wrong and think we can get away with them. "The fool says in his heart, 'There is no God.'" (Psalm 14:1) But isn't it a bigger fool who says there is a God, but thinks, "He can't see what I'm doing. He doesn't care. I'll get away with my sin."?!
Fools that we are, we deserve death. And not just physical death—the separation of body and soul—but spiritual, eternal death—the separation from God and his love (that is, hell) for all of eternity. "But… Christ has indeed been raised from the dead!" And this is the proof that our sins are forgiven and that we have received grace…
II. We Are Alive in Christ!
After touching on some of the proofs of Jesus' bodily resurrection, the apostle Paul goes on to explain what this means for us: "Through him and for his name's sake, we received grace and apostleship to call people from among all the Gentiles to the obedience that comes from faith. 6 And you also are among those who are called to belong to Jesus Christ. 7 To all in Rome who are loved by God and called to be saints: Grace and peace to you from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ."
We're going to explore what Jesus' resurrection means for our daily lives in more detail over the next 6 weeks. But for now, let's just touch on a few of them mentioned here:
First, we have received grace. That is we have God's unconditional love in spite of our foolish rebellion and sin because Jesus' sacrifice—his perfect life, his innocent death, his powerful resurrection—has removed our every sin. We are forgiven. It's all forgotten. And you and I are called to be saints: sinless and holy in God's sight.
Second, as a result of that grace and forgiveness, we have peace. We have peace with God, knowing that we are restored in our relationship to him. Or as Paul puts it, "we belong." "You also are among those who are called to belong to Jesus Christ." And so, in the very next verse he calls God, "our Father." God is our Father. Jesus is our brother. We are a part of God's family, "loved by God" and cared for by him. No matter what we go though in life, we know he is there by our side, keeping us in his care.
And finally, we have a job to do. Paul called himself, "a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle," but he also said of the Romans (and, really, of every Christian), "we received… apostleship to call people from among all the Gentiles to the obedience that comes from faith." An apostle is literally one who is sent out on a task on behalf of someone else, an ambassador, here, namely, God is the one who sent Paul out. And God sends us out too. To do what? "To call people… to the obedience [of] faith." That is, to share our faith in Jesus' life, death, and resurrection from the dead with others that they too might see the evidence, come to faith, and find grace and peace in Jesus, that they too might live lives of obedience to him in thanks for what he's done for them.
Join us over the next couple of weeks as we explore some of these themes further and see what Jesus' resurrection means for us every day of our lives. And in the meantime, rejoice that we're not the fools. We are incredibly blessed to know the truth that, "Christ has indeed been raised from the dead!" Christ is alive! We've seen the proofs. We've seen the importance. We are alive in Christ! We've received grace. We've been forgiven. We're loved by God. We belong. And we have a job to do that we're eager to do in thanks to him. For, "Christ is risen!" ["He is risen indeed!"] In his name, dear friends, amen.
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