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I Peter 3:18 “For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit.” Preaching without the message of the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ is not of God. Without the death of Jesus, preaching is a Devil’s substitute. Satan’s greatest enemy is the total work of Christ. Satan is happy when we magnify the life teachings and character of Jesus, but leave out His death. The necessity and importance of Christ’s death is the central theme of the Bible. His death is mentioned more than 175 times in the New Testament. The Bible is full of the death of Christ; there is more of it in the four Gospels than any other subject. Cut out His death and you have a Bible without a heart and a sermon without saving power. Christ became a man for the specific purpose of dying. Heb. 2:14 – Jesus is the God-man (Qeoj anqropoj – theos anthropos) one person with two natures: divine and human. Our Lord fed 5,000, yet He knew hunger pangs in the desert. He dispensed the water of life, yet He thirsted at the Samaritan well. He spoke and Lazarus was loosed from the shackles of death, yet on the Cross, He experienced the piercing agony of human pain. What was the purpose of the death of Christ? 1. He died as a vicarious offering for sin (vicarious = experiencing in the place of another). Isa. 53:5 2. He died as a ransom for many. Matt. 20:28 “Even as the Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give His life a ransom for many.” 3. He died as a sin offering. Isa. 53:10 “Thou shalt make His soul an offering for sin.” In Hebrews 9, which describes the Levitical offerings, the High Priest ventured into the Holy of Holies once a year to make a blood offering – a picture of Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross. 4. He died as a propitiation for our sins. To propitiate means “to render favorable”. Sin caused us to lose favor with God. We are brought back into favor with God through the death of Christ. 5. He died as our Passover sacrifice. Exodus 12 describes the dark night in Egypt when the Death Angle saw blood on the lintels and door-posts of the Children of Israel and passed over them. The result of the atoning work of Jesus: 1. Salvation is offered to the world. I John 2:2 2. We attain resurrection from the dead. I Cor. 15:22 3. All believers in Him are justified. Rom 5:9 Much more then, being now justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him.” All believers can enter boldly into His presence and live forever with Him because of the death of Jesus.
When He shall come with trumpet sound,
Christ does not save men by His life,
He does not save them by His words,
He does not save them by His works, Because He died, was buried and rose again, we will live forever. Because He lives, we shall live also.
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Grace Bible Church |
