The Apostle Paul focused on two great truths in his writings. First, the Gospel story of Divine Incarnation. We have just celebrated Christmas, a time to reflect on and celebrate the birth of Christ. A time when God clothed Himself in flesh. Paul spoke of Jesus, who was truly a man. Pascal, a fourth-century theologian, said, “He (Jesus) became what we are to make us what He is.” Paul preached about someone who was not a figure in a fictitious story. He preached of One who condescended, took upon Himself the form of flesh, bled, suffered, and died so we could be saved.
Secondly, Paul preached the Gospel of Resurrection. If Jesus had only lived a lovely life and died a heroic death, He may have been numbered among the great, but He would simply have been one among many. His uniqueness is the Resurrection. All the wannabe saviors are dead and gone, but Jesus lives on.
1 Corinthians 15:14 sums it up by saying, “If Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins.” In other words, if the resurrection is not true, then everything else is meaningless. Verses 18-19 follow that up by saying, “Then they also which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished. If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable.”
Paul is saying if the resurrection is not true, the whole Bible falls apart, and we have no hope. We may become better people by living by the Ten Commandments and the teachings of Jesus, but the Gospel is more than ethical teachings and social actions. The Gospel is not a religious system; the Gospel is a Person. The Gospel is the Person of Christ, who He is, and what He did. The Gospel is clearly defined as the life, death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. His resurrection fills us with hope.
Jesus said in John 11:25, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in Me will live, even if he dies.” (NASB) What we call death is not the end of the story.
The evangelist, D.L. Moody, once said, “Someday you will read in the papers that D.L. Moody of East Northfield is dead. Don’t you believe a word of it! At that moment, I shall be more alive than I am now; I shall have gone up higher, that is all, out of this old clay tenement into a house that is immortal, a body that death cannot touch, that sin cannot taint; a body fashioned like unto His glorious body.”
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