Lots of people are brought back from the dead in the Bible. Elijah did one such miracle in the OT. In Jesus’ ministry, He raised at least 3 people. In this series, we have been saying that the resurrection of Jesus is in no way an assumed or given fact, The early disciples struggled to believe that it is possible for one man to come back from the dead (and never die again). This disbelief is one of the strongest proof of the truth of the resurrection. Nobody found this coming back from the dead easy.
But how was Jesus’ resurrection different from the others who have been brought back, like Lazarus’? What was the effect of Jesus’ resurrection? More importantly for us, what is this power? How do we “obtain it”?
In Jesus, God made all things new. That’s why we’re here now. If we know that real life exists in the future, how do we pray? What do we ask Him for? Tonight we’re going to look at Paul’s priority, petition and purpose. Priority in that the thing he puts at the front of his mind is dependence upon the triune God, petition in the thing that he actually asks for, and purpose in why he is praying.
The resurrection is indeed a weighty truth. We have been looking at the truth and power of the resurrection previously. In this study, we continue our study of 1 Corinthians, looking at verses 35 to 58, and later at Romans 8. Through this study, we aim to highlight how the resurrection is a cosmic event; an event of grander scale, above the resuscitation of a physical body.
Christians get queasy when they talk about the resurrection. We often think of it so abstractly that it holds little applicative power for our present. Or we wonder if any rational, educated, and progressive person can believe in the resurrection.
Well, the answer is yes. And Paul tells us that the resurrection is more than something for forward-thinking. The implications of the resurrection press into our present. Let’s see what Paul has to tell us in 1 Cor 15!
Can Christians struggle with doubt?
Many of us may thing that the people in the Bible are “great heroes of the faith”, “unreal”, not like us and had no questions. When we do struggle with doubt in our own lives, we might feel isolated, just so unlike from those who praise God exuberantly, aimless and ever-wandering in our life. What is the point of following Jesus if our lives are so “crummy”?
While it may not be immediately obvious, the passage at hand speaks to us especially when we doubt the resurrection of Christ. In this passage, we see how Christ speaks with two doubtful disciples on the road to Emmaus, we see how the disciples encountered and experienced the same doubt. They too, found it even harder to believe that their hopes were being restored: that Christ has truly risen. It encourages us to a similar honesty about areas of doubt in our lives, and draws us onto the risen Christ.
