GOD’S PROVISION FOR SINFUL MEN

In many respects conditions in our land today are very similar to those in the ancient city of Corinth. Corinth was wealthy and cultured. Among its residents were men who were greatly admired in such fields as philosophy and speech. But so completely were Corinth’s people given over to impurity and kindred vices that the very name, “Corinthian,” has become a synonym for licentiousness and dissipation.

Yet God sent the apostle Paul to this city with the message of forgiveness and deliverance from sin. At one point He even reassured His servant that many would believe in Christ. “I have much people in this city” (Acts 18:10), He declared.

How did Paul seek to win the members of this cultured but wicked society? Not with the wisdom of men’s words but by the simple mesage of the gospel. Writing later to the church in Corinth, he says:

“Moreover, brethren, I declare unto you the gospel which I preached unto you, which also ye have received, and wherein ye stand; by which also ye are saved, if ye keep in memory what I preached unto you, unless ye have believed in vain. For I delieverd unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; and that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures” (I Cor. 15:1–4).

In these verses Paul sets forth God’s plan of salvation. The first essential factor in it is, “Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures.” This states what is repeated and emphasized in other portions of the Scriptures that all men are sinners and need a Saviour.

When Adam was created and placed in the Garden of Eden, he was given freedom to eat of every tree of the garden except one. God said to him concerning the fruit of that tree: “The day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.” Adam disobeyed and learned, in the words of Romans 6:23, “that the wages of sin is death.” Death is what Adam bequeathed to all his posterity. This was why Paul wrote in Ephesians 2 that by nature we are dead in trespasses and sins.

We are also sinners by choice. Deliberately and often with premeditation we have broken the righteous laws of God. For this reason we stand guilty before the very laws we broke, cursed by our own bent to lawlessness.

It is right here that Christ’s death on Calvary operates for our spiritual deliverance. He has provided redemption from the curse of the law having been made a curse for us (Gal. 3:13). This, as we say, has been provided, but we must receive it through faith (Gal. 3:14).

Provision has not only been made for our being redeemed from the curse of the law but from the very law itself (Rom. 7:14), so that we might live under grace (Rom. 6:4). That same death has provided annulment of the power of sin in our lives so that we need not serve sin (Rom. 6:7).

God is graciously inclined toward man through Christ’s substitutionary death for him. As we are told in I John 2:2: “And he is the propitiation for our sins: and not for our only, but also for the sins of the whole world.” God is favorably disposed toward us so that all He asks of us is to receive the salvation Christ has provided by trusting in Him.

God does not require that we present Him with a list of our individual sins before He will save us. The truth is, until a person has grown and matured in the Christian life there are many sins that are not even recognized as being sins. Our coming to the Lord for salvation will show that we recognize we are sinners by nature and need a Saviour.

Neither does God require that we make restitution for all the evil we have committed before He will forgive us. Often there are things which will have to be set right once a person has received salvation, but restitution will not make the individual acceptable with God. There is nothing any of us can do to merit salvation. We are to receive it as a gift from God through trusting Christ as Saviour. All things needed have been provided through Him.

The next great fact of the gospel is that Christ was buried. This needs emphasis because it is a vital factor with regard to the resurrection. Christ’s body was laid in the tomb and a few days later the tomb was found empty. The only satisfactory explanation for that empty tomb is the resurrection of Christ. However, that is not all there is to be considered with regard to Christ’s burial.

In Leviticus 16 are given the instructions concerning the sin offering involving two goats. One goat was slain and the other was sent out alive into the wilderness. The living goat pictures that aspect of Christ’s work which completely takes away our sins from before God. The Psalmist voiced his praise for this when he said, “As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us” (Ps. 103:12). The writer to the Hebrews states it in these words: “But now once in the end of the world hath he (Christ) appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself” (9:26).

God did not spare His Son but fully delivered Him up for us all (Rom. 8:32). When we trust in Him we find that death has forever disannulled sin’s power to condemn us. No one can lay any charge against us. No one can condemn us and no power can separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord (Rom. 8:33, 4).

Paul tells us that Christ rose again the third day according to the Scriptures. How could we have known that Christ’s sacrifice was acceptable to the Father if our Lord had remained in the grave? The apostle Paul assures us that Christ “was delivered for our offenses, and was raised again for our justification” (Rom. 4:25). The second little word “for” is very important in this verse, because here it means “on account of” our justification. Christ’s resurrection is proof that His sacrifice pleased God.

The resurrection of Christ also provides a living hope for all who will trust in Him. In our unsaved state we were dead in trespasses and sins, without God and without hope in the world. But now according to Peter, “God … hath begotten us again unto a lively (living) hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead” (I Pet. 1:3). It was for this same reason that the early apostles stood firm in the face of persecution and testified of the remission of sins through faith in Christ (Acts 5:31).

God has made the resurrection of Christ the basis of assurance to each believer in Christ that whatever he needs by way of grace and strength for living the Christian life and for serving the Lord is at his disposal. It was concerning this that Paul wrote the Ephesians: “The eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that ye may know what is the hope of his calling, and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints, and what is the exceeding greatness of his power to us-ward who believe, according to the working of his mighty power, which he wrought in Christ, when he raised him from the dead, and set him at his own right hand in the heavenly places” (Eph. 1:18–20).

The resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ is also the guarantee that our bodies will be raised from the dead. This is the teaching of such a passage as Romans 8:11: “But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you.” This was the assurance Paul also gave to the Corinthian believers when he wrote his second letter to them: “Knowing that he which raised up the Lord Jesus shall raise up us also by Jesus …” (II Cor. 4:14).

In addition Christ’s resurrection is a most solemn warning to all men. Once again the resurrection of Christ is a guarantee, but this time of judgment. In his message to the persons gathered in the house of Cornelius, Peter said, “And he commanded us to preach unto the people, and to testify that it is he which was ordained of God to be the Judge of quick and dead” (Acts 10:42).

The apostle Paul elaborated on this truth when he testified to the Greek philosophers on Mar’s Hill. He said, “God … hath appointed a day, in which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained whereof he hath given assurance unto all men, in that he hath raised him from the dead” (Acts 17:30, 31). A day of judgment has been set and a Judge has been appointed. None can hope to escape except those who receive Christ as Saviour while the day of salvation is open.

Christ’s death, burial and resurrection provide life for us. We who by nature are dead in trespasses and sins may have this life simply by receiving it through faith. It is for those who believe in their minds and in their hearts that what God says concerning Christ’s provision of salvation is true.

Paul apparently made a distinction with regard to believing when he said to the Corinthians, “By which also ye are saved, if ye keep in memory what I have preached unto you, unless ye have believed in vain.” There is such a thing as a head knowledge of truth without a corresponding heart response. To give mental assent to the fact of the gospel is not enough. Concerning this Paul said in Romans 10: 9, 10: “That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.”

To believe that Christ died but fail to receive Him as Saviour would leave us lost. We are saved only if we have received Him with genuine heart faith. Heart faith is appropriating faith. We must believe that Jesus died for man’s sins, was buried, and rose again. We must also appropriate for ourselves the benefit of what was accomplished by the finished work of Jesus Christ. Christ Himself thus becomes our very life (Gal. 2:20).

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