PhiLiPpiAnS 3:10-11
The early Christians always gathered together on the first day of the week to celebrate the resurrection! The early church didn't just celebrate the resurrection on easter sunday, but every sunday! Every sunday is the resurrection!
The resurrection ran counter to the ideologies of the Greeko Roman world. The Greeks believed that the body was evil. When you were born, you were pure spirit that had lived in another world that becomes imprisoned in the human body and when you die you're spirit is releaseed to return to that world of pure spirituality. The body is an evil thing that is left behind.
Paul ran into trouble when he preached... The Greeks were with him, the philosophers were with him as he talked about Jesus, he had them in the palm of his hand... and then Paul says but there's one thing more. This same Jesus who was crucified was physically resurrected from the grave. At that point, the Greek philosophers say, "that's it, were outta here." and they leave the scene saying they're not going to listen to this trash anymore.
The reality is that the concept of physical resurrection... was relatively unknown in Judaism...
Yes what these people thought was unbelievable was so concrete in its presentation that it could not be denied. For this people were willing to die as they preached the good news. He's alive, he can enter into your life, he can transform you, he can make yo into a new creature. Personal relationships with the resurrected Jesus is at the core of the Christian faith.
Your salvation is not dependent upon whether or not you believe a certain theory of the atonement.... it is dependent on this... do you have a relationship in the here and now with the resurrected Jesus.
"All I want is to know Christ and the power that raised him to life. I want to suffer and die as he did, so that somehow I also may be raised to life."
When we die... we will also be resurrected...
Teh early Christians seldom talked about Jesus as Savior. They often talked about Jesus as Lord. They knew Jesus was Savior but they seldom talked about it. That they were so convinced that Jesus was alive that the only question is, "is this living Christ the Lord of my life?" Namely, do i do what he wants me to do? Do i live like he wants me to live? Am i becoming the kind of person that he wants to transform me into being. The earliest doctrinal statement is "is Jesus your Lord?" They knew he was the Saviour. But he's not the Lord of all.
There are those who refuse to surrender to him and make him Lord of their lives. Billy Graham said this, "If he is not Lord of all, he is not Lord of all." You cannot accept the Saviour and say that i'm saved because of Jesus' death, you've got to do more than just give intellectual accent to a propositional statement. you've got to surrender your life to a living Christ who wants to invade you and transform you.
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