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NTS But God raised him up

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posted on Sep, 28 2018 @ 05:02 PM
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“But God raised him up, having loosed the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it.” – Acts ch2 v24

The message of the New Testament centres upon the death of Jesus on the Cross.
But the Christian faith would have been still-born if the Cross had not been followed by the Resurrection.

Hence the importance of Peter’s message in the words just quoted.
His hearers, the people of Jerusalem, took Jesus and handed him over to “lawless men”, so that he should be crucified and killed.
But the power of God was greater than the power of death, and raised him up again.
The Resurrection has the effect of turning an apparent defeat into a victory.

The effect is decisive.
The consequence, for Christ himself, is that he is exalted to a new status not previously seen in the man Jesus;
“This Jesus whom you crucified, know assuredly that God has made him both Lord and Christ” (v26).
As Paul puts it elsewhere, he was designated Son of God “in power” by his resurrection from the dead (Romans ch1 v4).
In this exalted state, he “ascends into heaven” and returns to the Father;
“The Father of glory… raised him from the dead and made him at his right hand in the heavenly places” (Ephesians ch1 vv17-20).
“When he had made purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of his Majesty on high” (Hebrews ch1 v3).
In that place he is able to intercede for us (Romans ch6 v34), whether we think of this as the work of an advocate in court (1 John ch2 v1), or as the work of a temple priest (Hebrews ch9 v24).
His position also gives him authority over the rest of the world;
“God has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, and of this he has given assurance to all men by raising him from the dead” (Acts ch17 vv30-31).
I will be considering the significance of the Lordship of Christ on a later occasion.

The Resurrection also has consequences for those who belong to Christ.
It has brought us into a new relationship with God, completing the process which began on the Cross.
“He was put to death for our trespasses, and raised for our justification” (Romans ch4 v25).
“For if, while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life” (ch5 v11).
There is no need to be too precise in separating out these two sets of experiences, being reconciled on the one hand, being justified and saved on the other.
The Crucifixion and the Resurrection are two stages in the same event, symbolising two different aspects of the same process.

In his last discourse with his disciples, Jesus promised to send them “another counsellor” in his place, “the Spirit of truth”;
“It is to your advantage that I go away, for if I did not go away, the Counsellor will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you” (John ch16 v7).
This promise was fulfilled by the scene in Acts ch2, as Peter goes on to say;
“Being therefore exalted at the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured out this which you see and hear” (v33)..

And the gift of the Spirit is the sign that those who belong to Christ share in this new resurrection life.
“If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus Christ from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also” (Romans ch8 v11).
It is a promise that we will share in the resurrection; “we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his” (Romans ch6 v5).
But we need not wait for the resurrection, for we may already, by the same power, “walk in newness of life” (v4).

The benefits of being “reconciled”, and receiving the Spirit, and the new life that follows, will be considered in more detail on later occasions.
The main point, for the present, is that the Resurrection is the event that makes them possible.

That is why the Christ who is taught in the New Testament is a resurrected Christ.
The Resurrection is a vital element in all the brief summaries of the gospel;
“…that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures” (1 Corinthians ch15 v3).
Indeed when Paul first spoke to the people of Athens, he used the word “resurrection” so much that they took it to be the name of one of his “foreign divinities” (Acts ch17 v18).

The Resurrection is also the key to the visions of Christ in Revelation.
John’s account begins on “the Lord’s day”, celebrating the day of the Resurrection, and the first image that he sees, “one like a son of man”, identifies himself as having been raised from the dead;
“I am the first and the last and the living one; I died, and behold I am alive for evermore.”
And in that resurrection power, he can also claim “the keys of death and Hades”, offering the prospect of life, the prospect of release from death, to the rest of us (Revelation ch1 vv17-19).
In a later scene, again, he is introduced as a lamb “who has been slain”, standing in his place in heaven (ch5 v6). That is, the image shown is not a corpse, but a resurrected lamb.
And as the crucified and resurrected Lamb, he has the power to “open the seals” of God’s plan of salvation.

So the Christian faith does not rest on the Cross alone.
It rests on the compound event of Easter, the Cross and the Resurrection taken together.
That is why Paul says;
“If Christ has not been raised from the dead, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins…
Then those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished.
If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all men most to be pitied” (1 Corinthians ch15 vv17-19).
In short, if Christ has not been raised from the dead, then we are all wasting our time.



posted on Sep, 28 2018 @ 05:03 PM
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“Folly to the Greeks, and a stumbling-block to the Jews”

During my college days, I made an accidental discovery.
My parents were the teaching staff of the village primary school. As I was home in December, and since we lived next door to the school, I got drawn into the school’s Christmas party. That was how I stumbled into the secret of winning at Musical Chairs.
The children followed a conventional strategy. As we went past the line of chairs, they would keep one jealous hand on the chair they were passing, while simultaneously pressing forward on the next child who would be doing the same thing. Rather than throw myself into this struggle, I kept aloof and held back a little.
But everybody else was pushing forward, and we were all moving in a circle. So the unexpected result of holding back was that I found myself at the head of a compressed line, with at least one guaranteed free seat in front of me.
That pattern, repeated each round, was enough to win me the game.

That episode has always been an emblem, for me, of the paradox of achieving a result in the “wrong” way, counter-intuitively.

The Cross is the classic example of such a paradox.
It is a victory achieved by a man who allowed himself to be put to death, and achieved by the very fact that he allowed himself to be put to death.
That is why it is “folly to the Greeks” (1 Corinthians ch1 v23).
Human wisdom would not and could not have discovered this way of proceeding. Victory through death, for human minds, is just as implausible as getting to the front of a line by going backwards.
In this case, of course, the unexpected factor is the Resurrection.



posted on Sep, 28 2018 @ 05:03 PM
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N.T.S. stands for New Testament Salvation.
This thread is one of a series, and I wanted to mark the fact without making the title too cumbersome.
The series is a sequel to, and the consummation of, the older series on Old Testament remedies for sin.
In that series, sin is defined as a relationship problem; the human will is out of alignment with the will of God.



posted on Sep, 29 2018 @ 10:08 AM
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a reply to: DISRAELI

Well done, if somewhat incomplete.
Salvation isn't automatic.



posted on Sep, 29 2018 @ 10:14 AM
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a reply to: TonyS
It's incomplete because it's one instalment of a long series, which will still be going into the New Year. This is an ambitious project. One piece of the jigsaw at a time. Thank you for the appreciation, though.



posted on Sep, 30 2018 @ 01:19 PM
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This continues a series which began with
Christ died for the ungodly



posted on Oct, 10 2018 @ 02:09 PM
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The sequel to this thread, and the most recent thread in this series is
The name above every name



posted on Oct, 12 2018 @ 03:03 AM
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Disraeli, I Am Primarily a Lurker Here, And I Always Admire Seeing Your Threads on Religion and Christianity.
I would Like To Ask you if You Had Considered Many, Or if Any, Quotes of Jesus Christ in The Bible, A Forebearing or Hidden meaning of Modern Day Science and Quantum Mechanics?
edit on 12-10-2018 by TheMessengerOfGod because: (no reason given)



posted on Oct, 12 2018 @ 03:40 AM
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a reply to: TheMessengerOfGod
To be honest, I'm not in favour of looking for hidden meanings in the words of Jesus and Biblical statements in general.
I believe the Bible is intended as a means of communication, so the intended meaning is normally the meaning that can be found openly.
There is the book of Revelation and a few other passages referring to the future, but they are advertised as referring to the future, and there is a specific purpose in referring to the future (the purpose of Revelation is to teach the need for perseverance in times of tribulation).
There would be no useful purpose in predicting a future science of quantum mechanics, so I don't see that he would want to do it.




edit on 12-10-2018 by DISRAELI because: (no reason given)



posted on Oct, 12 2018 @ 03:51 AM
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originally posted by: DISRAELI
a reply to: TheMessengerOfGod
To be honest, I'm not in favour of looking for hidden meanings in the words of Jesus and Biblical statements in general.
I believe the Bible is intended as a means of communication, so the intended meaning is normally the meaning that can be found openly.
There is the book of Revelation and a few other passages referring to the future, but they are advertised as referring to the future, and there is a specific purpose in referring to the future (the purpose of Revelation is to teach the need for perseverance in times of tribulation).
There would be no useful purpose in predicting a future science of quantum mechanics, so I don't see that he would want to do it.






Personally, I Dont Think he Was Predicting The Future Science, I Think He Had Already Known Them From The Future.

But Thats Just My Opinion Based off of My Experience And Research, As well as Understanding of The Context of Scriptures in Reference to Specific Quotes And Scientific Knowledge.

For Example, The Royal We and The Time Travel Quotes of The Bible.
As Well as, The Reality as Defined as Electrical Signals in The Brain.

And Not To Mention, The Seven Days of Creation And The "I AM The Light of This World."; And Nature's First Pattern Of Sacred Geometry and The Flash of Conception, "Let There Be Light."



posted on Oct, 12 2018 @ 04:01 AM
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posted on Oct, 12 2018 @ 04:03 AM
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a reply to: TheMessengerOfGod
I stick to my two main points.
Hidden messages that only a few people can understand are not part of the purpose of the Bible. Finding hidden messages is a wrong way of reading the Bible.
And hinting at the possibility of quantum mechanics would serve no useful religious purpose, so he wouldn't have done it.
The point of the Bible is to help people understand God.



posted on Oct, 12 2018 @ 04:13 AM
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a reply to: DISRAELI

hidden messages is not for a few to understand but a few do understand only. maybe we should give up the fight on that. I always wanted it to be the other way also. alas.



posted on Oct, 12 2018 @ 04:15 AM
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posted on Dec, 11 2018 @ 02:15 PM
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The most recent thread in this series is;
If anyone is in Christ




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