1 Thing Matters adb

The entirety of God’s Word can be summed up in one word: love. God’s Law is all about love. “Love the Lord your God with all your heart…” and “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:37,39). The gospel is all about love: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son…” (John 3:16). From his compassion for the sick and broken, to his sacrificial death on the cross, to the peace he provided after his resurrection, Jesus was the perfect embodiment of love. Love is his business.



Therefore, love is our business too. The resurrection reality is that with the same supernatural power by which God raised Jesus from the dead, God now enables us to live a new life—one marked by radically selfless love. The motivation and ability to do this comes from seeing the endless love Christ has for us. We love because he first loved us.

Self-assurance is a fickle thing. Ask the best golfers in the world how much confidence they have when they suddenly start to struggle just to qualify for the very tournaments they used to win. Self-assurance is at a high when we perform well, but as soon as we stumble in some area of life, our faith in ourselves flounders. That’s why real assurance - especially of where we stand with God - simply cannot come from ourselves. It must come from somewhere else. And it does. 



It comes from God himself who alone provides the assurance we so desperately seek. 

There are plenty of people today who claim they can provide healing or guidance for your soul. However, the Bible warns that, beneath the surface, not everyone is who they may appear to be. Rather than providing healing or guidance, many may actually do more harm to our souls than good. Their threats are real! But so is the resurrection reality that our Good Shepherd provides all that is needed to thwart their threats. 

Contrary to popular belief, “repentance” isn’t the dirty word many people think it is. While repentance does involve admitting and owning up to the filth of our sins, it isn’t repentance if it stops there. 



No, real repentance also includes embracing by faith what Jesus has done with our sins: wiped them away and washed us clean from them. The result? Not only are we left standing in the perfect purity of God’s light, but we also have the newfound desire to remain there. 

Jesus’ real resurrection brought peace and strength to those early believers. It also brought them together. That’s the power of Jesus’ resurrection: it brings us together with him through faith, but also together with fellow believers. How blest are we! Yes, we are brought to him, but also to each other!

It would not be productive to look for help in a cemetery. A corpse can do only one thing—rot. This is the source of the crushing sorrow Jesus’ followers felt. He was the one in whom they had placed all their hope for a better reality. Now he was dead, so they thought. They were overwhelmed with sorrow, not just because they missed their friend. It now all seemed so pointless: the years and miles following Jesus, witnessing his miracles, listening to him. He was dead! And a corpse can only do one thing.



The resurrection changed everything. The disciples saw clearly that Jesus is who he said he was and did what he said he’d do. They realized their faith rested on a rock-solid foundation. Here is the resurrection reality. If Christ had not been raised, our faith in him would be futile. He could do nothing to help us. But Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!