Forgiveness, Resurrection, and the Promise of Eternal Life

I know, again if I can speak personal and experiential for a second, when I go back to my own conversion experience to Christianity, from experiential perspective, from a feeling dimension, an emotional dimension if you will, what my experience was, was an overwhelming awareness of the forgiveness of my sins and I think that more than anything else in terms of my own psychology and my own emotions is what turned my life upside down. [00:01:13]

Because everybody has guilt, and everybody experiences guilt and guilt is something real, something objective. We can distinguish between guilt feelings and the objective state of guilt and sometimes we confuse them. Sometimes people will say “Well, I don’t feel guilty, therefore I’m not guilty,” but we know that in a law court, that defense of murder will not get very far if the only defense was, “Well, I couldn’t have committed that crime because I don’t feel guilty.” [00:03:01]

Because the Bible teaches and Christ taught unequivocally that every human being will stand accountable to God for his life. Now, I know that that tends to be obscured in our culture, people don’t like to talk about last judgments and so on. But you cannot have an intelligible understanding of the preaching of Jesus and the teaching of Jesus if you obscure that central motif of judgment. [00:05:19]

Jesus tells us, and the apostles tell us that at the final judgment every mouth will be stopped. Why? Well, I think the analogy comes out of the book of Job. After Job is protesting with God, and God comes and interrogates him for several chapters, and after God interrogates Job with one rhetorical question after another, finally Job repents and when he repents, he says I repent in dust and ashes, I will place my hand upon my mouth and speak no more. [00:10:13]

One thing that man desperately needs, is forgiveness. I mean what good is an incarnation, a virgin birth, a crucifixion, a burial, a resurrection, an ascension, a return in glory, if there’s no forgiveness. But the point is, is that the bottom line for me is that what Christ has done has, He has made it possible for me and for anyone who has violated the standards of God’s righteousness, to be restored to a righteous relationship with God, to be reconciled, to be justified, and that comes about through the forgiveness of sins which is real. [00:12:04]

I said, “If God says I will forgive you if you repent and confess you sins. And you do that once. And then you get up off your knees and you’re still feeling guilty, so you say because I feel guilty, I’m still guilty. Do you allow your feelings to have the final authority over what God Himself has promised and declared?” I said, “That’s arrogance, that’s the sin I want you to confess, the sin of arrogance. Get back on your knees and ask God to forgive you for your unspeakable arrogance, of assigning to God the same kind of inconsistency and lack of truthfulness that characterizes our own lives.” [00:13:03]

But as a Christian we say I believe in the forgiveness of sins. I believe that when I come to God and confess my sins. He forgives me. That’s the joy of the Christian life, is, that’s like Christian in, “Pilgrims Progress,” to get that ugly, obscene, dreadful burden of weight that’s what’s weighing down on the back. Get it off of you and throw it away. And what it means is that when God says, “I forgive you,” He holds it against you no longer. [00:15:37]

But, because of forgiveness we can say the “resurrectionus carnes” I believe in the resurrection of the body. God doesn’t just promise me a stored soul or peace of mind, which in and of them selves are the Pearl of Great Price. But He promises us a new body. And there are lots of times when I think ‘Hey, you know that’s what I need, a new body because the old one is wearing out. And the old one is falling apart. You know? But God says that we will be given new bodies in the resurrection. Glorified bodies, bodies that are immortal, bodies that are indestructible. [00:20:06]

When the Christian stands up and says I believe in the resurrection of the body, I’ve noticed that some people think that what their saying when they say this that they’re believing, the resurrection – they’re affirming the resurrection of Christ. No, when we say we believe in the resurrection of the body, whose bodies are we talking about? Ours, our own body, that that’s the result of the resurrection of Christ and it’s a bodily resurrection of Christ that’s why we look for a resurrection of our bodies. [00:22:00]

But Jesus Christ has conquered death. And He says to us that there will come a time because of the forgiveness of sins that our bodies will be raised. And we will have everlasting life. Now, we get everything in our power to continue the life that we now enjoy. Most of us would rather bare those ills we have as Shakespeare said, than fly to others we know not of. I don’t want to die. I want to hold onto a life that is marked by tears, by failures, by pain and sickness, death. I still want to live. [00:25:01]

But the life that we are promised in the resurrection of the body is an everlasting life that our LORD says is in a situation where He personally will wipe away every tear. There will be no more pain, no more sorrow, no more death, no more sin. That’s the Gospel, and you can call a pie in the sky but I don’t want a ticket to that feast, and I don’t want to loose my appetite for that pie because that’s the pie that every human being wants. [00:26:27]

That’s the message of the New Testament in an outline. And it captures the essence of Christianity. I think that says something for the riches of the creed and why it has persevered so long, and I’m sure it will continue in the history to come. [00:27:12]