Paul boasted that his Gospel had its roots in
ancient writings. He said that this wasn’t a thing that was connected only with
experience, as we hear preached so often today, none perhaps in the circles in
which we move, but generally among Christians.
They say that the reason the Gospel is true is
because it works in a man’s experience. The reason the Gospel is true is
because you feel it, because you enjoy it,
you, you get up and shout and sing loud and throw away
your cigarettes and all the rest of that sort of thing. Well, that may be a
very interesting phase of what the Gospel does in a man’s life, but isn’t
necessarily a proof because a moral man could throw away his cigarettes, jump, whoop and
holler, and roll in the aisles and sing songs, songs, loudly without ever
having been convicted by the Spirit of God. The Gospel that we preach is not
primarily a Gospel of feeling; it’s a Gospel of fact.
It’s a Gospel based upon the fact of the
resurrection, the death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ and the
implications of those facts. I say more than just a fact because it’s possible
for one to believe the fact and not to obey the truth implied by those facts.
To really receive the Gospel is to receive the truth implied by the death and
resurrection of Christ, i.e. that since Christ died, then we are all dead. If
he died for all then we are all dead, and that they which live should
henceforth not live anymore unto themselves but unto him that died for them and
rose again. That’s an implication of the death of Christ.
An implication of the resurrection is that one
which is given to us in the 17th chapter of this very book where Paul says the
times of God -- the ignorance, God overlooked but now he commands all men
everywhere to repent in that he has appointed a day into which he would judge
the world in righteousness by the man whom he hath ordained. Whereof he offers
proof to all men in that he raised him from the dead.
The proof
and the truth which we offer for the faith of men today is faith founded and
totally fixed in the fact and nowhere else. If your salvation rests anywhere
else but in the fact of the resurrection and the implications of that
resurrection that is like the Lord Jesus said, “if I live, you shall live also,
or because I live, you shall live also”. The implications of the resurrection
are what make the Gospel real.
Delivered 1951 Radio program The March of Truth,
Cairo, IL
by
Jim Elliot
Jim Elliot was an evangelical Christian who was one of five missionaries
killed while participating in Operation Auca, an attempt to evangelize
the Huaorani people of Ecuador. He died in January 8th 1956 at age of 29.
This is Jim Elliot’s resurrection sermon, excerpts from 1951 Radio program,
The March of Truth, Cairo, IL.
