Introduction: A passport is essential for international travel. You cannot leave the country without one. Each country has essential requirements for their passports. If these are missing, you simply cannot get a passport.
Salvation is God’s passport to heaven. Two of the essentials to get such a passport are faith and forgiveness. The resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead is essential for both faith and forgiveness.
Transition: Read 1Co 15:17. This text gives us two clear reasons that Christ’s resurrection is essential.
1. Christ’s Resurrection is essential for our faith.
a. What is our faith?
1) Subjectively, faith is acting upon trusted information. It is belief in the truth. In salvation, this faith is repentance of sin and trust in Christ’s atonement.
2) Objectively, faith is that which is believed. It is doctrine.
3) In this verse, it could be either our act of trust or that in which we trust.
b. What if Christ did not raise again?
1) If He did not resurrect, our faith is vain or empty.
2) It is vain because we are trusting in an event that never truly took place. Christ’s resurrection is at the core of the Gospel. Read 1 Corinthians 15:1-4. If he raised not, that claim is a lie, and the Scriptures that predicted it were not fulfilled.
3) Romans 4:25 says that Christ, “… was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification.” If Christ did not raise, His payment was not completed, and He cannot justify any sinner.
4) If He did not rise, His deity is undermined. (Romans 1:4) “And declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead:“
5) Believing that Christ raised is required for salvation. (Romans 10:9) “That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.“
6) Without Christ’s resurrection, we have no lively hope or hope of living eternally. (1 Peter 1:3) “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to his abundant mercy hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,“
7) His resurrection gives us hope of resurrection. (2 Corinthians 4:14) “Knowing that he which raised up the Lord Jesus shall raise up us also by Jesus, and shall present us with you.“
c. Both our faith in Christ and our Christian faith depend on Christ’s resurrection.
2. Christ’s Resurrection is essential for our forgiveness.
a. To be yet in our sins is to be unforgiven.
1) Our sins condemn us. The Bible tells us so, and our conscience heartily agrees.
2) One glorious truth of salvation in Christ is God’s forgiveness of our sin. (Acts 13:38) “Be it known unto you therefore, men and brethren, that through this man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins: And by him all that believe are justified from all things, from which ye could not be justified by the law of Moses.“
3) If Christ raised not, we are yet in our sins, unforgiven and unable to escape. We are drowning in the cesspool of sin with no means to escape.
b. To be unforgiven is to be eternally damned.
1) To be yet in our sins is to be unforgiven by God and thus separated from heaven and doomed to eternal damnation in the lake of fire.
2) There is nothing worse than being unforgiven by God.
3. Praise God, Christ did rise.
a. Our faith in Christ is not in vain.
1) Christ is alive, having completed our atonement.
2) Our faith in Christ is full of hope and assurance.
b. We are no longer in our sins.
1) Our living Lord conquered sin and death and is able to forgive our sins.
2) We are set free from the bondage of sin and delivered from the penalty of sin through Christ’s atonement and resurrection.
Conclusion: We must praise God that we have a living Saviour. As we have noted in our text this evening, if Christ had not raised, our faith would be empty and worthless. It would be no different from the dead religions or our world. We would also yet be in our sin, unforgiven and doomed to spend an eternity in the Lake of Fire paying for our sins.
If Christ is your Saviour, thank and praise him right now.
If Christ is not yet your Saviour, I urge you to trust him while you still can.
Prayer: Let’s pray, and then we will have the Lord’s Supper.
