By TIMOTHY L. MELTON
Pastor of Cherokee Pentecostal Holiness Church
Transcribed by Myra D. Colgate
Focal passage: 1 Corinthians 15:1-20
Christianity is never to be thought of as being “just a religion”. Each person is to make a firm decision to follow Jesus as Lord. By having chosen our relationship with Jesus, this should be a love relationship for each follower. We are learning how great He desires to help each person after their having chosen to follow Him. As He considers mankind to be the highest form of Creation on this planet, we must realize we matter to Him. Allow Him to fully aid in accomplishing this.
Having begun to read and study the Bible, it becomes easier for each person to come to know Him as God and Creator of us all. This is why we must begin reading with understanding the Bible for ourselves. To realize what a treasure the Holy Bible, God’s Word, is and was written down by forty of His faithful servants, over about 1,500 years, is more important. Understanding the Bible is to become our lifelong goal. To help each other in bringing His Kingdom into this world can only be done with His help and eternal blessing.
Each Kingdom participant, if having chosen to follow Him, is to begin their life over, His way. The choice is given to each person, only while they’re still breathing the earth’s atmosphere. No one’s excluded in following Him unless they’ve refused to follow His leading. The possibilities exist when we live, on purpose, in our trusting acceptance of His offered love. If we’ve determined to live as He wants us to, we should believe it’s for His sake and our ultimate good!
As we mature in our understanding and beliefs, we begin choosing to love, honor, and obey our God and Creator, and what that means to each of us. It all represents, a wonderful, and vitally necessary development, as we grow into perfection. Remember He is to be the “Author and Finisher” of our faith and life journey.
Just before the Feast of the Passover was to begin that year, Jesus was forced to suffer an unjust trial, by the Jewish religious leaders at night, facing an undeserved, horrendous beating and scourging, then sent by them to Pilate, the Roman Governor. A crown of thorns was even jammed onto His head, and on that endless day, he was then nailed to the cross by the Roman soldiers hammering His hands and feet to a cross. The suffering He endured from that unjust trial and punishment by the Jews was rendered by the Roman soldiers.
Jesus’ resurrection on that third day became known as the Miraculous One. So many had witnessed His death at the hands of the Roman soldiers while also closely monitored by the Jewish leaders and all the crowds of Jews there in Jerusalem for the remembrance of the days of the Passover Feast that year.
There were said to be over 500 people who saw Jesus, heard Him, and witnessed all these happenings in Jerusalem at that time. The twelve witnesses should have been enough to convince people of the Truth of their own experiences and all that had transpired as Jesus had also fulfilled every prophecy and had shown to everyone the unwavering goodness and graciousness of God.
We each should find God’s plan has been written in Scripture almost from the very beginning, even before mankind had fallen. God has always known what had to be done to be able to rescue mankind, which was made necessary by our having made so many wrong choices.
It’s because He loves us all so much and wants us to choose to participate in life with Him by having chosen a closer relationship with Him as our Father. He who also dearly loved His “Only Begotten Son” gave Him to us on earth. So, there would be “a man” able to live in a body of flesh, tempted as we all are, and yet remain sinless. He also suffered such an agonizing death as our substitute, possibly only if chosen by that person to be their substitute.
He died for each one of us who have chosen Jesus. He became “God with us” as our Lord and Savior, by dying in our place so we would not have to die. He then, having died such a death, so we can begin to love each other as well as all those who are of His Creation. It begins to answer so many “why” questions, as in “Why did this have to happen?” So, we could have all our answers and begin to answer other questions, as we tell them “the whole story”.
