THE K I N G ' S BUS I NE S S FOR REPENTANT AND BELIEVING MEN ONLY ON THE GROUND OF HIS SHED BLOOD. In the careful definition that Paul himself gives in 1 Cor. 15:1-4 of the gospel that he preached, he says: “Now 1 make known unto you, brethren, the Gospel which 1 preached unto you . . . For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that CHRIST DIED FOR OUR SINS according: to the Scriptures.” He says again in Gal. 3:13, the epistle from which we not only get our text, but which is entirely given up to a detailed description and definition of the gospel. “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us: For it is written, cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree.” And he says in 2 Cor. 5:21, “Him who knew no sin (that is Jesus Christ) He (that is God the Father) made to be sin on our behalf: That we might become the righteous ness of God in him.” He says in Rom. 5:10, “We were reconciled to God THROUGH THE DEATH of His Son.” We do not need to multiply quota tions. There can be no doubt that the gospel that Paul preached was that Jesus Christ died as a substitute for us sinners, and that it is on the ground of His atoning death, on the ground of the shedding of His blood, and on that ground alone, that there is pardori and salvation for us. Jesus Christ is, ac cording to Paul’s doctrine, our Pass- over Lamb. As he himself puts it in 1 Cor. 5:7, “ CHRIST OUR PASSOVER IS SACRIFICED FOR US,” that is to say, it is on the ground of His shed blood that God passes over and spares those who believe on Him. Any Gospel that leaves out the teaching that Jesus Christ’s death was in the fullest sense substitutionary and vicarious, that is that He u righteous one who deserved to live, died in place of us guilty sinners who deserved to die, is a radically dif ferent gospel from the one Paul preached, and is utterly unchristian, thoroughly unsound and untrue, and will lead to perdition any one who ac cepts it, and the one who preaches it, no matter with how much skill of rhe toric and elegance of delivery he preaches it, deserves not to be com mended and listened to, but to be “ anathema.” This doctrine of the sub stitutionary character of Christ’s death, of course involves the doctrine that all men are sinners and hopelessly lost, so
255 hopelessly lost that they can only be saved by the atoning death of one who was both God and man in one person. Literal Resurrection IV. The fourth essential and cardi nal point in the Gospel Paul preached, is the doctrine of THE ACTUAL AND LITERAL RESURRECTION OF THE BODY OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST AFTER HIS DEATH BY CRUCIFIXION ON THE CROSS OF CALVARY. In the passage to which we referred in the preceeding division is a passage in which Paul gives a careful definition of the Gospel he preached, after having said, (1 Cor. 15:1-4), “For I delivered unto you first of all that which also I received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures.” “And that he was buried and that HE HATH BEEN RAISED ON THE THIRD DAY according to the Scriptures Paul here says that the two central points of his gospel were, first, The atoning death of Jesus Christ, and sec ond, the literal raising from the dead of that body which had been “ buried.” There is no point in Christian doctrine that Satan is attacking more vigorously and more persistently today, than the actual, literal resurrection of Jesus Chrijst, (from the dead. Many, very many, even in supposedly orthodox pul pits deny or question the actual and literal resurrection of the body of Jesus Christ from the dead. They say that they “ believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ,” but oftentimes if you question them closely, what they really believe in is the resurrection of His spirit, or some even go so far as to say the resurrection of the Christ Spirit, in man being made Christlike today. But it was no such resurrection as this that Paul taught, indeed that would be no resurrection. That which is raised, must be that which fell down, and it was the body of Jesus which fell down, not His spirit, and it was the body of Jesus that was raised. Paul devotes, the entire fifteenth chapter of 1st Corin thians to an insistence upon and exposi tion of the truth of the resurrection of the body of Jesus. So fundamental and so cardinal was the truth of the resurrection of the body of Jesus Christ in the mind of Paul that he says, . “ If Christ hath not heen raised, then is our preaching: vain, and your faith also is vain.” 1 Cor. IS:14. Take away the resurrection of Jesus Christ and we have no Christianity left. Paiil says that the only doctrine a man
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