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November 18                                               Today’s Reading: Acts 25-26

“One Jesus, which was Dead, Whom Paul Affirmed to be Alive”

Acts 25:19

 

Paul was just the man to affirm it. After His resurrection, the Lord Jesus spoke to Paul from heaven. But Paul was by no means alone in this affirmation. John, the beloved apostle, gave the church his repeated testimony to it. The Lord Jesus not only made His appearance to John, in common with the other apostles, but appeared to him alone on Patmos and proclaimed, “Fear not; I am He that liveth, and was dead; and behold, I am alive for evermore” (Revelation 1:17-18). Peter testify to the Savior’s resurrection before Cornelius and his household. So testified all the apostles. Being the Savior’s chosen witnesses, they saw Him and ate and drank with the Lord Jesus after His resurrection (Acts 10:41).

 

Resurrection Affirmed

How can I prove the resurrection of Christ in my own experience, so that, like Paul, I can with confidence say of this “One Jesus,” this only One, this blessed One, who was once dead, I affirm to be alive? Can that be confidently affirmed by me? Can you affirm it?

Remember, my soul, what the Savior promised His chosen just before He died. He said, when redemption’s work is done, “the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in My name, He shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you” (John 14:26). If God the Holy Spirit is come, then Christ is risen from the dead and ascended on high. God the Father has confirmed His perfect approbation of, delight in, and satisfaction with the righteousness and death of the Lord Jesus, as the Surety of His people, in raising Him from the dead, setting Him on His own right hand, and sending down the Holy Ghost, as the Savior promised.

 

My Affirmation

But can I affirm the Savior’s resurrection in my own experience? Can you? If we are born of God and taught of God, we can. Is He my resurrection and life? Has He recovered me by the life-giving power and grace of His Holy Spirit? Has He brought me from death to life by His omnipotent grace? Is the Lord Jesus Christ the daily life-giving, life-imparting, life-strengthening source of all my faith, and life, and hope, and joy? Is Christ Jesus to my soul as the morning dew, reviving and refreshing me? Does He, by His Holy Spirit, convince me of sin, and righteousness, and judgment, causing me ever to confess my sin, trust His righteousness, and rejoice to know that there is no condemnation for my soul and no possibility of condemnation?

            This “One Jesus” lived and died for me. Yes, I affirm by the sweet, daily experience of His life in me that He is alive! Do you so affirm His resurrection, not merely as a historic fact and a doctrinal truth, but as a matter of day by day life experience of His grace, His salvation, and His life? Let us then proclaim Him to all, far and near, as his witnesses. Wherever we go, to all people, let us affirm that Jesus, the Christ of God, once died in the accomplishment of redemption and is now alive, saving those poor sinners for whom He died, “the Just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God!

 

 

 

Don Fortner

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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