The Appearance of Jesus

 DEVOTION

THE 1^ST LETTER TO THE CORINTHIANS

THE APPEARANCE OF JESUS 

1 Cor 15:1-8

15:1 Now, brothers, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand. 2 By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain. 3 For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, 5 and that he appeared to Peter, and then to the Twelve. 6 After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. 7 Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, 8 and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born.

NIV

There are just a few primary points in our salvation and they are enumerated here for us with the final one of the resurrection. Nevertheless, it is the gospel message in all its fullness that we are saved. There is no work that we can do to attain salvation, for it is all within the gospel message which contains the work of God and Him alone. Of course, we must believe it or receive it in our lives. Still, it is Christ who died for our sins. There is no sacrifice we could make that would bring us salvation. There is no work we could do that would bring us salvation. It is Christ on the cross, the shedding of his blood which brings the forgiveness of our sins. We certainly have no power within ourselves to attain anyway near worthy of this salvation. It is solely about the love of God for his creation, us, as he made us in his own image, thus we bear the image of God within us. We believe Jesus died for our sins and we believe he was buried and was raised from the dead on the third day. How could we ever fail to believe this truth? As far as Jesus appearing to his disciples and all those other people and then to Paul as one abnormally born, we have no doubt that happened. We do find it interesting that after he appeared to his disciples and more than five hundred, he ascended into heaven to sit at the right hand of the Father. However, it was after his ascension that he appeared to Paul on the road to Damascus. He spoke with him, giving him instructions. We also find it interesting that Jesus can appear to us as well, and we can see Jesus if we but read the word of God. However, we are still considering the power of God here and it is very possible that Jesus could make a supernatural appearance to us. There is definitely some expression of Jesus when a person receives the call to some aspect of ministry, but we would also think that everyone is called to be a witness to the power of God in their lives. How can we experience the power of God, the saving grace of God in our lives, receiving eternal life as well as many spiritual and material blessings without wanting to tell everyone what is happening in our lives. We do need to be careful not to boast about our lives, but to boast about Jesus Christ crucified, buried, resurrected, and ascended to sit at the right hand of God continually making intercession for us. We should never boast about our works, or what we have done, for nothing we can ever do would make any difference in our salvation.