The good news we bring to lost men and women is the gospel of the Risen Christ. There would be no gospel if Christ had not been raised from the dead. The apostle Paul wrote, "And if Christ is not risen, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins (1 Cor. 15:17)."
Years ago a liberal preacher in an Easter message said, "The body of Jesus still sleeps in a Syrian tomb, but His soul goes marching on." But that is not the gospel of our Risen Lord! We do not proclaim a message of a dead Christ, but of a living Christ who sits exalted at the Father's right hand. He lives to save all who put their trust in Him. He lives exalted at God's right hand, and He is "able to save to the uttermost those who come to God through Him (Heb. 7:25)." This is the message that we take to the ends of the earth.
A former student of mine works with the Dinangat people in Papua New Guinea. A number of months ago, he told of another tribal village who had heard the good news of Jesus' death, burial and resurrection. The following are quotes from some of the new believers in that village.
Simon: "I am very happy. I have heard God's talk and I believe it."
Jerry: "I am a sin-man. But all the sins I have done before and all the sins I will do in the future, Jesus died for them. He showed us the road to Heaven. He died for my sins."
Michael: "I am going to Jesus. I am hanging onto Him alone."
Maikalus: "I used to follow another religious way for years, but now I have the gospel. Jesus died on the Cross for my sins and His blood ran down to the ground."
Not that long ago these people were steeped in animistic beliefs. They were in complete darkness and had no idea Who God is. Praise God that the message of a Risen Savior was brought to these precious people and that many turned to God's free gift of salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ.
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Christianity Stands or Falls with the Bible
All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness. (2 Tim. 3:16)
Christianity is based on a book. It centres in a Person. It expresses itself in a message. It authenticates itself in an experience.
That basic book is the Bible. That central Person is Jesus. That expressive message is the Gospel. That authenticating experience is the new birth.
Think here about that basic book. Christianity stands or falls with the Bible. It is no use saying, as the liberalists or modernists do, that so long as we have Jesus we do not need an infallibly inspired Bible.
Nay, all that we know authentically about the Lord Jesus we owe, and shall keep on owing, to the Bible. To say that so long as we have Jesus we do not need the Bible is about equal to saying that so long as we have the sunshine we don't need the sun.
I have said it many a time, and am surer of it than ever, that the life and death issue of Christianity is the inspiration and authority of the Bible.
If the Bible is uniquely and inerrantly inspired, then we have certainty; we may know real truth about God, about man, about origins, about morals, about the race's future, and about human destiny on the other side of the grave. But if the Bible is not the uniquely and inerrantly inspired Word of God, then (let us be blunt) we do not have certified truth about God, about man, about origins, about morals, about the race's future, or about human destiny in the hereafter: we are only groping.
If the Bible is provenly inspired by the divine Spirit, then Christian theology is truly a science, for by it we may truly "know". But if the Bible is anything less than provably inspired, then Christian theology instead of being "the queen of the sciences", is merely religious philosophy and human speculation.
—J. Sidlow Baxter
