Pastor Olusola Ogidan
[biblegateway passage=”1 Corinthians 1:17-18″ display=”1 Corinthians 1:17-18″], [biblegateway passage=”Romans 10:8-10″ display=”Romans 10:8-10″]
The message of the Cross is the message of our salvation- that Christ died for our sins, and God raised Him from the dead and He ascended into glory.
The Cross signifies the entire redemptive work accomplished in the death, burial, resurrection and ascension of the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. You cannot separate any one of these things from the others.
When we talk about the Cross, we don’t only talk about the death of the Lord Jesus Christ because it was not only His death that bought for us our salvation alone.
[biblegateway passage=”1 Corinthians 15:11-14″ display=”1 Corinthians 15:11-14″]; [biblegateway passage=”Romans 6:4″ display=”Romans 6:4″]; [biblegateway passage=”Ephesians 2:5-6″ display=”Ephesians 2:5-6″]
The Cross also signifies the union of believers with Christ in death, burial, resurrection and ascension.
[biblegateway passage=”Romans 6:6″ display=”Romans 6:6″]
The Cross of Christ brought an end to the reign of sin. That is what the book of Romans means in Chapter 6;6, that our old man was crucified with him, that the body of sin might be done away with and that we should no longer be slaves of sin.
It is the old man that is the “factory” of sin, and it is recorded that the old man was crucified with Christ.
On the Cross, God laid the foundation for a new life and our death with Him is a foundation of the new life.
[biblegateway passage=”Romans 6:4″ display=”Romans 6:4″]; [biblegateway passage=”1 Corinthians 15:45″ display=”1 Corinthians 15:45″]
God ended everything about the Adamic race when the last Adam came and he was crucified for our sakes. Jesus of Nazareth is not the second Adam. We make that mistake when we refer to him as the second Adam. Reading through the book of first Corinthians 15;45, what we find there is, the first man Adam, was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit. And then, we find in verse 47, that, the first man is of the earth, earthy: the second man is the Lord from heaven. That second man is not the same Jesus of Nazareth that was called the last Adam.
We are a new race of people, no longer after the likeness of Adam, but after the likeness of the resurrected one. Now, by virtue of Christ’s resurrection, we have the ability to be responsible to God.
1 Peter 1:3
“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to his abundant mercy hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.”
God is working inside of us, Resurrection is at work within us, and we are changing. We must not be tired of also hearing the word of God, and it is not hearing to want to do something but sometimes, we need to acquire certain knowledge. Knowledge does something within us. It is not at all times you will encounter the Word and find practical things to work on, but that knowledge is working inside you.