An Application Challenge

1 Corinthians 15:51-58
Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, 52 in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. 53 For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality. 54 When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written: “Death is swallowed up in victory.” 55 “O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?” 56 The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. 57 But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. 58 Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.
"Paul intends—God intends—that there be a practical effect of what he has said. He intends for the effect to be verse 58. And the word “therefore” shows that he intends for verse 58 to happen because we know and remember verses 51-57. Christ has come. He has died for you. He took all your sins on himself. He satisfied the demands of the law for you. The sting of death is removed. There is no condemnation. No hell. No fear. Though your body be laid in the grave, Christ will come and the trumpet will sound, and this mortal body will put on immortality and this decomposing, decaying body will become imperishable. Death is swallowed up in a great, blood-bought, Christ-wrought victory. To die is gain. Away from the body, at home with the Lord. THEREFORE . . . ."
"Verse 58 is God’s will for my life—and yours. And Paul says, it happens THEREFORE, that is, because you know and remember what is in verses 51-57. Therefore our obedience to verse 58 rests largely on our reading and memorizing these verses. If you know it and you believe and you meditate on it and memorize it and remember it, it will fill your mind and your heart in such a way that verse 58 happens."
How many mighty therefores will come true in your life, if you give yourself to the reading and knowing and remembering the great truth of Scripture!
-JOHN PIPER

new birth



"A dead man can not assist in his own resurrection."

-W.G.T. Shedd

St. Augustine

"Thou owest men nothing, yet payest out to them as if in debt to thy creature, and when thou dost cancel debts thou losest nothing thereby."