In just a few weeks we will have the opportunity and privilege of celebrating the death and resurrection of Our Dear Lord and Savior. Holy week is a time to remember afresh that God so loved the world that He sent His only begotten Son to rescue us, providing a way for sinners like you and I to be reconciled to God. It is also a time in which each of us should pause to re ect not only on His incredible sacri ce, but also on the fact that Jesus was beaten, brutally killed, buried and on the third day He rose from the dead, that we might have life.

At times, I think we lose sight of the importance and centrality of Christ’s death and resurrection! Forgetting that the central event in human history is the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ! If you think about it, the whole essence of the Gospel message is that Jesus Christ is the only begotten Son of God, and He was “made flesh, and dwelt amongst us, and then He went de- liberately to the Cross. He could have avoided it, but He said that He must go through with it, in order to complete the work for which He had been sent. So He suffered the agony. He was beaten and nails were hammered into His holy esh, and He died and was placed in a tomb. Then He rose again and is alive today.

I find it fascinating that for the apos- tles and the early church the heart of the gospel was not Christmas and Jesus’ virgin birth, as wonderful and essential as that was. The heart of the gospel is what happened on Good Friday and on resurrection Sunday.

As the Apostle Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 15: 3-7: For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was bur- ied, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that He appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. After that He appeared to more than five hundred brethren at one time, most of whom remain until now, but some have fallen asleep; then He appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Paul makes it clear in these verses that it was the action of God in Christ, for sinful people that the apos- tles stressed in their teaching. In fact it dominated what they taught. Why?  Click here to read more