Jesus Is Unique

If you read this post, you can skip service this Sunday. Just kidding! Even though this IS my "teaching" for the week, being with other Christians is so important. God has called us into fellowship with himself through Jesus, and in so doing has called each of us into fellowship with each other. Scripture says that we don't "go to church" but we "come together as" or "gather with" the church. And the idea of "church" is Jesus' idea after all.

We can do almost anything else solo--hear good teaching, sing, pray, give, for example--but spiritual gifts cannot function in isolation, nor can we practice fellowship alone.

Enough preaching! I'll be talking about the uniqueness of Jesus, using 2 Timothy 1:8-11 as the text. We are told there of three things that Jesus has done--saved and sanctified us, destroyed death, and inaugurated immortality. Each of these is a sermon in itself, but think about this:

Almost every religious teacher talks about these in some degree, But Jesus did more than talk about them--he did something about them through his offering of himself. He brought deliverance from sin by his atoning death; the Spirit he promised to send after his ascension sets us apart to belong to God; spiritual death has been defeated by his resurrection, physical death will be at his return (1 Corinthians 15:24-26); eternal (or the second) death is cast into the lake of fire after judgment (Revelation 20:13-14); immortality and incorruptibility is guaranteed by the future receiving of a glorified body that will never age nor die.

As Christians, we have much to be thankful for. Let us rejoice in God's goodness and in his good promises!