February 12 Daily Devotional

Bible Reading

I Corinthians 15:1-11:

¹Moreover, brethren, I declare unto you the gospel which I preached unto you, which also ye have received, and wherein ye stand;
²By which also ye are saved, if ye keep in memory what I preached unto you, unless ye have believed in vain.
³For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures;
⁴And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures:
⁵And that he was seen of Cephas, then of the twelve:
⁶After that, he was seen of above five hundred brethren at once; of whom the greater part remain unto this present, but some are fallen asleep.
⁷After that, he was seen of James; then of all the apostles.
⁸And last of all he was seen of me also, as of one born out of due time.
⁹For I am the least of the apostles, that am not meet to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.
¹⁰But by the grace of God I am what I am: and his grace which was bestowed upon me was not in vain; but I laboured more abundantly than they all: yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me.
¹¹Therefore whether it were I or they, so we preach, and so ye believed.

Devotional

A professor in one of our large American universities once said that Jesus should be regarded as a genius, but not as a successful genius. The professor reasoned that Jesus was defeated in His death, that His teachings were rejected, His purposes frustrated.

But Paul does not regard the death of our Lord as defeat. He includes it in the good news, the Gospel, that he preaches. He even informs the Corinthians that he had determined not to know anything among them save Jesus Christ, and Him crucified. Paul regards the death of Christ as providing good news, for he knows that the holy and undefiled Saviour died for the sins of His people, as the Old Testament had foretold and as God had determined before the foundation of the world. Our Lord had come to give His life as a ransom for many. He who knew no sin became sin for His own. He freely in their place, as their substitute, paid the penalty required by the law; He covered their guilt; He satisfied the justice of God for them; and He has propitiated God and reconciled Him to His people.

The death of the Saviour did not mean defeat for Him, but it meant triumph - yes, it meant good news! Indeed, apart from it there could be no good news or no Gospel or no salvation for men.

Welcome to "Think on These Things," a twelve-week daily devotional prepared by the late Dr. John H. Skilton, an ordained minister in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church and for many years Chairman of the New Testament Department at Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia.

We are indebted to P & R Publishing and Skilton House Ministries for permission to use this copyrighted material on the OPC Web site. (P & R held the copyright from 1975 to 2005, at which time they reassigned the copyright to Skilton House.)