Liz and Andy Peth do a scripture commentary on the death and resurrection of Jesus right in time for Easter. “The Brilliant Strategy of Christ’s Death and Resurrection” is an Easter message that shows, start to finish, why the seminal moment of Christianity wasn’t just some guy getting martyred, but actually our only way to life. Andy takes us through the Choice, the Fall, and the Law, all showing our complete helplessness by our own standards. Then, in conclusion, they talk about the Solution — how God fixed the problem. Happy Easter!
This is Liz Frenzel with Crawford Media Group, and today we’re doing a scripture commentary with Andy Peth, one of our hosts here at the station. We’ll be talking about the brilliant strategy of Christ’s death and resurrection that began long before Jesus died on the cross. Andy, this ties into some of our other scripture commentaries, so why don’t you start us off by giving us a little recap?
SPEAKER 01 :
I will definitely do that. You see, every Easter we discuss the death and resurrection of Christ, right? Yes. But why was it necessary? A lot of people look at this and say, yeah, it’s part of your religion, so what? And then we say, well, he died for our sins. And they say, who asked him to? Why does it matter? I mean, should I give my life to a 2,100-year-old martyr because he did something really impressive? So what? Why did he have to do any of this? So today, yeah, we’re going to recap a lot of what I’ve taught in the past to understand the strategy behind what Christ did on the cross and after it. We’re going to go warp speed. Are you ready? I’m ready. All right. All right. Number one, God’s choice. Why did a spiritual God make a physical universe? And you’re wondering, how does that pertain? It does. In other words, why did he make all of this that’s around us?
SPEAKER 02 :
And I have to interject. I often ask him, Lord, why didn’t you just… Not do the devil thing, not do the free will thing and just leave us all in heaven. And it would be wonderful. Exactly. Since we’re, you know, those who believe in you are going to go there anyway.
SPEAKER 01 :
Yeah. Well, there are a lot of cynics who will ask that exact same question. It’s a great question. Well, first of all, the reason he made a physical universe is because he didn’t need one. Explain that. Okay. He’s a spiritual God. He has no use for a physical universe, which means that he was making it entirely for someone else. That’s us. This is his display of pure unselfishness, pure selflessness. He made all of this not for him, but for us, which is pretty impressive. It’s incredible when you make something purely for somebody else and not for you and then give it to them. And that’s what he did. This is something we have to keep in mind. Selfless equals good. Selfish equals bad. And we still know this today. We people, we value selflessness above all things, don’t we? I mean, even if somebody does something really good for you, but then you find out they had selfish motives, do you still feel good about it? No. No. And, you know, it’s kind of funny because we’re the only species that feels this way. right if we have a dog and we both give the dog you know treats the dog and you have good motives and i have bad motives the dog doesn’t care about the motives does it that’s true the dog just wants the treats well guess what that’s actually plays out throughout the entire animal kingdom they care about what they get they don’t care about the motives behind it only we do and we put unselfishness or selflessness as the number one motive we want to be good above all things, even if we can’t reach it. We’ll get to that in a moment. Next, our choice, and we’re getting into your question here pretty quick. Genesis 2, 9b. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Okay, well… Quick question, if eating the tree killed us, why put it there? Why does a loving God allow evil to enter the world, like you were saying, right? Well, here’s a good way to look at it. Imagine a mom, and she tells her son, doing good means cleaning your room every day, while doing bad means burning Teslas. OK, so and then she encases his body in a RoboCop shell. Remember RoboCop, where she holds the remote and every day she forces her son to clean his room and not burn Tesla’s question. Has he done any good? Well, basically, he’s been a robot. Right. He hasn’t done good. You see, this is important because without the choice to do bad, you can’t do good. God put the tree there so we could do good. We had to have the option to do bad. Otherwise, you can’t do good. So free will. Right. Moving on. Number three, our fall. Okay, here’s where the bad comes. Genesis 2, 17. But you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it, you will surely die. Well, why does eating from a tree kill us? Right. Yeah, I mean, a lot of people who are not Christians look at us and say, this is just old superstition. This is stupid. What was this? You know, Snow White, you know, and you ate magic fruit. That’s not what happened. Okay.
SPEAKER 02 :
However, that didn’t happen right away. Death.
SPEAKER 01 :
Yes, it did in a different way.
SPEAKER 02 :
Right.
SPEAKER 01 :
So explain that. Spiritual death, we were separated from right away. Physical death came over time. And I’ll explain that. See, we ate… Look at the name of the tree. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Whoever decides… what is good and evil in any situation is the boss of that situation right mom does this with her son i just talked about that a ceo does it in a company president or king does it in a country whoever says this is good that is bad you can do this you can’t do that that person is in charge of the situation right so the hebrew word by the way for die you know when you eat of it you will surely die it means separate you’ll be separated from me okay from the creator which makes sense We ate from the tree to decide for ourselves what is good and what is evil. We wanted to be gods, okay? So we separated ourselves from God, taking the creator off the throne and putting the created, us, on the throne. See how that works? It makes perfect sense. The reason he was simply telling us, look, if you do this, you’re going to be you’re going to be fighting for yourself. What is good and evil? You’re leaving me. OK, you’re separating from me. I’m not separating us. You are.
SPEAKER 02 :
And he wasn’t sentencing them. No, he was actually saying this is what’s going to happen if. Yeah, he wasn’t causing the if.
SPEAKER 01 :
Natural consequence. He’s saying you walk off a cliff, you’re going to fall. Okay. And we did. Okay. What happens when you separate from life? What happens when you take an appliance and pull the plug out of the wall? What is it?
SPEAKER 02 :
Death. Death.
SPEAKER 01 :
Doesn’t work anymore. Right. Let me ask you something. Can you jump over the Grand Canyon? You seem very, you know, in fit. I know you can jump pretty far. Probably not. OK, picture God on one side and you on the other. You can’t jump over. You’re dead and you can’t reach out to touch life any more than a rock can grow. It’s too far. There is a separation between us and God. We can’t preach. We’ll get into why right now. Number four, the problem. We talk about the fall of man, but we fell into what? What is sin? All right. Remember, selfless equals good. Selfish equals bad. We all know this. That’s why we all value selflessness above all things. Right. Before the fall, God defined us by grace. He gave us our goodness. That’s what grace is. It’s unmerited favor. It’s a birthday gift. You can’t earn God’s goodness. Now, some can just, you know, they’ll say, oh, really? So he could just give us goodness. Well, think about it. Yeah, that’s the only way. I mean, think about two parents and they have a child, brand new child, baby, in the crib. They look down in that crib. Do they define their child as good because of the deeds that kid is going to do one day? No. No, of course not. They define them as good because it’s theirs. Why did God define us as good? Same reason. It’s perfectly natural, folks. This is not rocket science. It’s a good analogy. Real goodness can only be given. It can’t be earned. All right. And we’ll get to why in a moment. Yeah. But once we pulled the plug, we left his grace and could only define ourselves by works, deeds, what we do. Do good, be good. Do bad, be bad. That was our standard, not his. This is how every religion, by the way, on earth, except one defines good and fixes us. Right. Okay. Problem is mankind is incapable of doing a single selfless deed. That’s why religion never fixes us. Now, you’re wondering, we can’t do one? No, not one.
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, it goes back to the Old Testament where they had to do all those sacrifices.
SPEAKER 01 :
Ooh, that’s coming next. Okay. No, no, no. I always love it. You’re always a step ahead. It’s so good. You see, deep down, we all want to be good. We do. That’s important. Let’s say good is helping a little old lady cross the street and bad is shoving her into traffic. That would be bad. Right. If I help her and I don’t shove her, I’ve done good and avoided bad. And I even had some good motives. Right. I wanted to help her. Right. But guess what? I also have a bad motive. I couldn’t accept myself if I shoved her or if I ignored her. Right. I’m defining myself with my deeds and that gives all my deeds a selfish motive. Interesting. Exactly. Gandhi had this selfish motive. Mother Teresa, me, you, everybody, except Tanner in the next room. He’s selfless. But, you know, all of us have this selfish motive. We are defining ourselves with our deeds and that taints every one of our deeds and makes it selfish. We cannot break out of this. We’re in prison. We’re on the other side of the canyon.
SPEAKER 02 :
Pleasing man is what you were saying, trying to get kudos from our works.
SPEAKER 01 :
Or even pleasing ourselves.
SPEAKER 02 :
Making ourselves feel good about ourselves.
SPEAKER 01 :
Exactly. Perfect. So selfless equals good, selfish equals bad. Isaiah 64.6, all our righteous acts are as filthy rags. Why? Because even our best acts, we have a selfish motive in them now. Why? Because we left him in the garden. He defined us as good like the kid in the crib. We left all that and decided to find ourselves with our deeds. What we did is we barred ourselves from good forever. See how that works? And Proverbs 16, 2. All a person’s ways seem pure to them, but motives are weighed by the Lord. Once again, the Lord looks at motives. By the way, just like us. He sees our heart. Yeah, okay. Remember that Grand Canyon? You’re dead. You can’t jump over and touch life. Okay, now the law, the sacrifices. I wish I could take more time on this. I cannot. Basically, why not just fix the problem right away? Why give us the law and all those sacrifices for all those centuries? What do you think?
SPEAKER 02 :
I think to keep them in line.
SPEAKER 01 :
Well, certainly got to keep them in line. They would have run amok. They’re all sinful creatures. But I’m going to say this. So we could spend centuries proving we can’t jump over the canyon. Remember, the death and resurrection of Christ was necessary. And that’s what we’re going to get to next. We spent centuries proving it by trying everything else. I kind of like that. Okay. The only way you can be good is if someone else defines you as good. You can’t define you. They do. Someone perfect, sinless. Okay, the solution. How did Christ dying and rising again fix the problem? It’s very simple. If death can’t reach out and touch life, life must reach out and touch death.
SPEAKER 02 :
Interesting.
SPEAKER 01 :
Yes. Selfless, let selfish kill it. And three days later, he rose from the dead, building a bridge, crossed that canyon back to life. And now, having built a bridge we can’t build, he looks at us and says, follow me. Remember, the price of sin is death. Someone had to pay it. Now, we’ve been trying to earn goodness with deeds that can never be purely good, as we’ve said. But read Hebrews 10, 14, Does that sound too good to be true? Perfect forever? If it sounds impossible, here’s my question. Was there any other way? Could he just give us another system of earning it? Really? I think jumping across Grand Canyon is impossible. Right. Yeah. What he did is bridge the canyon. That’s why Christ had to die and rise again. It wasn’t just a perfect strategy. It was the only strategy. Okay.
SPEAKER 02 :
That’s good. You know what I thought about when you said life has to touch death? In my mind, I saw a candle lighting a candle that had burnt out. So that burnt out candle is a candle, but it couldn’t light itself. So the other candle, the lit candle.
SPEAKER 01 :
I like that. I like it. Okay, let me take it home here. Look around you. Look at every workplace. Turn on your TV. Go on Facebook and tell me that sin isn’t real. Come on. We value selflessness above all things, and yet we’re incapable of doing a single purely selfless act. We are forever barred from the goodness we crave. That’s why society gives up and descends into evil. For those who have given up, let me promise you something. If you accept Christ’s gift and cross that bridge, your deeds will never define you again. You’ll put the fruit back in the tree, God back in the throne of your life, so your selfish motive will be removed. There’s nothing in it for you. Even with all your faults in the here and now, your perfection is stored in Christ forever. So many people think Christianity is doing good deeds, but Christians, we don’t do good deeds to save ourselves. We do good deeds to thank the guy who already saved us.
SPEAKER 02 :
So true. And you know what I think is even more wonderful than that is that our sins are forgiven forever. Yes. Like forever. However, it doesn’t mean that we just go run amok. And then when we do sin, which we do, even thoughts. Of course. It doesn’t mean we’re not forgiven. It means we just want to come back to God and say, you know, bridge that gap again. Because, you know, when we do something wrong to somebody, there’s a little there’s an elephant in the room.
SPEAKER 01 :
Remember the baby in the crib. Come back to Christ. Come back to God. He will see you as that child forever. Okay? He will never forget who you were in that crib. And you’re thinking, well, that’s impossible. No, it isn’t, because he’s not bound by time. We are. We’re thinking in terms of time. Well, yeah, but I still go forward and commit this many sins in this week, that many in that week, and so forth. And he’s saying, you don’t seem to understand. I paid the sacrifice already. I already paid your bill. You’re talking about once again getting back on the treadmill, doing more good deeds to pay the bill. I already paid the bill. You can leave. You’re done. Okay? It’s over. Just like in the Garden of Eden, it’s a choice. It’s not a religion. And the choice is up to you. Nothing has changed. There’s a tree of life. There’s a tree of knowledge, good and evil. Take the tree of life.
SPEAKER 02 :
We’ve been talking about the brilliant strategy of Christ’s death and resurrection with Andy Peth, one of our hosts here at the station. You know, Andy, this came in perfect timing for Easter this Sunday. And, you know, and the whole cross and resurrection is what this weekend, this Sunday. that sunday is about and so thank you so much for bringing this to light to so many of our listeners and um i just think it’s a good reminder that you know we don’t have to work hard to be loved and to be forgiven you don’t have to work at all thank you
