Tonight I’m going to do my best to brag about Jesus,” Charles T. Carter told participants at the opening session of the Alabama Baptist State Evangelism Conference on Feb. 23.
“My home preacher taught me as a boy that whenever you’re called on to preach and you’re not assigned a topic to take your Bible and get your books and do the best you can to … brag about Jesus.”
And so Carter did as he focused on “the incomparable Christ” by preaching from part of John 3:31 — “the One coming from above is above all.”
‘One of His kind’
“Every way you look at it, He’s unique. He’s the only one of His kind,” said Carter, pastor emeritus of Shades Mountain Baptist Church, Vestavia Hills.
The way He was prophesied and the way He was born both prove that, Carter said.
“Jesus did not come into existence in Bethlehem. He was in the beginning with the Father. There never was a time when the Son was not. The validation of this is that there are more than 2,000 fulfilled prophecies about Jesus in the New Testament,” he said, also noting Micah 5:2 and Isaiah 7:14 and 9:6 from the Old Testament.
“His pre-existence is so vitally important because you cannot have an incarnation without a pre-existence,” Carter said, pointing to John 1:1–3, John 8:58 and John 17:5.
The miracle of Christ’s birth was not the way He was actually birthed but the way He was conceived, Carter said. “Nine months before He was born He was conceived by the divine power of the Holy Spirit. That was the miracle. That makes Him the incomparable Christ.”
More proof comes in the way He lived, Carter noted.
“We know we try to be good and do good but we’ve all sinned,” he said. “But in Him there was no fault. He lived without sin. That ought to put a fire in our heart and a passion in our voice as we proclaim Someone who was totally unique.”
And the way Jesus died was like none other, Carter continued, referencing 2 Corinthians 5:21. “Jesus took His righteousness and imparted it to you and me. He had no sin in Him but all sin was on Him” at the cross.
The way Christ descended and ascended also point to His incomparableness, Carter said.
“We have very little talk about [Christ’s apparent descent into hell] today … (but) that’s what the Bible says (in 1 Peter 3:19 and 4:6). … I think He told the fallen angels, ‘Your judgment has been pronounced. You rejected the Lord God Almighty.’”
To those who died in faith in God, Jesus “showed that He was incomparable in that He went into the realm of the dead and preached the good news.”
Christ’s resurrection
As for Christ’s resurrection, “our whole faith stands and falls on that,” Carter said. “If there’s no resurrection then our preaching is in vain.
“If you’re not sure the resurrection really happened stop preaching today. Everything stands and falls in the resurrected world. He was who He said He was.”
And then there is the way He intercedes and the way He returns, Carter concluded.
“[Jesus] presents our case before the Father … You and I cannot lose with Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit at the right and left hand of the Father,” he said. “And from that lofty position, according to the Bible, one day literally, visibly, victoriously, bodily — Jesus is coming again.”
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