What Is the Basis of Your Hope?

There is no better test as to whether we have been born again or not than this very thing.  To men or women who are born again, this is everything.  Christ is risen!  But if they are not born again, this is certainly not the center of their life or the basis of their hope.  That is why this is such a thorough test; it cannot be counterfeited.  The Devil can counterfeit many things that we experience as Christians, and that is why we are always told to prove the spirits, to “try the spirits,” to test them to see whether they be of God or not.  But here is something that cannot be counterfeited.  The Devil is never anxious for people to say, “Christ is risen!”  He received his greatest defeat there, and that is something that he tries to get people to deny, even those who call themselves Christians.   Many are denying this today; they say the literal, physical resurrection is not true.  But this was the basis of the hope of the early Christians, and so they greeted one another with the salutation “Christ is risen!”  I repeat, the vital question that comes to us: Is that the basis of our hope and of our whole position?

Martyn Lloyd-Jones, “Experiencing the New Birth: Studies in John 3,” pg.213-214