Are You Living a Resurrection Life?

Today we celebrate the Christian holiday of Jesus’ resurrection, known in the English speaking world as Easter. Approximately 1986 years ago, around 32 AD, Jesus, known as the Christ, physically rose from the Tomb given for His burial by Joseph of Arimathea. Three days earlier, He had been crucified by the Roman civil authorities, at the request of Jewish religious leaders in Jerusalem. According to the Bible, Jesus is the long-awaited, prophesied, Messiah of Israel, whose redemptive work provides the power of salvation to all who believe, Jew and Gentile alike. Other Biblical prophecies, not yet fulfilled, promise His return one day to establish an earthly kingdom, from which He will rule the present world for 1000 years, and then into eternity in the new heaven and new earth. His death paid the cost of our sin, and His resurrection defeated the power of death, providing an inheritance of eternal life to those adopted into His Father’s, YHWH God’s, family. (2 Timothy 1:10) This is the reason for the celebration of Easter.

But I wrote this today, not for the purpose of retelling the original Resurrection narrative, but to discuss the resurrection that we can, and must, experience in our own lives. Are you living a resurrection life?

Jesus was resurrected from the grave. How can we experience a similar resurrection without first having died? Oh, but my friends, we have died. We are born dead. We are dead in our trespasses and sins. (Ephesians 2:1) We are spiritually dead, and our relationship to our Creator is severed. Physical death is a consequential inevitability. To become alive, we must experience our own resurrection. We must be reborn. (John 3:3)

How can we do this? The answer is simple, yet challenging at the same time. Simple because it requires no work on our part; Jesus has done it all. Challenging because it requires us to surrender the only thing we truly possess: ourselves. Just to be clear, God does not require that we mortally sacrifice our lives as Christ did. We will all die one day, unless Jesus returns first, but we need not physically die in order to gain a resurrection life. What we must surrender, however, is our own will. We must die to ourselves so that the life we live is Christ living in us. (Galatians 2:20)

How do we die to self? First, we must acknowledge our own sinfulness, our own unworthiness, our own failure and inability to redeem ourselves from the depraved state into which we are born through inheritance of sin and in which we abide through our own intentional thoughts, actions, and will.

Second, we must surrender our will, our very essence of being, to our Creator. This is hard for people to do. We must go against the message of the world which tells us to embrace ourselves, and cling to our nature, and live life for ourselves, and by our own strength and force of will. These things are the very things which, in our pre-resurrected state, drive us further from our Creator—who through His own love for us and desire to provide a way of reunion, took upon Himself a mortal body in the person of Jesus, and physically sacrificed His own life for the sins that He didn’t, but we all did and do, commit. (Hebrews 10:10-12) Yes, Jesus is the Son of God. But He is also God the Son. And He was present and active in the creation of the universe. (John 1:1-3)

Third, we must ask for God to save us through the finished work of Christ, not because of our own insufficient merit, not because of our own works, but based solely upon His promise to save us, by His own grace, through our faith in believing Him and His Word. We must not continue to rely on our own abilities. We must not place our faith in ourselves and our own works. This will not only fail, but will end up being the very thing by which we will be condemned—our own nature and our own deeds.

If we die to ourselves, if we give up our old lives, Jesus has promised to spiritually resurrect us, to take up new life within us in this life, and to physically resurrect us into new bodies in the hereafter. (John 1:12, 1 John 1:9)

Grace and peace. And happy Easter!

“but has now been revealed by the appearing of our Savior Jesus Christ, who has abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel,”
-2 Timothy 1:10, NKJV

“And you He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins,”
-Ephesians 2:1, NKJV

“Jesus answered and said to him, ‘Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.’”
-John 3:3, NKJV

“I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.”
-Galatians 2:20, NKJV

“By that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. And every priest stands ministering daily and offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But this Man, after He had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down at the right hand of God,”
-Hebrews 10:10-12, NKJV

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made.”
-John 1:1-3, NKJV

“But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name:”
-John 1:12, NKJV

“If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
-1 John 1:9, NKJV

“Jesus said to her, ‘I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live.’”
-John 11:25, NKJV

“buried with Him in baptism, in which you also were raised with Him through faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead. And you, being dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He has made alive together with Him, having forgiven you all trespasses,”
-Colossians 2:12-13, NKJV

Was Jesus Good?

“And Jesus said unto him, Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God.”
-Mark 10:18, KJV

(“So Jesus said to him, ‘Why do you call Me good? No one is good but One, that is, God.’” -Mark 10:18, NKJV)

This statement of Jesus is recorded in three different places by three different authors: Mark 10:18, Matthew 19:17, and Luke 18:19. If any statement of Jesus recorded in the Bible is true (to have been spoken by Him), certainly one recorded from eyewitness testimony in three separate accounts is as valid as it can get. I say this not as a skeptic, but for the skeptic. I also acknowledge that this isn’t in itself proof of validity, but it is supportive. And if we aren’t willing to accept the Bible as at least one source for Jesus’ words, then what source have we?

For the follower of Christ, or for the one who believes the Bible is the Word of God (or at least contains the word of God), there are at least three teachings, two direct and one indirect, that we can learn from this statement. These are teachings that we can either believe or at the very least recognize that Jesus believed. Either has implications for our understanding of Jesus regardless of what we ultimately choose to believe about Jesus.

First (direct): “NO ONE IS GOOD but One, that is God.”

No one is good. People are not inherently good. Our core is corrupted by sin. We are depraved from our beginning. Certainly, we are made in God’s image, as the Bible states, and that aspect of us is good. But from the fall of our race into rebellion against our Creator, we are selfish and wicked by nature. That is why Jesus came to complete His work and provide us a way of redemption and salvation. The common ethos of humanism would have us believe otherwise, but this is not what Jesus taught, nor what the Bible asserts.

“for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,”
-Romans 3:23, NKJV

“But we are all like an unclean thing, And all our righteousnesses are like filthy rags; We all fade as a leaf, And our iniquities, like the wind, Have taken us away.”
-Isaiah 64:6, NKJV

“For whoever shall keep the whole law, and yet stumble in one point, he is guilty of all.”
-James 2:10, NKJV

“You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder, and whoever murders will be in danger of the judgment.’ But I say to you that whoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment. And whoever says to his brother, ‘Raca!’ shall be in danger of the council. But whoever says, ‘You fool!’ shall be in danger of hell fire.”
-Jesus (Matthew 5:21-22, NKJV)

“You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”
-Jesus (Matthew 5:27-28, NKJV)

Second (direct): “No one is good BUT ONE, THAT IS GOD.”

God is the only one, the only being, who is good.

Now let’s define the parameters of our discussion here. We must delineate the actors. The context is a conversation between Jesus and His human audience. The beings in discussion are human and divine. Jesus is a Jew speaking (primarily at the time of this discussion) to Jews. The Divine being discussed is to be understood in monotheistic terms; specifically, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; the great I AM; YHWH. The comparison to the Divine here being humanity; Jesus’ audience. Other human deities are not relevant here. Angels are also not relative to the conversation here. We know from other Biblical passages that there are angels who serve God (“good” angels), and those who are in rebellion against Him in service to Lucifer (“bad” angels; Lucifer being an angel as well). Angels are not described as being made in God’s image. Regardless, they are not part of the conversation here.

Third (indirect): Jesus is either God or Jesus is not good either.

By direct question, Jesus has asked the individual who initiated the conversation why he referred to Jesus as “good.” By direct statement, Jesus asserted that only God is good. By direct implication, Jesus asserted that He is only good Himself if He is God. This is either a declaration by Jesus of His own deity or a declaration the He, as a person, is not good; no more so than the rest of humanity, which He has already declared is not good.

In summation, in His statement, Jesus has asserted at least two direct points. One is that people are not good. The other is that only God is good. He has also declared either that He is God or that He is not good.

This is the implication we must face. If you choose to believe the former, then your life should be profoundly impacted. If Jesus is God, then you must face the reality of the situation, and His other teachings, or ignore it at your own peril. If you choose to believe that He is not God, then you should recognize that by His own assertion, He did not believe Himself to be good. You may believe He was good, but He did not; unless He believed He was God. If He did and if He wasn’t, then there are other implications you must deal with. I believe the former—that He is God—and there are plenty of other passages in the Bible that support this. But I won’t quote them here; you can look them up if you want.

Either way, if you want to be rationally consistent, you should not assert to be a follower of Christ or a believer in the Bible unless you acknowledge that Jesus either taught that He was God or that He was not good; and then deal with the implications accordingly.

Thanks for reading. Grace and peace to you.

Gospel Priorities

This is not intended as a critique of exercising political choice, but rather an observation of influences and priorities.

Whether intentional or not, it seems to me that many Christians who are more concerned with promoting temporal, political change than spiritual, redemptive change are motivated by underlying, assumptive, Postmillennial influences. Although many of them would not claim to hold the position, some would certainly advocate it.

Postmillennialism is not a system to which I subscribe. While it doesn’t necessarily factor into one’s positional standing before the Almighty, it certainly can affect one’s attitudes, behaviors, and priorities.

I do believe a critical consequence of embracing Postmillennial thought can be to distract and deviate from the Great Commission: proclaiming the Gospel message regarding spiritual redemption from sin, and eternal salvation from its consequences, first and foremost.