The Risen Lord part 2
Jesus died... and then three days later He rose again. Both of those truths are ultimately important. And I'm not going to sit here and say I completely understand every bit of it. But I do understand this: When He died, I died. And when He rose again, I rose again. The old passed away. The new came forth. It's a whole new ballgame where we have been equipped and empowered to walk in newness of life. To live Jesus' abundant, everlasting, eternal, Resurrection Life by letting Him live it in me, and through me, and as me. To partake of His Divine Nature through the knowledge of Him. And I'm not talking about head knowledge either. I'm not talking about knowing ABOUT Him. I'm talking about heart knowledge. Relationship. KNOWING Him. I'm talking about living in this flesh through the faith of the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me. Gave Himself TO me. Laid His life down for me and then took it back up. Gave me everything He had--Himself--so that I could have something. Something to enjoy. To share. To give. It's like this: Jesus died (in part) so that we could inherit everything the Father had for the Son--which is all things--and then He rose again to make sure that we got what was coming to us. I've heard it said that mercy is us not getting what we deserved and grace is us getting what we didn't deserve. And I can see that. But I can also see a God who never wanted to punish us in the first place. A God who warned us not to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil because He didn't want us to die. A God who would rather die than be without us. A God who wanted us to have His life so badly that He literally gave it to us. He drew us into Himself and died so that the old COULD pass away. So that DEATH could die. He died so that we would no longer be in bondage to sin and death. He died to take away our sin and conquer death. And then He rose again. So that we could live. So that, instead of just pushing a cosmic reset button and then leaving us to our own devices... we could experience HIS life. Nobody can live Jesus' life except Jesus. I can't do it. Even Moses, the mediator of the Old Covenant, couldn't get into the Promised Land on his own merit. Because it is, "...Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the LORD of hosts" (Zechariah 4:6). We couldn't do it. So He did it for us (and as us). He came down to where we were and brought us up to where He is. The consuming fire burned everything else away. Everything except itself. Everything except love. The inner man, the hidden man of the heart, was buried beneath all of the surface stuff. So Jesus got rid of all of the surface stuff. He brought us back to the simplicity of Christ by showing us who God really is. Showing us who WE really are. God is our loving heavenly Father. We are His beloved Son in whom He is well pleased. A dead man is a man who doesn't love, because He doesn't know He is loved. He can't give what He doesn't have. And Jesus didn't come to make "evil" people "good." He came to make dead people alive. He came to fill us with His Spirit so that we might receive (and release) His love. Live loved, and live LOVE. That's what it means to be alive. That's what make abundant life abundant. That's what happened when Jesus rose from the dead. WE rose from the dead. To a life of love. A life where God's love fills us to overflowing and comes out of us (naturally) and gets all over everybody else that we come into contact with!