Resurrected for Life

This week is Holy Week—that solemn, joyful, beautiful time culminating in Easter, when we commemorate the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus.

One of the victories Jesus’s work achieved for His followers is the promise of our own future resurrection. When Jesus returns to establish God’s kingdom on earth, all who’ve put their faith in Him will receive glorious, incorruptible bodies, just as our risen Savior has. Believers who’ve died will be raised, never to die again. Those still alive will be transformed, never to taste death.

That sounds wonderful. But it also sounds a bit…remote. Of course it’ll be glorious when it happens. But does it matter for us here and now, in this life?

Yes!

Here are four ways our resurrection later offers us hope and meaning now.

A Picture and an Assurance

First, our physical resurrection gives us an image—and a guarantee—of the spiritual transformation that’s underway now in every Christ-follower. Over and over, biblical writers like Paul speak of this transformation as spiritual death and resurrection.

In one sense, this renewal happens instantaneously at the moment we claim Jesus as our Lord and Savior. In surrendering to Christ, we make a sacrifice. We give Him our old way of living and thinking, and He gives us a new way—a life so spiritually abundant that the old was dead by comparison. The change might appear quiet and subtle or bold and dramatic, but it’s as profound and final as if we’ve died and risen to a new life.

In another sense, our spiritual renewal is an ongoing process. As we practice repentance and the Holy Spirit works in us, the sin so ingrained in us by the Fall is being removed as utterly as though it’s dying. At the same time, our spirits are coming alive, showing more and more clearly the likeness of God in whose image we were created.

In both senses, the image of resurrection provides firm assurance: As surely as Christ rose, and as surely as our bodies will rise, so our spirits rise from the deadness of sin to the eternal life of knowing and being like Jesus.

A Guarantee of Complete Victory

Not only does the promise of resurrection assure us that renewal is inevitable, it also assures us that renewal is total and final.

Death exists because sin exists. God created the world “very good” (Genesis 1:31). When the first humans sinned, the introduction of death into the world was among the chief consequences. According to the apostle Paul, at Christ’s return death will be the last enemy to be destroyed.

In promising to destroy death, God signals that all our sins truly are forgiven in Christ, and that one day we’ll be totally free of sin. If we ever question the extent of God’s willingness and power to redeem us, we can look to the resurrection. If death is going to perish, sin must really be doomed. And God isn’t going to stop at saving and sanctifying our souls—He’s also going to save and glorify our bodies. He’s a God of complete redemption.

A Righting of Relationships

The resurrection means we who are in Christ will all one day be alive together forever in a renewed world. That prospect has implications for our relationships now.

First and most obviously, this promise offers believers comfort in times of loss. Separation hurts. But amidst our pain, we can rest assured we’ll one day be reunited with our Christian loved ones. More than that, we’ll share with them all the wonders and joys of eternity in God’s kingdom. We can and should grieve our losses, but we needn’t despair over them.

Our resurrection also gives us hope for each other’s current struggles. The same promise of total transformation that applies to us applies to them. The physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual battles they fight will end in victory, just as ours will. Knowing this, we can fight alongside each other with strength, empathy, and solidarity. We can encourage each other with reminders of God’s ever-advancing good work and pending triumph in us.

And when our view of each other become distorted, the resurrection corrects us. When we struggle to forgive, we can remember that God forgives enough to destroy sin’s chief consequence. When we sink into apathy, we can remember that God has destined us for eternal community. When we catch ourselves building pedestals, we can remember that all Christians will share the glory of resurrection. When we struggle to surrender to God’s will for a believing loved one, we can trust that God will continue His good work in them until He brings us all, perfected, into His kingdom.

A Gift Worth Fighting For

Finally, our resurrection calls us to live with faith. focus, and endurance. The glory and redemption we’ll experience will more than compensate us for the hardships of following Christ in this fallen world. They outweigh our sufferings and outvalue our temptations.

In a culture that can only seem to imagine zombies and ghosts, where brokenness is either condemned or celebrated, the resurrection dares us to think bigger. If our God can resurrect sinners both spiritually and physically, surely He can work lesser miracles. He can meet daily needs, heal fractured relationships, provide needed wisdom, and bring good out of the hardest circumstances. If His ultimate victory is so decisive, surely He can accomplish His will in everyday life. His kingdom must be flourishing even when we can’t see it.

Based on such a confidence, we can pray for and expect His will to be done in our every situation. We can love others with a love that believes in and seeks their redemption. We can serve and share the gospel with faith that God is at work in the world. We can refuse the world’s shallow offerings, knowing we’re promised things far better. We can endure trials with Christlike character, knowing that Christ will not only end them but bring good out of them.

If you haven’t already claimed this glorious hope, now’s the time! Believe that Jesus died on the cross to atone for your sins, was buried, and rose to life on the third day afterward to offer you eternity with God. Confess your sins to God and repent of them. Ask His forgiveness. Ask Jesus to be the Lord of your life and Savior of your soul.

Praise God for His perfect redemption!

***

One afternoon last October, my sister and I visited our maternal grandparents’ graves. The sun smiled and the sky arched blue over the fading grass dotted with plaques and bouquets and a few pines and oaks.

I tried to imagine a sky-shaking trumpet blast, the trees reeling and cherished faces last seen statuesque in coffins crowding the lawn, feet standing on their own markers—Mawmaw and Pawpaw beaming at us from among them.

But the flowers and markers remained unmoved. The sun shone, a nearby pine rustled, and a car passed on the distant road. The world went on as though it always had and always would.

And I wondered: Did God see all this while He led Paul to write over forty straight verses in 1 Corinthians 15 on the sure hope of resurrection? As He breathed promises of immortal bodies, did He see faded grass and flowers and silent lawns and death dates engraved in bronze under simpering suns and mindless rain? As He sang of victory and the death of death, did He feel the ache of still-mortal hands and eyes and ears longing for the touch, sight, and voice of someone separated by something more impenetrable than earth? When He spoke of forever after, did He measure it against the crawl of ten minutes beside an unblinking, unsmiling, unapologizing plaque?

He knows all times and places at once. So I know He did.

So I’ll believe His promise—and live.

For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the archangel’s voice, and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are still alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord. Therefore encourage one another with these words.

1 Thessalonians 4:16-18 CSB

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Scripture quotations marked CSB have been taken from the Christian Standard Bible®, Copyright © 2017 by Holman Bible Publishers. Used by permission. Christian Standard Bible® and CSB® are federally registered trademarks of Holman Bible Publishers.