Into Your Hands I Commit My Spirit Series

I believe that it also teaches us that when we trust him with our spirit, He takes us from spiritual death to a resurrection of a new life. Paul describes our life perfectly before we entrusted our spirit to him when he wrote this to the church at Ephesus. “As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of the world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath. But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions--it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.” When we were living life the way that we wanted to live it and when we were steering our own ship, we were dead in our transgressions. Spiritually we were dead. That means spiritually that there was no pulse in our relationship with God. When you are spiritually dead you can have no fellowship with God. But just like Christ was raised from the dead we can be made alive in Christ. We can be resurrected from our spiritual death. Like the scriptures said and like we talked about last week, it is only by grace that you can be saved, you can’t earn it, the work Christ did on the cross paid the price. But you have to trust the work of Christ and the provision the Father made for us. God wants to bring that spiritual resurrection to our lives so that He can lavish His love upon us. But when God brings that spiritual resurrection to our lives, we are resurrected to a new person. We are no longer the same person we used to be. Just like Paul said in 2 Corinthians 5:17 “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” Sure we look like the same person. It’s not that people won’t recognize us when they see us out on the street. It’s just that they won’t recognize our actions anymore. Through the Holy Spirit God begins to change your heart and when your heart is changed so will your actions be. Praise God that you can be raised from the dead this morning. Trust him in what He said we must do, accept his gift of salvation through His son, and put your spirit in his hands and you will have new life.

I believe the other lesson that this statement teaches us is this: When we entrust our spirit to God we know with confidence that physical death is not the end. Jesus knew that when he gave up his spirit that it wasn’t over. He had complete trust that this wasn’t the end. He knew that He would continue to have life. He knew that once again in the future He would be in the presence of his Father. And because of that day when the Angel of the Lord said to the women at the tomb, “He is not here; he has risen, just as he said.” We too can have victory over death and we can have confidence that our physical death isn’t the end. Paul experienced that confidence when he said in Philippians 1:22,23, “For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain. If I am to go on living in the body, this will mean fruitful labor for me. Yet what shall I choose? I do not know! I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far…” Paul knew that for him to depart this world he would be in the presence of Christ. We can know just like Paul and countless others, that God indeed has prepared something for us that is so good that we can’t even begin to imagine or conceive just how great it will be.