It was going to be a beautiful day, at least, insofar as the weather was concerned. One could tell. It was still some minutes until sunrise, but it was one of those early pre-dawn mornings when the air smelled fresh, there was hardly any breeze, the night dew was drawing a damp but pleasant odor from the grass and the various flowers of the garden, and one could just tell that apart from the present, horrible circumstances, it was going to be a nice day.
But the women had come to tend the body of someone they had loved and even worshiped. The nightmarish events of the day before Passover still played themselves over and over in these grieving minds and hearts. The celebration of their highest holy day had been drab and empty. They had gone through the motions, but there had been no joy in it...no promise. Suddenly, the wonderful things God had done in the midst of the Egyptians to free His people had lost some of their splendor. What good were miracles, when the miracle worker lay torn and bloodless in the cold ground?
They had thought this One was to be the Deliverer of whom Moses had spoken. Somehow, His humiliation and ignoble death had set their hopes back to the beginning, and the Passover celebration this year only served to awaken them to the fact that the One they were waiting for, if He would ever come, was somewhere still out there...perhaps far out...in the future.
All their hopes had been dashed. But that would not keep them from dressing their dead loved-one.
As they neared the burial site however, they were greeted by an astounding vision. The entrance of the tomb was not blocked by a stone, as they had last seen it on Friday afternoon. Pilate’s seal was broken, the guards were gone, and the stone was standing aside. Even more amazing, was that there was a man there, sitting on the stone, in gleaming white clothing. He seemed by himself to illuminate the entire garden, though it was not quite day.
As the women stood, mouths gaping in awe, he said, “Do not be afraid; for I know that you are looking for Jesus who has been crucified. He is not here, for He has risen, just as He said. Come, see the place where He was lying. And go quickly and tell His disciples that He has risen from the dead; and behold, He is going before you into Galilee, there you will see Him; behold, I have told you”.
After that they saw Him. Mary saw Him and spoke with Him in the garden. Others saw Him in the locked upper room where they were hiding from the Jews. He ate with them. Two walked and talked with Him on the road to Emmaus. In the coming 40 days, many other selected witnesses saw and spoke with Him and touched Him and ate with Him; on one particular day, over 500 people saw Him at once.
He was different now. He had changed. His glory was not concealed any longer. He existed in a different realm now. He appeared and disappeared at will, and nothing hindered Him. Not locks, not walls, not the Jews or the Romans...nothing.
Finally, in the presence of His apostles, He rose from the ground in absolute sovereignty over gravity and all natural law, and disappeared into the clouds of Heaven.
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This is what we must never forget. According to Paul, this is what has become of the Christian. Nothing less.
“...(He) made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places, in Christ Jesus”
I want to talk to you today about what it means to be ‘raised up’. Last time we met in Ephesians we discussed what it was to be dead. You may remember my illustration from the movie, “Death Becomes Her”, and my zombie-like description of the one dead in trespasses and sins. I won’t go over all that again.
But I’ll ask you to pull what you can remember of that sermon from your mental file, and to make the contrast sharp as we can, consider where you, where we all, were raised up from.
Uselessness, Godlessness, hopelessness, utter decadence and decay.
Then, having considered that, we will leave it behind and focus on the brighter message; WHAT CHRIST NOW IS, WHAT WE NOW ARE IN HIM, and WHAT WE SHALL BE.
WHAT CHRIST NOW IS
Let me say to begin, that Christ is what He has always been. Hebrews 13:8 says “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, and today, yes, and forever”. He is God, one with the Father and the Holy Spirit, and has never been less than that at any time.
But in reference to His atoning work and His identification with us, there are things that we can say He ‘became’ in respect to His office as Redeemer.
First, He became a man. According to the Father’s pre-determined will and the eternal plan of the Triune God-head, He entered into time and space as an infant, and lived a life in the flesh, as John put it, “...and dwelt among us.”
Prior to that, we believe He made occasional appearances in human form as what the Old Testament calls, ‘the Angel of the Lord’. He appeared to Adam in the garden, He appeared to Abraham at Mamre and Moses at the burning bush and elsewhere. He appeared to Joshua by the Jordan, to Jacob, to Samson’s parents, (Manoah and his wife), to Gideon... but not until the fulness of time, in Bethlehem, through Mary, did He become flesh.
He did this for the specific purpose of shedding His blood and dying, to pay the penalty for the sins of all. But the entire work of redemption covers a much broader scope than the events of the day of His crucifixion.
In the flesh, He showed us that it is possible to walk according to the will of the Father. He showed us how to daily die to the hungers of the flesh. He showed us that true Godly purpose and fulfillment is in seeking that which comes from above, not what can be acquired in this world.
And some strange things are said about Him concerning His life of flesh and His sufferings.
We’re told that He learned obedience, and we’re told that through His sufferings He was made perfect (Hebrews 5:8,9).
That is not to say that He was ever disobedient, or that He was less than perfection, as God. But through His sufferings, which He never would have had to endure had He not become flesh, He experienced submission and obedience to the Father’s will, when His human will wanted to avoid that suffering.
“And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” Phil 2:8
And the perfection referred to there in Hebrews 5, is the perfect qualification to the office of High Priest that was attained to when He offered Himself the supreme sacrifice for all. As it says back in Hebrews 2:17,
“Therefore, He had to be made like His brethren in all things, that He might become a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people.”
These things were all necessary, as the risen Christ told the two on the Emmaus road, “...for the Christ to suffer these things and to enter into His glory”.
What Christ now is, is founded upon the sufferings He accomplished.
He is the Captain of our salvation. He is our great High Priest, eternal in the heavens. He is our advocate before the Throne of the Father, having taken the decree of debt that was against us and nailing it to His cross. He is our intercessor, He is Head over all things to the church, He is the soon coming King, He is the One to whom all authority has been given in heaven and on the earth, and He is the One who will reign eternally as King of Kings and Lord of Lords.
WHAT WE NOW ARE IN HIM
It is very important for you to understand, that what we are now in Him is spiritual. It is not flesh. Not of the flesh. That is why we do not yet see all things that we now are in Him. We have to take them by faith; but we must believe that they are real and true of us now, not just someday in the sweet by and by.
This is difficult for us, I know. Every time I teach this principle I struggle for words, and to this point I don’t think I’ve ever found a way to say it that leaves me satisfied that I have conveyed the message effectively.
When we use the words ‘spirit’ and ‘spiritual’, our minds automatically click over to the ‘I’m hearing a fantasy’ mode. Especially, I think, in our modern world, with modern forms of entertainment; the quick read or the movie packed with special effects.
Like the involuntary reflex of blinking, we hear the words and the pictures that flood our minds range from Casper the friendly ghost, to Jacob Marley adorned in chains and steel balls, to feminine angel figures with flowing blonde hair and long, billowing wings.
But I want you to put those pictures aside today, listener, and consider this. Jesus, our Lord, has a body. It is not a body of flesh any longer, but a spiritual body; but a body, nonetheless. Listen:
“...even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know Him thus no longer.” II Cor. 5:16
Then in I Corinthians 15, Paul explains...
“It (the body) is sown a perishable body, it is raised an imperishable body; it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body.”
When we were identified with Christ, we identified with His death. God the Father now reckons us as dead to sin and the things of the flesh, and alive to the Spirit; alive to God.
So the difference now between us and Jesus, is that His body is now spiritual, and ours is still flesh. But being raised up with Him, there are things that we are now to God, that we were not before we believed.
Let me explain this further.
When we were still in Adam, lost to God because of the Adamic nature, we were dead to God. We were alive to Adam, but dead to God.
And so it is with all in this world today, who are not saved. Their spirit is dead, and they are dead to God. They talk about Him, and some will even say they believe in Him.
But at the very best, it is an idol that they believe in. It is a god of their own mind; one they have formed in their fallen thinking and said, “this is God as I understand Him”, but in reality, they do not understand God at all. They cannot understand. They are dead.
But the moment a person repents of their sin and turns to God through Jesus Christ, they receive new birth ~ spiritual birth ~ from above, and now, in the spirit, they are alive to God and dead to Adam.
Being alive to God, means knowing Him. It means understanding what He is saying to you through His word. It means being aware when He is speaking to you by His Spirit. It means having the ability now to submit to His will and obey His commands; whereas when you were dead to God and alive to Adam, you didn’t have the power to do any of those things.
Do you hear what I’m saying? In short, what He has made you mirrors what Christ is.
Romans 6:9,10 says, “...knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, is never to die again; death no longer is master over Him. For the death that He died, He died to sin, once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God.”
So when we say Christ is raised from the dead, we can also say that we are raised from the dead. Present tense. Are raised.
When we say that Christ is never to die again, we can also say that we are never to die again.
When we say that death is no longer master over Christ, we can also say that death is no longer master over us. We need never fear death again. It’s in our past.
And when we say that Christ died to sin, we can also say that we died to sin, because when He died to sin, He died once for all of us.
And when we say that the life He lives, He lives to God, we can say that we live our lives to God. That’s why Romans 6:11 goes on to say, “Even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus”.
God reckons us so, therefore we must see ourselves that way too.
I want you to understand today, believer in Christ, that you are the only truly living people in this world. You are very significant. You are important! Because you and the other Christians are the only people in this world who have Life and the ability to give that Life to others.
You are aliens, walking on a dead and dying world, amongst the corpses of the dead inhabitants of this planet. That is what you are right now, in Christ.
You are not like them any more. Sin is their master, not yours. Death is their master, but not yours. They do not know God. You do. They do not know anything beyond this world and this life, but you know about it and, indeed, you can often feel the tug of it on your heart, as you yearn for that better place for which you were created.
You are infinitely different than the people that belong to this present world, Christian. Jesus wants to you see that.
Finally, let’s talk about WHAT WE SHALL BE
Well, John, in his first epistle to the church back there near Revelation, says, “Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not appeared as yet what we shall be. We know that, when He appears, we shall be like Him, because we shall see Him just as He is.” (3:2)
So I don’t want to sound like I’m contradicting what John has said. I believe that what John is expressing to us is that until we get to heaven we really can’t fathom what it’s going to be like...what we’re going to be like; but “WE KNOW THAT”...
Hear those words? “WE KNOW THAT...” So I guess we know...
that when He appears we shall be like Him.
Instantly transformed by His power to subject all things to Himself; transformed perfectly into His image. We shall be like Him. We know that.
So what shall we be?
We’ll be like Jesus. Unfettered by time or space. Experiencing for the first time, as we never could in this life, perfect and absolute clarity of thought and understanding.
We shall know as we are known (I Cor. 13:12)
There will no longer be any need for faith, for we will possess all things promised and preserved for us. No need for hope, for our hopes will have been realized fully. But we will know perfect Love, perfectly.
“O perfect Love,” wrote Dorothy Gurney, “all human thought transcending; Lowly we kneel in prayer before Thy throne.”
We will be made fit to rule and reign with Him. We will judge angels.
I don’t know what else. We’ll be like Him. It doesn’t get any better than that.
But dwell on this thought today, believer; What we WILL be is as sure, and MORE sure than what you are today.
This is not fantasy. It is not fodder for dreams. The same God who has brought to pass, perfectly, everything He predicted through His prophets and finally in His Son, will bring the rest to pass in His time; and it will not fail.
We will be like Him.
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It was going to be a terrible day. One could tell. Even in the predawn darkness there was a smell of death in the air. For three and a half years life had been miserable; that is...for those who had survived at all.
Violent crime had been rampant. Starvation commonplace. Natural disaster and calamity had only been compounded by the terrorist tactics of the world’s leader and his minions.
Death, doom and despair had become the bywords of the nations, and the Jews, especially, had decided that their God, the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob had forever turned His back on His people.
As the sun peeked over the eastern horizon, the armies marched on the little nation of Israel from every direction, and everyone knew deep down in their soul, that this was it. This was going to be the end for millions upon millions of people, and maybe even the end of the world.
It had come to that. But in the misery of the past months and years, and the increasing devastation of all that ever mattered, men and women everywhere had sadly been united by this thought ~ if the end comes today, it will be a relief. There just is no reason anymore to continue. All is vanity. All is lost. There is no hope.
The battle raged. Blood flowed in the valley of Armageddon until it reached the bridles of the horses there. Man’s hatred for God and for his fellow man and for himself had rolled into a big explosive ball and finally released itself in this horrible place, on this horrible day, and Satan was dancing with glee.
Suddenly, light so blinding that it made the sun appear dark in comparison, flashed across the polluted skies. There was a noise that seemed like a million claps of thunder all rolled into one and the entire planet shook with one sharp jolt that sent everyone in the world to the ground at once.
Those in the valley stopped fighting one another and turned their weapons toward whatever that was, coming from the sky.
The world leader himself, watching the battle from afar, ran from his bunker with his aids and his guards and his right-hand man, and from deep in his bowels came a demonic cry of desperation. “NO-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O!!! It can’t be HIM!!!”
Looking down on a devastated earth, each one riding his own white stallion, the church of Christ followed behind their Champion. With speed faster than thought they entered the smoke-filled atmosphere and spread out to cover the whole earth, as the King of Kings and Lord of Lords shouted out one word. And with that simple command all the armies of the enemy fell back to the ground. All the weapons of man melted into the sand, useless and harmless, forever.
His foot touched down on the Mount of Olives in precisely the same place that same foot had lifted off when He ascended into Heaven so long ago; and when it touched, the mountain split in two.
The world leader and his right-hand man were quickly swept off their feet and thrown into a large lake of fire that had opened up in the ground with the King’s arrival. Then Satan himself, cowering and whimpering, was grabbed by the scruff of his neck and bound to the side of the pit.
The war was over. The sky cleared. The King declared the kingdoms of this world His own, and called down the New Jerusalem, that glorious city not made with hands, to hover over the earth.
His church, His own, those who had been raised up and seated with Him in the Heavenly Places; those who had cast their crowns gladly at His feet; those who had overcome and were granted to sit with Him on His throne; those who had returned with Him to the world that had rejected them because it rejected Him,... now set about under the King’s authority and rule, and in His power, to rebuild the earth in His name, where they would live with Him and reign with Him and come and go from His throne as princes and princesses of the Kingdom, until the millennium passed as He had decreed, when He would create His new heaven and new earth, where they would dwell with Him in righteousness forever.
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That scene will occur as historical fact, believer. It will be just as real as that first resurrection morning at the garden tomb. And you will be there, if you have been raised up and seated in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.
The day is coming soon, and it will not fail.
“Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your toil is not in vain in the Lord”
I Cor. 15:58
