The Greatest Power Series

His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness.

2 Peter 1:3 (NIV)

Notice that God’s power gives us “everything we need for life”. In fact, you might even want to underline those words. God’s power is sufficient for every need in my life. It is enough to overcome every trial and temptation. It is adequate to allow me to live out my faith in an unsupportive culture. We already touched on that briefly a couple of weeks ago when we talked about God’s incomparably great power for us who believe. But other than the context of Ephesians 1, how do I know that it is resurrection power, and not some other type of power that we are looking at here? I could take you to a number of passages that would support that premise, but let’s look at just a couple.

First, let’s go to another of Peter’s letters:

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,

1 Peter 1:3 (NIV)

Peter doesn’t use the word “power” in this verse, but if you’ll go back and read the verses which follow, you’ll find that Peter writes these words in the context of God’s power enabling us to persevere in the trials of life. That’s what he’s writing about when he says that we are given a “new birth into a living hope”. And how do we get that power? Through the resurrection of Jesus. So it is resurrection power than enables me to consecrate my life to God right now.

But how does that work in practical terms. In order to understand that, we need to go to the writer of Hebrews:

Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.

Hebrews 12:2 (NIV)

It is the life of Jesus that demonstrates how resurrection power enables me to live a life that is consecrated to God. In fact, the writer of Hebrews exhorts us to look to the life of Jesus as a demonstration of how resurrection power should work in our lives.

We know that Jesus faced all kinds of opposition in his ministry. The culture of His day wasn’t very receptive or supportive. People wanted to destroy His ministry, even if it meant killing Him. To be real honest, most of us haven’t faced even a small fraction of what Jesus went through. And yet Jesus was able to face all those difficulties and still live a life without sin and fulfill the mission for which He had come to the earth.

And how did He do that? He kept His focus on the joy set before Him. Jesus could endure because He looked forward to the resurrection. That was the joy set before Him. Because he knew that His Father would exercise the greatest power ever known in order to raise Him from the dead, Jesus could face whatever circumstances came His way.

Today, we’re on the other side of the resurrection. And knowing that God had the power to raise Jesus from the dead and seat Him at His right hand in the heavenly realms means that God certainly has the power to help us get through our everyday life and remain faithful to Him. Compared to raising Jesus from the dead, helping us through the trials of life is frankly a pretty meager exercise of God’s power.