The Spirit Of The Resurrection

The Spirit of the Resurrection

I heard about a woman named Carol. She was the organist at her church. She was a good musician but did something no organist should ever do at her church. She overslept on Easter morning and missed the sunrise service. She was so embarrassed. Of course, the minister and the church forgave her. They teased her about it, but it was done lovingly and in good fun.

The following year, on Easter, her phone rang at 5 a.m. Jolted awake by the loud ringing, she scrambled to answer it. It was the minister, and he said, “Carol, it’s Easter morning. The Lord has risen! And I suggest you do the same!”

We, too, can be resurrected. Christ shares his resurrection with us. He rises, and so can we. We, too, can have new life. We, too, can make a fresh start. And one day, in the future, we will rise out of our graves to eternal life.

Philippians 3:7-10 (NKJV):

7 But what things were gain to me, these I have counted loss for Christ. 8 Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ 9 and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith; 10 that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death, 11 if, by any means, I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.

I like calling the anniversary of the resurrection of Jesus “Resurrection Day” rather than “Easter.” The word “Easter” is not in the Bible other than a mistranslation of Passover in the KJV. If my studies are correct, Easter derives from the name of a pagan fertility goddess, Ishtar. The use of rabbits and Easter eggs commemorates fertility, not resurrection.

The facts of the gospel are simple. The gospel is the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. Paul laid them out in 1 Corinthians 15:1-8 (NKJV):

Moreover, brethren, I declare to you the gospel which I preached to you, which also you received and in which you stand, 2 by which also you are saved, if you hold fast that word which I preached to you—unless you believed in vain.

3 For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4 and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures, 5 and that He was seen by Cephas, then by the twelve. 6 After that He was seen by over five hundred brethren at once, of whom the greater part remain to the present, but some have fallen asleep. 7 After that He was seen by James, then by all the apostles. 8 Then last of all He was seen by me also, as by one born out of due time.

There is more to the gospel than citing or understanding facts. As God-followers, we entered an arena different from anything we have experienced apart from Him. We now engaged with God on spiritual terms, not logical or even emotional. God is more concerned about our character than our feelings or intellect. Since this is spiritual engagement, it involves the Holy Spirit. He teaches us certain things in conjunction with His inspired word and enables us to comprehend what we could not otherwise.

The Spirit’s impact involves several things, including the condition of our hearts. The Holy Spirit can move us beyond logic if we have receptive hearts. When the Spirit was present at Pentecost in Acts 2, He empowered the words of Peter and the other apostles so much that their hearers were “cut to the heart.”

While Peter appealed to the scriptures and the details of the crucifixion, the Holy Spirit supernaturally and spiritually impacted the people. The apostles experienced the risen Savior between Passover and Pentecost. However, the difference between the apostles before Pentecost and after isn’t the gospel’s facts but the Spirit’s presence.

We are in spiritual, not intellectual, warfare. The demons are running rampant convincing people to embrace wrong values, calling evil good and good evil (Isaiah 5:20). Information and logic are involved in this warfare, but it does not end with these. How much more do we need the Holy Spirit to help us see beyond the veil of spiritual blindness and to the light of God’s Son? We need the word of God and the facts of the gospel, but we also need the Spirit of God to touch our hearts. Jesus said in John 6:63 (NKJV):