The role of Jesus at the cross did not end with His death. It ended with the resurrection. We do not celebrate a dead Savior who gave His life for us, and we simply remember what He did. We celebrate a risen Savior who did die for us but now lives and is reigning, ruling, and interceding for us. When Jesus died, the disciples fled in fear and terror. When Jesus rose and then imbued them with power, they became the boldest and most fearless men who ever lived. They make all our modern heroes in our movies, books, and games look like pansies, and that is no knock on those heroes. The disciples became that and much more. They were given the “elixir,” the new life in Christ by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.
This part of the Gospel is frequently neglected due to simply tying it to the cross. The ascension of Christ is another neglected doctrine that should be preached once again. They both relate to this part of the Gospel. Jesus did not merely rise from the dead, but He has ascended and is reigning and ruling now as the King. Jesus is the only person ever to hold the three primary offices of prophet, priest, and king all at the same time. Jesus did not merely die to cover for our sins. He rose again so that we might have new life that He lives in and through us.
Many preachers, books, and presentations miss this so vital part of the Gospel. They may state that Jesus rose, but they don’t go into what that means. Most people treat it as Jesus “completing” a gap in our lives or “Jesus fills a God-shaped hole in your heart.” There is truth to that, but the Christian life is not an add-on to an already established life. Because we treat the character of God lightly and the severity of our sin lightly, most modern evangelism has garnered rightful critiques that you can live whatever life you want, confess your sin before you die, and you can get away with it all. That’s not the Gospel. While Jesus will wipe the slate clean on a legal basis, there are some sins we commit that no amount of faith in Christ is going to remove the stain on our earthly lives with the consequences thereof. David and Paul are prime case studies. David lived with his sin of adultery and murder for the rest of his life, and he was permanently marked for it. Paul persecuted and murdered Christians before becoming one himself, and he would be haunted by this fact for the rest of his life.
But with Paul in particular, we get to see what the Gospel is and what the Gospel does. It literally changes your life. Christianity and the substitutional atonement are much more than Jesus being our literal substitute for the judgment of God where Jesus takes our sin as though it was His own and then gives us His righteousness as though it was our own. It is much more than that. Jesus takes the sinful life upon Himself, the sinful desires, wishes, and dreams, and the desire to rule one’s own life without God. He gives us His life, a life that longs after God, seeks the things of God, and seeks to be with God forever. But to get this new life, we have to give up the old life. I’ll unpack this a few more weeks, but Jesus said that to be His disciple, we have to deny ourselves and take up our cross daily. We no longer want the sinful life. It grieves us when we sin; it disgusts us, and we no longer want to associate with it. We may be stuck in it for a season, but we don’t want to be, and we will start seeing more and more victory over it the holier we become.
The resurrected life means that sin and death have no more grip on us. When the disciples learned and grasped the resurrection of Christ, they no longer feared death, which means absolutely nothing could faze them. Most of Western Christendom only understands the resurrection in theory as an event from 2000 years ago, but not Jesus as the living Savior today. How can I say that? Because of how easily people cower and are willing to change the message at the mere question of a slave girl or a college professor. The fear of man still grips us, and it has a strong grip. That is why we are so weak today. We don’t know the power of the resurrected life.
Yet, there is still hope to get it. I’m noticing a trend brewing among those who are genuinely born again. There is a call to return to resurrection life and away from pure intellectual Christianity. My pastor has been preaching on this for the last year, and I am writing this series because I see a need for this in my own life, let alone needing it in others. And I am seeing others still starting to push more and more for a Biblical-centered thinking and Christ-focused life. There is a call to return to sound preaching and then for true revival that is not pure emotionalism but genuine repentance and holiness. It is time we get the resurrected Jesus back in our view. Personally, I still have too much of an intellectual, fact-driving faith. It is absolutely necessary to have the intellectual understanding and the facts correct, but that is not good enough. We need the true, practical faith that calls for denial of self and self’s understanding of things and true reliance upon Christ and what He did for us once again.
The resurrection life is also much more than no longer wanting the sinful lifestyle and replacing it with a God-centered life. It is also eternity focused. The Gospel deals with much more than just our sin here and now and the judgment that will come; it also deals with eternity and when God will come to bring all things to an end once and for all.
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