Resurrection changes everything. It changes the way we see the past, the present, and the future. In the new life of Christ we are all offered the promise that death is not the end.
It really is only the beginning.
Begin now to see God at work to bring life again, to you and to every one.
Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.
John 20:30-31
At the close of John’s Gospel, he tells us that the main reason he wrote down the story was so that all who read it “may come to believe.” Believe what? There are probably a number of ways to answer that question, but certainly the defining moment in the Gospel is Jesus’ resurrection. We live hundreds of years after these things took place and in spite of the amazing accomplishments we’ve enjoyed in science and medicine, Jesus’ resurrection remains a mind-blowing event! Do you appreciate just how awesome it is?
It’s not just that Jesus’ dead body came back to life, but this event was of such cosmic proportions that it reconfigured everything that happened before and after. The resurrection is the power and person of God unleashed into the world like never before. To believe in resurrection is to believe that God’s kingdom is come. If God’s kingdom has come, then our lives must conform to the standards of that kingdom. This way of living does not happen in one moment, but it comes through daily walking, and believing, that Christ is risen.
Tammy Wiens-Sorge
Risen Lord, hear my prayer this day. Let me live with the conviction that your kingdom has come and that my life makes a difference in this great cosmic plan of yours. Open my heart to do your will. Amen.
But if Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness.
If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you.
Romans 8:10-11