Day 243 - FOUNDATION STONES IN A YEAR

Read: Romans 8

We must remember that ‘resurrection’ does not mean being “raised to heaven” or “taken up in glory.”  Neither Elijah nor Enoch had been resurrected in the sense that Daniel meant it. 

Resurrection will happen only to people who are already dead.  To speak of the destruction of the body and the continuing existence, however blessed, of something else (call it a “soul” for the sake of argument) is not to speak of resurrection, but simply of death itself.  Resurrection is not simply death from another viewpoint; it is the reversal of death,  its cancellation, the destruction of its power.  And thus it is so important to fully grasp that God is the living God who has no truck with death. 

Earliest Christianity simply believed in resurrection, that is, the overcoming of death by the justice-bringing power of the creator God. For early Christians, resurrection was seen to consist of passing death and out the other side into a new sort of bodily life.  As Romans 8 shows, Paul clearly believed that God would give new life to the mortal bodies of Christians and indeed to the entire created world: “If the Spirit of the God who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised the Messiah Jesus from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit who lives in you” (Romans 8:11). 

Resurrection hope turned those who believed it into an alternative society that knew the worst that tyrants could do and knew that the true God had the answer.  But the Christians had an extra reason for this hope, a reason which, they would have said, explained their otherwise extraordinary focus on, and sharpening of, this particular Jewish belief.  For the Christians believed that the Messiah had already been raised from the dead.

Prayer

Thank You Lord for allowing me the revelation of the resurrection