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Jesus as the Resurrection and the Life

Every gardener knows that life springs out of a dead seed or at least an apparently dead seed. When I shake a dry seed out of it’s little paper package I observe no evidence of life. But when someone with a bit of green thumb takes that seed, places it in an appropriate growing medium gives it a suitable amount of water, suddenly a change takes place. Life springs from that dead seed. It is not that the seed itself is resurrected but new life comes from it.

Once we move beyond plant material the idea that life can spring from something that is dead seems impossible. If we approach the Bible with that idea we are going to discover an enormous stumbling block because there we discover that life did spring from death, not just plant life coming from a seed, but human life being restored and coming out of the grave.

With the resurrection of Jesus we find an event that is inexplicable by any natural means. It is truly a supernatural event. Supernatural but not merely spiritual because the Lord Jesus Christ was raised physically. The body in which he lived during His earthly ministry was restored to life. That is next to impossible for us to accept, let alone to understand. It seems to defy all logic. It seems to defy all evidence. And yet we have, in the New Testament, the record of many witnesses to the fact that the Lord Jesus Christ was indeed raised from the dead and lived again after He died.

Even before this happened, Jesus announced Himself to be the resurrection and the life. To declare Himself to be the life without commenting on His being the resurrection would not really go far enough. The fact that Jesus, who was to die and live again, declared Himself as the source of life gives much greater impact to the statement Jesus was the resurrection and the life. But not only for Himself.

Romans 8 makes it clear that the same power that brought Jesus out of the tomb, is available to the rest of us when we believe that Jesus died for our sin and was raised again. God gives us that same spirit, that spirit of life that brought Jesus out of the tomb. The Holy Spirit, which He gives to us, is God’s promise that He will raise us, too, from the dead just as He did His Son. Clearly it would be unreasonable to expect that people who didn’t believe in this would receive it. God makes that the condition for our receiving the Spirit of life and the hope of resurrection in the Lord.

When we recognize Jesus as the resurrection and the life and we accept by faith what God did to Him, in bringing Him out of the tomb, we suddenly find ourselves in the position of being able to receive the Holy Spirit that God has given to us. This is not just something that happens after we experience physical death, but in deed this resurrection life, this spirit of life comes into us as we believe. It animates us, it is what makes us alive.

The Bible talks about this in terms of abundant life. Jesus said that He had come to give us life and to give that life abundantly. That is not just to say eternal life, but full life. It is not just talking about quantity but quality as well. So we can experience a full and eternal life because of this fact that when we believe that Jesus is the resurrection and the life God gives us His Spirit as the promise that though we may pass through physical death, we will live eternally and fully in His presence.

Ron Hughes
© July 2006