Part 7 – To come alive in Christ     

The reality of what God created us for – the human potential he gave us in Genesis – comes alive in Christ. Apart from him it won’t happen (John 15:5). Only Jesus is “the way” to our human potential being restored (John 14:6), “the truth” of how its done, and the source of bringing it all to “life” in us personally.

Our attachment to Christ, then, is essential, which is why the Father raised Jesus from the dead and “united us with him in his resurrection,” Romans 6:5. Which is quite startling, that “God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms,” Ephesians 2:6. Not “will” raise us up in a future resurrection, note; it’s “you have been raised with Christ,” Colossians 3:1. It’s happened already.

So right now we’re alive together with Christ. We sit with him. It’s what the Father ripped us out of this “dominion of darkness” for, to “bring us into the kingdom of the Son he loves,” Colossians 1:13. 

So we’re right there with Jesus in his world. And for what purpose? For creating new humans, who are being restored back to what God made humans to be in the first place. All these new humans coming alive in Christ, therefore, so that one day, Colossians 3:4,“When Christ appears” and “you appear with him in glory,” the whole world will see what God had in mind for us humans. Because there these new humans will be, in all their glory for all to see: living witnesses to the glory Jesus prayed we’d have in John 17:24. 

To come alive in Christ, then, means becoming a new creation. And that’s going to make a huge difference in our lives, because “if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit, who lives in you,” Romans 8:11. The same Spirit that raised Jesus to new life from the dead is now living in us to do the same thing – “conforming us to the likeness” of Jesus, because that was the Father’s original and intended plan for us (verse 29).  

Jesus became the first of those new humans, and through the Spirit many more are coming alive to “live that new life” too (Romans 6:4)…(continues tomorrow) 

Part 6 – So Jesus can live his life in us     

We see what our human potential is in the life of Jesus, because he lived what his Father created us humans to be. 

But we didn’t live it. We blew our potential right off the bat in Genesis, and since then “all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God,” Romans 3:23.  

So the Father gave Jesus the job of restoring the glory we’d fallen short of. But how, when Jesus was the only one who’d lived it, and none of the rest of us had? Well, the solution to Jesus was obvious, as we see in his prayer to his Father in John 17:26, that “I myself may be in them.” Simple solution: live what he had so successfully lived as a human, in us. 

And it’s not surprising that Jesus came up with that as the obvious solution, when in his own human life it was trusting the Father to live his life in him that had enabled Jesus to be so successful (John 14:10-11). So if we could trust Jesus for the same reason, then as Jesus said,“anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing,” John 14:12. We could be, and live, like him.

He explained how he’d make it possible too: it would be through the “Spirit of truth” living “with” us and “in” us (John 14:17), “taking from what is mine (all that Jesus is) and making it known to you” (John 16:13-14). The Spirit takes everything in Jesus’ life – every teaching, command and example – and fills our minds with them too (John 14:26). And that’s how Jesus lives his life in us. 

Which is what Jesus wants to do. Using his own analogy in John 15:5 – “I am the vine; you are the branches” – he’s constantly feeding who and what he is into us. And by trusting him to do that, through the Holy Spirit, we “will bear much fruit.” More and more we become like him and what the Father intended us humans to be, thereby restoring the glory of our potential that we lost in Genesis. 

The key to it being verses 7-8, that “If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish (to become like him), and it will be given you. This is to my Father’s glory.” Because what gives glory to the Father is the unfolding of his plan in humans becoming like his Son…(continues tomorrow) 

Part 5 – To turn our disaster into joy    

Our human potential was amazing in the beginning, but it soon turned into a disaster when evil got a foothold in our heads.

But the Father had a plan of salvation that would take the utterly unsalvageable and restore it, and in so doing turn our disaster into joy. It would be like restoring a mouldy banana or a rusted piece of metal to its original pristine condition, when the rot and rust are so bad it’s impossible to salvage anything. But God takes the unsalvageable and restores it to its original beauty, by taking upon himself (as the human Jesus) the suffering and death we brought on ourselves and transforming them into joy. That’s the marvel of God, but how does it work? How can disaster be turned into joy?

As a grandparent, I got a little glimpse of how this works when our 5 year old granddaughter broke one of our dishes. It was beyond repair and she was devastated. She fell on the floor, crying her eyes out. I got down on the floor with her, hugged her tightly and said, “Cheer up, all is forgiven!” It had a magical effect on her. She stopped crying, looked up at me and said, “OK,” and off she went, happy and free. From an unsalvageable disaster to joy. What a marvellous transformation it was.

How did it happen? By the same process Jesus transformed our unsalvageable mess into joy – by absorbing the pain and penalty of our sin into himself, just like I absorbed the cost of the dish, and my granddaughter’s pain. And what was her reaction? Instant relief, peace of mind and joy. I imagine she could hardly believe her luck. Here she was sitting in a pile of broken dish parts being hugged – and at no cost whatsoever to her either. She was forgiven, loved and free to go.

Which is exactly what God does with us. We bring all this suffering and death on ourselves but God comes as Jesus and doesn’t hold any of it against us (2 Corinthians 5:19), nor does he expect us to pay for what we’ve done. He absorbs it all himself.

How can you not want to hug a God like that? But that’s exactly what he’s after, a hug. A hug of relief, peace of mind and joy on our part when we realize God knew our pain, shared every bit of it himself, and absorbed the cost of all our disastrous behaviour in himself, so we’d know we’re forgiven, fully loved, and free again to fulfill our potential…(continues tomorrow)

Part 4 – To enter Jesus’ world    

The goal of the Father’s plan of salvation was us coming to love his Son as he always has. And Jesus happily went along with it because we would then experience the Father’s love as he always has. 

Jesus willingly died for us, therefore, so we could enter the world he lives in, as we see in John 17:24 when he prayed, “Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world.”

And this is what Jesus now lives for, verse 26, “to make you, Father, known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them.” That’s the world Jesus lives in, of knowing and experiencing the constant love of his Father. His greatest wish, therefore, is for us to live in that world too.   

Or as Paul phrased it in Colossians 1:12-14, we can “thank the Father for enabling us to share in the inheritance that belongs to his people, who live in the light. For the Father has rescued us from the kingdom of darkness and transferred us into the Kingdom of his dear Son, who purchased our freedom and forgave our sins.”

The Father wants all his children to live in the world of his love that his Son lives in. That’s why the Father “rescued us” – saved us – “from the kingdom of darkness” that we were stuck in and couldn’t get out of. 

And we know how he did it too, that “in Christ we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.” It was through Christ’s shed blood on the cross that made Jesus’ love for us so real. And that’s when a whole new world of love and light opens up to us, understanding what the Father wants for us, and how real he made it for us through the love of his Son willing to give his life to buy back the potential we had in the beginning.  

And why did the Father do it this way? Because it shone a bright light on his Son, “the Son he loves” (verse 13, NIV). 

That’s what the Father wants us to see through this whole process of saving us. It’s how great his Son is, in giving his human life – and his resurrected life – to make his Father’s plan for us happen…(continues tomorrow)   

Part 3 – By an unusual solution     

To restore our human potential, the Father came up with a most unusual solution: “redemption through Christ’s blood,” Ephesians 1:7. Which is a bit harsh on Jesus, isn’t it, because why should he have to suffer and die for our foolishness? 

But Jesus didn’t see it that way, because he knew “The Father loves the Son,” John 3:35. So whatever the Father had planned for him – including dying a horrible human death – there was a loving purpose behind it.

Jesus also knew that all his Father’s plans were being fulfilled and completed “through him and for him” (Colossians 1:16), including “placing everything in his hands” (John 3:35), “bringing all things in heaven and on earth together” under him (Ephesians 1:10), and making him the source of our eternal life (1 John 5:11-12). So Jesus knew how much his Father revered, loved and trusted him.

So what could possibly be the Father’s purpose in having him die, then? 

Well, look at it from the Father’s point of view. He knows how great his Son is, which is why he handed the reins of his plan to him. But how could he get us to see his Son as he does, so that we come to love, trust and revere his Son too? Because as Jesus said in John 14:21 – “the Father loves you because you have loved me.”

To the Father, loving his Son is the key, so what did the Father put in his plan that would give us the love for his Son? Well, “This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us,” 1 John 3:16. 

This is how we’d come to love his Son, in seeing his willingness to become human and die for us. Which explains why the Father let us get in a horrible mess in the first place, because in his solution we would see the love of his Son. And to the Father there is nothing more important than that. 

And there’s nothing more important to Jesus too, because in loving him the Father loves us. And to Jesus there is no greater gift he could give us than that (John 17:24, 26). No wonder, then, he went along with his Father’s plan, when he knew this was what it would lead to…(continues tomorrow)  

Part 2 – To fulfill our potential     

The good news “gospel of our salvation” is that the plan God put in place “before the creation of the world” was to make us humans “holy and blameless in his sight,” Ephesians 1:4. Imagine this planet, then, with all us humans – politicians, corporate leaders, educators, financiers, carers of children, animals and the environment, etc. – all of us being really good people.  

But that’s exactly the potential God had in mind for us. He made us sovereign rulers of this planet, and equipped us to make it a wonderful place to be. Instead, however, we still fall for the seductive power of evil that “alienates us from God” and makes us “enemies in our minds because of our evil behaviour,” Colossians 1:21. 

So instead of us being on course to fulfilling our potential, we constantly end up “falling short of the glory of God” he’d planned for us, Romans 3:23. Which prompted Paul to ask a rather piercing question in verse 27, because looking at the mess people were causing in his day he asked: “So where, then, is boasting?”  

He’s got a point, because instead of fulfilling our God-given potential to be spreaders of his wisdom, love and creativity all over the planet, with the most incredible results for the whole creation, we’ve been reduced to the “god of this age blinding our minds so we can’t see the light of the gospel,” 2 Corinthians 4:4. So it’s hard even seeing what we humans were created for, let alone fulfilling it.

But we thrash away at life anyway, which is really quite pathetic, because no matter how good, clever, hard working, or well educated we are, or how well we’ve looked after our health, finances, family and community, or how many different ideologies we try, or revolutions we inspire, or new inventions we come up with, we’re still stuck with the same old problems.  

And how frustrating is that, especially after we’ve learnt that the potential of humanity to be good and do good is huge? So what would this world be like if that good in us was given the chance to shine supreme after all? Well, if the “gospel of our salvation” still stands, that is what God has in mind for us. So how is he bringing it about?…(continues tomorrow)    

Part 1 – To give us what we dream of

Ephesians 1:13 describes the Christian message as “the gospel of your salvation” – the good news that we’re being rescued and delivered.

Which for some may sound a bit odd, because what do we need to be rescued and delivered from? But for those who recognize there’s something terribly wrong with us, the Christian message has a ring of truth. We really do need saving.  

Because there’s no denying we have a lot of unsolvable problems on this marvellous planet of ours. We can’t end poverty, war, disease, child abuse, power crazy tyrants, or greedy corporations. We are a mess, and a powerless mess at that, because evil persists no matter what we throw at it. 

But there’s no denying we have a lot of GOOD in us as well. We dream of a better world, and we work hard to make it better. We love peace. We love family. We love helping out in the community. We love seeing children safe and successful. We jump in to help in emergencies and disasters, and we sacrifice our time, money, and even our lives for the sake of others. And despite all the bad things happening, there’s still a lot of good in us longing to make life on this planet better.

And we recognize this in ourselves, that we are an exasperating mixture of good and bad, and if only we could get the bad part out of us, we could make this planet a great place to live for everyone.

Well, that’s exactly what the gospel means by “salvation,” that God dealt with the bad part in us. In Romans 8:3 (The Message), “God went for the jugular when he sent his own Son. He didn’t deal with the problem as something remote and unimportant. In his Son, Jesus, he personally took on the human condition in order to set it right once and for all.”

The Christian message, then, is that God dealt with the bad in us through his Son, and now through the Spirit he makes possible the good he put in us too. Both parts make up the word “salvation.” And that makes “the gospel of our salvation” important, because in it is the promise of the better world we dream of…(continues tomorrow)

Part 8 – Proof daily 

In John 5:24, Jesus told Martha, “Whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has crossed over from death to life.” And by “life” he meant “eternal” life (same verse) – meaning we can experience eternal life now. Every day.

John confirms that in 1 John 5:11 when he writes, “God has given us eternal life.” It’s already ours to experience, therefore. John explains how it’s ours too: it’s because “this life is in his Son.” Jesus is the source of it. So anyone “who has the Son,” verse 12, “has life.” To have Jesus in our life means we can experience eternal life now, every day. But how? 

Paul gave us a clue from his own life in 2 Corinthians 1:8-9, when writing about “the hardships we suffered in the province of Asia. We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired even of life. Indeed, in our hearts we felt the sentence of death.” 

Paul reached the point he couldn’t take any more. And who doesn’t feel that way at some point in life, when hope is shattered by illness, accidents, job loss, family and marriage issues, personal addictions and crippling stress? “But,” Paul continues in verse 9, what he and his companions suffered “happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, WHO RAISES THE DEAD.”

Paul puts this entire physical experience we call “life,” with all its hardships and stress, into one simple package: It’s all meant to teach us that Jesus is always there for us, night and day, to raise us from the dead, by lifting us, as he did Paul, out of our hopelessness, weakness, and our inability to cope with our emotions and the circumstances we’re in. We need him to “deliver us from our deadly perils” too, as Paul phrased it in verse 10, SO THAT when we trust the resurrected Jesus to do that for us and he does it, we then “set out hope that he will CONTINUE to deliver us” any time – and any day – we get in such a fix again.

Because that way we’ll KNOW he’s alive. We’ve got real live experiences in our everyday lives, proving to us again and again that we’ve already “crossed over from death to life” – because Jesus really did come back from the dead to make it possible.

(Coming up next: “Saved…” – digging into the meaning of salvation) 

Part 7 – Proof personally

There are many people today, and especially young people, who reject the historical, cultural, logical, and even the scientific evidence of Jesus’ resurrection. And for an understandable reason too, because they hear Christians saying that everything changed when Jesus ascended to heaven after his resurrection, that a new creation began on this planet with Jesus in charge, and he’s now restoring – and even RE-creating – humans to what God originally created us to be. 

“But where is the proof of it?” they ask, when there’s still so much suffering, war, disease, poverty, corruption and mental illness in the world, and religion hasn’t made people act any better either?

Good point. And look at the state of the Christian Church too, riddled with pedophiles, practicing homosexuals, bishops voting to celebrate same-sex marriage and gender fluidity, the fearsome threats of Hell for unsaved souls, and the weirdness of floating in disembodied souls in Heaven for eternity too. Throw in the Crusades for good measure, and all the other killings done by Christians in God’s name – like the vicious battles between Catholics and Protestants – and no wonder we’re living in a post-Christian, anti-Christian “want nothing to do with God” world.

And look at the state of individual Christians as well, suffering all the same problems of sickness, accidents, depression, anger, broken marriages and financial worries as everyone else. So where are all these wonderful changes that prove Jesus was resurrected and is now in charge of the whole world putting things to rights? If they’re not visible in the world, or in a sorely divided and messed up Christian church, or in the visible lives of Christians, where do we look for proof instead?

And isn’t that the next challenge we face as Christians? If no obvious changes have happened to us PERSONALLY for believing Jesus was resurrected, surely it renders all that historical, cultural, logical and scientific proof obsolete, doesn’t it? I mean, why bother with Jesus’ resurrection at all if it doesn’t make any noticeable and wonderful difference in a person’s life? 

So, what differences in us personally did Jesus say would happen?.…(continues tomorrow) 

Part 6 – Proof scientifically 

Even if Jesus did survive the flogging and the crucifixion, and he was put in the tomb while still alive, how could he – in his massively weakened condition – have loosened himself from the tightly bound linen he was wrapped in, weighed down by 70 pounds of spices, and then on his own strength move the huge stone from the entrance and overpower at least two armed Roman guards on sentry duty outside?

And who would have followed such a man in his mangled condition too? Jesus was a physical wreck, covered in blood and gaping wounds. The last thing people would think of doing when looking at Jesus’ tattered body was to make him their leader. They’d more likely be thinking, “Get that poor man to a hospital.”

But maybe, as some claim, those five hundred eye witnesses who saw Jesus alive after his crucifixion were hallucinating, and they only thought they saw him alive. Do they have a point, though? Because when the disciples first saw Jesus after his resurrection they thought he was a ghost, and maybe they were hallucinating too. But Jesus immediately corrected that by asking for something to eat (Luke 24:36-43). Ghosts don’t eat. And that’s what convinced them it really was Jesus standing before them in a healed human body. And who would be willing to die for a hallucination, too?

Historically, culturally and logically the evidence supporting Jesus’ resurrection is undeniable. But for some people that’s still not enough. They want SCIENTIFIC proof. Which is a bit difficult because how can the scientific method of observation, experimentation and testing be applied to a one time event that cannot be repeated? Like the “Big Bang.” No one was there at the time to see that either, nor can it be repeated. So how do scientists conclude that it happened?  

Because the scientific method allows for a “best explanation.” If you can’t get all the facts you’re left with: “What is the best explanation for the information gathered so far?” And the information gathered so far makes the Big Bang highly convincing. And with the information gathered so far for the resurrection of Jesus, what better explanation is there for how Christianity began and evolved into the largest religion on Earth today, other than Jesus being resurrected? But for some that’s still not enough – because…(continues tomorrow)