Pastor A

Many world religions believe and teach that this life is all there is to human existence. Somehow, the thinking goes, our spirit just evaporates into the universe when we die. Existentialist Jean-Paul Sarte puts it this way: “There is no exit.” If this is true, it causes some real problems. For one thing, it decreases your value.

The Bible says that you are an eternal being. This makes you more important than anything temporal. In other words, you are more important than anything in the world because according to the Scriptures, this world will not last forever. However, if your life is only 70 years, then you are not as important as the United States, for example, which is now over 225 years young. The government is more significant than you, which is exactly what people living under oppressive rule are taught.

But there is another important way you can identify with Christ in His resurrection. The moment of spiritual birth, a special part of you is given life. This part of you is called your spiritual nature. I Corinthians 2:14-15, “But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. 15 But he that is spiritual judgeth all things, yet he himself is judged of no man.” The Bible explains that this nature conflicts with another part of you called your sinful nature. Galatians 5:17, “For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would.” This sinful nature is that power within all of us that causes us to go contrary to God’s laws and principles.

The spiritual nature pulls you in the other direction. Identifying with Christ in His resurrection means that you will experience more of the power of the spiritual nature and less of the pull of the sinful nature. Christ’s resurrection once and for all freed us from the power of our sinful natures; and the more we claim that resurrection power in our lives, the more victory we will experience.

Paul put it this way in Romans 6:11-13, “Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord. 12 Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof. 13 Neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin: but yield yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God.“

The resurrection of Jesus Christ enables us to walk in newness of life, in the power of the Spirit, and in victory over sin!