The Lord Jesus spoke these words to His disciples shortly before He died and rose again (John 11:29). They contain a wonderful promise which has sustained believers ever since.

When by faith we are united to Christ, our Head, we as members of His body are made partakers of all His benefits, including those that flow from His resurrection. The first benefit is that our sins are forgiven. By raising His Son from the grave, the Father testified that He had accepted Christ’s sacrifice for our sins. Jesus emerged from the sepulcher as the Conqueror over sin, leaving our sins behind in the tomb. This has great implications for our status before God. We are no longer viewed as guilty in God’s sight. Rather, He views us as righteous, clothed with the righteousness of His Son.

When do we receive this wonderful blessing? At the moment we are enabled by the Spirit to put our trust in Christ – when we renounce our own righteousness as filthy rags and look to Christ as our only ground for acceptance with God. Although justification takes place at the very moment we embrace Christ by faith, the founda­tion for justification was laid in His resurrection. Then all God’s people were justified objectively. Every time we believe, our faith is directed to that awesome fact in his­tory: the open and empty tomb of Jesus.

The justifying faith in the risen Christ has a trans­forming effect on our lives. The Apostle Paul says that as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we also should walk in newness of life (Rom. 6:4). Our Lord’s resurrection becomes the model for our spiritual lives. There is a striking parallel between His resurrection and ours as to the source, manner, and pur­pose of both. Christ was raised from death by the glorious power of the Father, and by that same power we are made alive from our death in trespasses and sins.

The power whereby Christ was raised was irresistible. The stone, the seal, the guards were all futile. They could not prevent Christ from coming out of the grave. So it is with us when we are made alive in Christ. The Holy Spirit breaks through every obstacle that stands in the way.

Satan, the world, and our flesh are determined to keep us in the grave of sin. But the grace of Almighty God enables us to resist Satan’s temptations, to say no to the world, and to deny the lusts of the flesh. Although our victories over these enemies are incomplete as long we are in this life, so that we often suffer defeat at the enemy’s hand, the fact that a war is being waged with the adversar­ies of our soul proves that we share in that resurrection life. We strive against sin and seek to honor God. That is the purpose of our new life in Christ – to live for God, glori­fying Him in all that we do in thought, word, and deed.

Christ’s resurrection not only guarantees the resur­rection of our souls or spirits; it is also the pledge of our physical resurrection. He has become the “first fruits of them that slept,” the apostle says (1 Cor. 15:20). First fruits means there are more to come. All believers in Christ, strong and weak, beginners in grace and more sea­soned saints, shall be raised in due time. Our vile or lowly bodies, says Paul, shall be made like unto His glorious body (Phil. 3:21). There is hope for us beyond the grave! The cemetery is not our final resting place. At death we enter graves that have been consecrated by Christ who was also in a grave. He came out of it and so shall we!

Will this be true of you? Do you believe in the resur­rection doctrinally but also experientially? Has the resur­rection changed your life so that you serve a living Savior with whom you love to talk and walk day by day? If Christ is not a reality in your life, you do not belong to His people. You are still a stranger to His grace and power. Call upon the risen Lord to raise you from the spiritual death in which you were born. The Father has given Him all power in heaven and in earth.

Are you enslaved by sin and do your lusts have a stran­glehold on you so that you see no way out? Are you afraid that you’ve wandered too far away from God to be brought back? Why give in to such negative thoughts? What are they based on? Surely, not on God’s Word. That Word says, “He (Christ) is able to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him...” (Heb. 7:25). He says also to you:

I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.John 11:25-26