Luke 24:1-9,44-49, theme verse Luke 24:47
The praise and honor and glory be to our heavenly Father who seeks true worshipers who worship Him with the Spirit and truth.
In this Easter Sunday, I pray that the joy and power and grace of His resurrection may be with you all in full. As we have been meditating on true meaning of His suffering and crucifixion last week, this week we would like to think about true meaning of His resurrection to learn few lessons.
1) Last week we kept it as passion week. In this passion week, on Sunday, after Jesus entered city of Jerusalem riding on donkey humbly yet on the road which was laid with palm leaves. On Monday, Jesus cursed a barren fig tree as if He was scolding Israel for not bearing fruit and then entered the temple, drove out the merchants, and purified the temple. And on Tuesday, He taught in the temple, scolding the Pharisees for their hypocrisy, and arguing with the Sadducees about the resurrection and then climbed the Mount of Olive to give the Olivet discourse about the end era, and spent all Wednesday praying. And then on Thursday, after eating the Passover meal with His disciples, He prayed all night in Gethsemane. And being captured early on Friday and suffering under Pilate, He was hang on the cross and died. And being buried by Joseph of Arimathea in a tomb, He was there on Saturday and was risen early on Sunday morning as phophesied.
2) But His resurrection does not mean only He came to life again and His body and soul were reunited, rather, but it also means that His human nature, both body and soul, was restored to its pristine strength and perfection and even raised to higher level. For instance, as we can see in Jn 20:19, He could enter into the room which was locked from inside where His disciples hid themselves, and also as we can see in Lk 24:16, even His two disciples on their way to Emmaus, could not recognize Him, because He was resurrected with a heavenly body of immortal, glorious, strong, and spiritual as 1 Cor 15 says, which was completed different from that of before. Even though we could not imagine what it is, yet, since He was resurrected as such, we believe that our resurrected body in the final day will be the same as His by the power of His resurrection so that I really thank and rejoice to wait it. That’s why Louis Berkhof said His resurrection has threefold significances; (a) Firstly, it constituted a declaration of the Father that the last enemy had been vanquished, the penalty paid, and the condition on which life was promised, met. (b) And secondly it symbolized what was destined to happen to the members of Christ’s mystical body in their justification, spiritual birth, and future blessed resurrection. (c) And finally it is also connected instrumentally with their justification, regeneration and final resurrection.
3) That’s why John Calvin said, “Through His death, sin was wiped out and death extinguished; through His resurrection, righteousness was restored and life raised up.” Through His death and resurrection, Jesus paid the guilt of physical death and spiritual death and all the agony of cursed life as the consequence of the first sin in Eden to eat the forbidden fruit by which God commanded not to eat so in the day of eating, God said they would surely die, by taking all the wrath of God to the sin on behalf of human inability to save humanity from their misery, as well as He resolved total depravity of human nature through the spiritual regeneration and future bodily resurrection.
4) In summary, His death paid the penalty of sin of all the agony of life and even the death, while His resurrection resolved the corruption of human nature order words, so that His all merits which was earned through His death could be imputed to human being who has the faith in Jesus to avoid the wrath of God and to become children of God through the reconciliation after receiving forgiveness and reconciliation of God. And also His resurrection makes us to be regenerated to resolve our depravity, in which the Holy Spirit crucifies old self and breaks the chain of the sin and creates new self in us to grow more into Jesus, and in the final day, will raise our body into spiritual and heavenly one. That’s why Charles Spurgeon said that “When Christ’s followers rise, they shall leave the old Adam behind them. Blessed day! One of the happiest aspects of Heaven will be freedom from the tendency to sin, a total death to that old nature which has been our plague and woe.”
5) As such, while the power of His resurrection resolves our depravity issue and makes us more glorious, it leads us into new place. I mean, According to the last chapter of four gospels, I means, in Mark 16:15, Matthew 28:18, Luke 24:47 and even John 20:21, the resurrection account of Jesus leads to the great commission of His disciples. In order words, all the resurrection accounts of four gospels resulted in the mission of Gospel proclamation of His disciples to the world. Like this, there is the reason why the resurrection results into the mission. It’s because there is the power in His resurrection as Phil 3:10 says. The power of the resurrection makes us revive in His new life and discover the meaning and purpose of our life and even take His mission. As Leon Morris said ”The same power that brought Christ back from the dead is operative within those who are Christ’s”, the power of the resurrection is still working in His people so that it makes them alive and transform and even active in proclaiming His resurrection and reign of the kingdom of God to the world, after tasting His resurrection and its power working in them.
6) Through today’s Bible verses, we would like to learn few things. Firstly, we would like to think about how we can receive all the merits which Jesus earned through His death and resurrection. We could receive all His merits through the union with Christ by the Holy Spirit. Our water Baptism is the sign and seal for these grace in the union with Christs. Then secondly, we would like to look at more details on the union with Christ, I mean, the ingrafting into true vine, after being cutting from old human nature. On this union with Christ of ingrafting into true vine, after falling from old sinful nature, Puritan theologian Thomas Boston provides an insightful yet very challenging explanation. I mean, according to Boston, when the Holy Spirit comes into the mind of the believers, He ingrafts the believers into the union with Christ after cutting them from the old nature, through four stages as follows; (a) In the first stage, the Holy Spirit “darts in some beams of light into the dark soul” to make them to recognize former profane courses and their sins and quit them. This stage of legalistic effort to live the holy life, he called outside religion. (b) And then in the second stage, the Holy Spirit makes them to see and resolve their inner sins such as pride or lust so that it is called inside religion. (c) But, through the first and second stages, when they recognize that they could not overcome these outer and inner sins by themselves or by their own strength and effort, they proceed to rely on the grace of Jesus Christ and they try borrowing, bargaining or begging of His grace. I mean, they try to borrow the grace of Christ where they are in short, or try to bargain with Christ by making personal covenant with Christ in the way that if Christ resolve this or that issue, then they promise to live well, or based on the promise of forgiveness in the Bible such as 1 Jn 1:9, they just try to beg the forgiveness from the Lord. Yet still in this third stage, their inner self is not yet humiliated so Boston calls the man of this stage as a proud beggar. (d) And then, finally after they recognize it is impossible to make themselves pure enough to proceed to Christ, they were cut away from the hope, yet fallen into desperate, then now they think that they only proceed to Christ as they are. Like this, when they “can no more believe that they can reach up their hand to heaven, and bring Christ down from there, and they can neither help themselves by working, nor by believing, having no more to hang by on the old stock, then they falls off from old self. And while they are distressed thus, seeing themselves likely to be swept away with the flood of God’s wrath, and yet unable so much as to stretch forth a hand to lay hold of a twig of the tree of life, growing on the bank of the river, they are taken up, and ingrafted in the true vine, the Lord Jesus Christ giving them the Spirit of faith. Likewise, the embodiment and actualization of the crucifixion of old sinful nature and the cutting from old self, and ingrafting into true vine, Christ who is the life, is the time-consuming and painful process in which even the believers may feel the despair, but, the reason we cannot lose our heart is that our Lord Jesus leads us and persevere us to the end. And finally we would like to think about whether we taste, experience and enjoy the mystery of the power of resurrection. Often, some people try to experience the joy of the resurrection of our Lord through the joy of relationship and other life matters which was the result of His resurrection, yet, the joy of His resurrection goes far beyond them. Until experiencing and tasting that extreme joy of the power of resurrection which works in us, we could not proclaim His resurrection with its power. That’s why I really pray that we all can meet our Lord who is risen today and taste and experience the power of His resurrection. That’s why NT Wright said “As Ernst Troeltsch said that we can only speak or write as historians about things which have some analogy in our own experience, we cannot, as historians, speak of the resurrection, if the resurrections do not occur in our experience.” Since after we experience the joy and power of His resurrection, the transformation of life begins and we can take His great commission in joy and power. Therefore I pray that we all may taste, experience and live in the joy of His resurrection and proclaim the power of His resurrection to the world.
Key Questions as Small Group Activity
Q1 As Leon Morris said, the power of His resurrection is still working in Christians who belong to Him. After reviewing your life to check whether this power of His resurrection is still working in you, I hope you can share your experience of how it works with your team members to share His grace.
Q2 And the union with Christ which the Holy Spirit ingrafted us into true vine, makes us receive all the merits which Jesus earned through His death and resurrection. Yet, it takes long time and several processes to embody and realize it into our life. After reviewing your spiritual life and checking which stage you are in, I hope you can share your experience and thought and grace with your team members to share grace.
Love you. Thank you. God bless you.
Prayer Note
Dear ( God’s attribute which you found Today ) God!
Thanks for ( something you received through the sermon or even during the week )
Praise, gratitude and glory be to You, Lord!
Today, I realized my sin (pains) that ( the sin God reminded through the sermon ),
please forgive (or heal) me and help me not to repeat ( the sins you recognized ).
I learned that ( something you learned through the sermon )
Please help me to live in that ( learned way of life )
I pray in ( Jesus’ attribute you find ) Jesus’ name. Amen.
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