RESURRECTION LIFE FROM GOD

As Christians, we believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. After the Lord’s crucifixion, the Holy Spirit entered the tomb where He lay and raised Him up. This is why we sing on Easter that Christ rose from the grave, victorious over His foes, and now reigns forever with the saints.

We also believe that by Christ’s power we will be resurrected. This will happen when Jesus comes again. Scripture says all of us will be changed in the twinkling of an eye (see 1 Corinthians 15:52). The Holy Spirit will raise us up from this earth with incorruptible bodies and place us in the Lord’s very presence. This is the resurrection power Paul describes in his epistles — the power of a God who raises the dead!

I want to show you that Christ still raises the dead today. I speak now of the resurrection life that God brings to those who are spiritually dead. Paul describes this kind of life-giving power in his letter to the Ephesians:

“You He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins, in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the children of disobedience, among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as others.

“But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus” (Ephesians 2:1–6).