LET ME TELL YOU A STORY.
CONSIDER
STEVE AND
ANDREA, WHO
dated throughout college and had recently become engaged. When they invited their pastor to conduct their marriage ceremony, he was honored to be a part of their special day. They were so perfect for each other, and everyone knew it.
But then, just one day before the wedding, Steve fell to the ground and died instantly of a heart attack. He had no history of heart trouble and had showed no signs leading up to his shocking death. The most difficult aspect of the whole event was not his passing but how Andrea sought to cope with it.
Although Steve already seemed to be dead, the medical team rushed him to the hospital. Andrea rode along in the ambulance, but by the time they reached the hospital, it was obvious there was no hope. Their pastor met up with Andrea in the emergency room, and the first words that left her mouth were, “I still want to marry him! I don’t care if he’s gone. I still love him. And we’re going to go through with this.” At that point, their pastor didn’t know what to say.
Twenty-four hours later, the time for the wedding had arrived, and Andrea still hadn’t changed her mind. She insisted that everything should continue as scheduled. What was to be a wedding would now become a combination funeral-wedding. For the first
time ever, the pastor was conducting two ceremonies simultaneously. His instructions were to officially commit Steve’s body to burial and then to announce Steve and Andrea as husband and wife. Out of concern for Andrea, he agreed to do both.
As the ceremony began, half of the audience was saddened by Steve’s passing. At the same time, Andrea’s side of the church shed tears of joy over her union with Steve. And the pastor was caught in the middle, not knowing how to feel. And the most awkward moment of all was when Andrea leaned into the coffin to kiss her groom and then fell inside!
Every bit of this story is pure fiction. But by telling it, I want to illustrate an important point: we don’t marry dead people. To do so would be quite strange. But aren’t we the bride of Jesus Christ? And he lived two thousand years ago. Are we spiritually
married to a dead person? Obviously, the answer is no. It’s important to understand that we’re joined to the risen Christ, not to a dead religious teacher.
Some Christians mistakenly obsess over everything that the historical Jesus did in the four gospels. We memorize his words and actions and try to imitate them the best we can. When we think of being the bride of Christ, we may imagine ourselves to only be married to Jesus of Nazareth—the God-man who lived a “good” life for thirty-three years. But the Scriptures indicate that we’re married to an eternal, risen Christ.
Although we were once married to the law, we obtained a “divorce” through our death. Now we’re reborn and remarried to a heavenly husband. And our union with him will last forever:
So, my brothers and sisters, you also died to the law through the body of Christ, that you might belong to another, to him who was raised from the dead,
in order that we might bear fruit for God.
ROMANS
7:4, italics adde
d
Everything we need is found in our spiritual husband, Jesus Christ. Once we are married to him, we no longer have to wait or hope or even ask for spiritual resources. We already have everything we need for planet Earth right here and now.
So we’re not merely married to a part of Christ or to his teachings. We’re spiritually united with all
of him. He doesn’t swoop down out of heaven at special times to give us counsel. Instead, the entirety of Christ himself is joined to us twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, without interruption.
FULLNESS
In Colossians, Paul reveals the amazing truth that we possess all
of Christ within us: “In Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, and in Christ you have been brought to fullness.
He is the head over every power and authority” (Colossians 2:9-10, italics added).
Fullness means that we’re not missing any part of the person of Christ. In Christ we have what we need for life
and godliness (2 Peter 1:3). This doesn’t mean we merely have what we need to understand the Bible or what’s required to conduct a church service. God has given us much more. In Christ we find everything we need for normal, everyday life. God knows the resources needed for life here on earth, and it’s all included in the life we possess through Christ:
His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness.
2 PETER
1:3
The realization that we already have everything
in Christ Jesus impacts our approach to daily living. If we merely had a ticket to heaven, there’d be no power to live in the present
.
FULFILLMENT
Sometimes we attempt to live a godly life in the hope of earning rewards in heaven. But it’s very difficult, if not totally unrealistic, to live for something far off in the future. Although the idea of living to earn future rewards might sound practical from a natural perspective, it’s simply not rooted in God’s Word. The motivation for daily living within the New Testament centers around acting like the person you truly are and benefiting from Christ’s life in the here and now.
When we come
to Jesus Christ,
we receive his life.
Paul urges believers to walk in a manner worthy of their calling (Ephesians 4:1). In Romans, he highlights the teaching that there’s no benefit to sin and that the outcome of those things is death (Romans 6:21-23). At no time are we told to live an upright life in order to garner a more righteous standing or to collect prizes in heaven. Quite the opposite! We’re urged to grasp an important spiritual truth: when we come to Jesus Christ, we receive his life. Through our expression of him, we find fulfillment.
AN
ANCIENT
CONVERSATION
It’s possible to hear something so often that you grow numb to the words and the significance behind them. The term born again
has been used and at times abused to the point that many have become callous to its real meaning. Yet there’s a valuable truth to be discovered in it. After all, these are Jesus’ own words!
Here’s an ancient conversation between Jesus and a local expert in the law
:
Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born again.”
“How can anyone be born when they are old?” Nicodemus asked. “Surely they cannot enter a second time into their mother’s womb to be born!”
Jesus answered, “Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and the Spirit. Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit.”
JOHN
3:3-6
First, let’s do away with a commonly held notion about this passage. This conversation has nothing to do with baptism in H2
O. Here Jesus is talking about two births that are necessary in order to enter the kingdom. The first is a natural birth, meaning a person is born as an infant from a human mother. The second is a spiritual birth. The natural birth is described in two ways: “born of water” and “flesh gives birth to flesh.” The spiritual birth is also described in two ways: “born of…the Spirit” and “the Spirit gives birth to spirit.”
Some have used this passage to support the idea of “no salvation without water baptism,” but nothing could be further from the truth. Jesus is saying that an infant is naturally housed in water within the womb of his mother. On his 0th
birthday, he’s born of water. After placing his faith in Jesus Christ, he’s literally born a second time spiritually. God issues to him a new human spirit, and God’s own Spirit comes to reside in him. The claim that one must be dunked in the local swimming hole in order to obtain spiritual rebirth is not supported by the context of the passage.
Childbirth is an amazing event. I’ll never forget the day I witnessed the birth of our son, Gavin. What was so amazing was that something appeared to come from nothing. A human being with
all of his complexity was formed from a sperm and an egg inside a sphere of water over a period of nine months.
God literally birthed us
through his Spirit.
I remember all that my wife went through—the morning sickness, the labor pains, and the joy that broke forth at the birth. Experiencing this firsthand gave me new insight into the Holy Spirit’s “giving birth” to us spiritually. There’s something remarkable to be learned from Jesus’ description of salvation as being born of the Spirit. If God literally birthed us through his Spirit, what does that say about our spiritual “genetics”?
THE
PARADOX OF
LIGHT
At the turn of the century, physicists were researching light to determine its nature. Some published evidence that light was a particle,
while others experimented with light and determined it was a wave.
When light is shone through narrow slits, for example, it produces wavelike patterns similar to what we see in ocean water. But when light is shone at protons or electrons, it collides with these particles and bounces off like a billiard ball. Thus, it behaves like a particle.
Despite these conflicting findings, I’m happy to enlighten you about the nature of light. Is light a particle or a wave? The answer, quite definitively, is yes.
Yes, light is a particle and
a wave. Somehow it’s both at the same time. From one perspective, it appears to be a particle. At the same time, further examination reveals that it’s a wave.
Like the mystery of light, the outworking of our spiritual life can be equally perplexing. Is it supposed to be Christ
in me working through me? Or is it me
—who I am in Christ—working out my daily life? The answer, again, is yes.
It’s a spiritual
union—a mystery
that was hidden
and has now
been revealed
.
Just as light is both a particle and a wave, it’s both Christ in us and
our own selves who live the Christian life. It’s inaccurate to say that it’s all Christ and that we act as hollow tubes. It’s also inaccurate to envision the Christian life as a focus on identity alone—that we work things out on our own. Instead, it’s a spiritual union—a mystery that was hidden and has now been revealed. We’re united together with Christ. He’s our source of strength, and we’re new, righteous, and compatible with him as our resource.
Is it him, or is it us? Yes,
it’s both.