The Special of the Day… From the Orange Moon Cafe…
"No Witnesses"
No earthly eyes saw the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. Of course, He made many post-resurrection appearances, once to more than five hundred witnesses (I Corinthians 15:6). However, in the moment of His rising, only God the Father and God the Holy Spirit were on hand to greet the risen Son.
"God the Father… raised Him from the dead" (Galatians 1:1).
"For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened (enlivened) by the Spirit" (I Peter 3:18).
God promises resurrection life to born again believers in the Lord Jesus for the living of our present lives.
"What is the exceeding greatness of His power to usward who believe, according to the working of His mighty power, which He wrought in Christ, when He raised Him from the dead" (Ephesians 1:19-20).
"Mighty power" indeed raised the Lord Jesus from death. It also presently enlivens us in countless ways as we trust and submit to God. However, like the sparsely attended tomb of old, the manifestation of our Savior's Life beyond life often takes place in such quiet and unobtrusive ways that the miracles may only be known by the believer who experiences it. Or that believer himself may not consciously realize he has been energized by the risen life of Christ Himself. "We look not at the things which are seen but at the things which are unseen" (II Corinthians 4:18).
Believers require resurrection on a daily basis. The Apostle Paul taught that our human members and faculties bear no independent ability to do the will of God.
"If Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin. But the spirit is life because of righteousness. But if the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, He that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken (enliven) your mortal bodies by His Spirit that dwelleth in you" (Romans 8:10-11).
The life of Christ in our spirits must motivate, guide, and empower us because we bear no independent capacity to live the life of faithfulness to which God calls us. "Without Me, ye can do nothing" (John 15:5). Thus, the resurrection that gave us hope for freely given forgiveness and justification provides the power to give us hope for the living of the Christian life. "As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in Him" (Colossians 2:6). A life of faith and faithfulness requires the life of the risen Lord Jesus. Again, however, let us expect the imparting of such grace will most often not appear in spectacular displays of open glory. We and others will often see the effects of our own personal resurrections for God's glory. But we will rarely be privy to the Spirit's of God's miraculous enlivening of our human faculties to walk in "the working of His mighty power."
"We walk by faith, not by sight."
(II Corinthians 5:7)
"The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and wither it goeth. So is every one that is born of the Spirit."
(John 3:8)
Weekly Memory Verse
And He is before all things, and by Him all things consist.
(Colossians 1:17)
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