Death Cannot Hold the Resurrection Life
Continuing from my previous post on The Sign of Jonah, I'd like to write about our experience in relation to Christ entering into death and passing through death into life.
It's good to know that Christ entered into Hades as both God and man. Yet the account of Jonah's prayer, which parallels to Christ's activities in His burial, is so detailed that it makes me wonder- why do we need to know what Christ did in such a thorough way?
1 Peter 3:18 says,
"For Christ also has suffered once for sins, the Righteous on behalf of the unrighteous, that He might bring you to God, on the one hand being put to death in the flesh, but on the other, made alive in the Spirit;"
Christians hardly talk about Christ in His burial, especially about the part where He was "on the one hand being put to death in the flesh, but on the other, made alive in the Spirit." Yet this is a great matter!
At that very juncture of time, within this One Person, humanity was brought into divinity. This is a very deep thought. In His humanity, the Lord Jesus struggled because His flesh was being put to death. But He was simultaneously charged with a new power of life, called the resurrection life.
In fact, He became so full of the resurrection life that, just like the fish had to vomit out Jonah, Hades had to vomit Him out because it could not hold His life-ness down. Actually, as both God and man, the Lord became the embodiment of the resurrection life Himself.
Death cannot hold the resurrection life! (Acts 2:24)
I believe that one of the many reasons the detailed account of Jonah's prayer (i.e., what Christ did in Hades in His humanity) exists is so that we also can experience the resurrection life in our Hades situations.
Christ began by calling upon Jehovah, crying out to Jehovah, because of His distress. Oftentimes this is exactly our situation. Oftentimes we call upon Him when we're in distress. The death waters that encompass our soul force us to cry out.
But still, usually our crying out is to ask the Lord to get us out of that situation. That is why the Lord is showing us more and more in these days the importance of experiencing the resurrection life, the passing from death into life.
Instead of asking "Lord, get me out of here!" we need to pray,
I didn't realize before what the Lord experienced in Hades, that He had to pass through death into life, was so that we can experience the resurrection life in our Hades situation.
ReplyDeleteYes, isn't it touching, Dana? He became a man so that we may enter into Him to be God in life and nature, but, of course, not in the Godhead.
DeleteI was enjoying this same thing this week. I never thought of "the sign of the prophet Jonah" as being so significant! I never thought of the burial of Christ and what happened... but this One is SO FULL of life that He shook the gates of Hades, and He walked out of death with the keys of death and of Hades in His hands! Death cannot hold Christ as the resurrection life!
ReplyDeleteI love that song which says in the last stanza, "Oh, may I know this resurrection life - in every kind of death its power outpoured! And in my experience ever realize - this life is nought but Christ, my living Lord!"
Oh which song is that, Stefan? Could you possibly quote more stanzas?
DeleteWow. That is amazing. I am so touched that we should not pray for God to deliver us from our problems but to infuse us with Himself. I am going to pray this today.
ReplyDeleteActually you just reminded me to pray this evening...
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