Here are some initial questions and encouraging thoughts to consider about the relevancy of the risen LORD, and the indispensability of his life to the sort of life that we are created to live, including how we are to maximally live it:
Do I honestly think that the risen LORD Jesus is relevant to my existence?
Do I mostly "live" by striving to make it through what seems to be an unimportant and unempowering sort of life?
Do I feel, think, and choose as though Jesus came, died, and has now left all his followers alone in order to fend for ourselves and attempt to live meaningful sorts of lives until we ourselves die and go to heaven?
Might there be a connection between a shrunken view of my life and its purpose along with a small view of Jesus' life lived in and risen by the power of the Holy Spirit?
A few years ago I discovered that it had been a habit of my own thinking to live my life as though the importance of Jesus' life
only amounted to him coming to earth and climaxing his life by dying on the cross for my sins. That's it. And that somehow was maximal good news to proclaim as gospel. A wonderfully sacrificial and a tenderly gracious choice by Jesus to be sure! But I lived my life as though the resurrection of this same Jesus was just a divine afterthought, a sort of "plan b" or at best a mere effect of a cause.
Similarly, I found that a shrunken view of the resurrection unquestionably left me with a minuscule view of the Holy Spirit and his ministry to us today. The New Testament declares that it was the Spirit of God almighty that raised Jesus from the dead! Should it be at all surprising that if I had a malnourished view of the relevancy and importance of the risen Jesus that I would almost inevitably live as though the Spirit's work somehow died and was buried with Jesus?
To say it differently and perhaps more theological, I lived as though Jesus' life, ministry and teaching were simply intended to absolve us of guilt, impute justification and forgive our sins. Of course, I believe that his merciful work on the cross did do that perfectly. But that, thank God almighty, is not the end of the story.
Hallelujah! The LORD has risen!
And Jesus has risen not just as a miraculous fact of human history, but as a triumphant despising and ridiculing - a full blown championship! - over the power of death, the power of sin, and the power of hell itself. This is the "for all nations" blessing of good news intended for all peoples!
A power-oriented first-century culture of Jesus' time understood this power-oriented significance. Their worldview was not raped by a preoccupation with what could only be detected by sight. They understood and lived in a wise knowledge of reality that testified about the realism of demonic activity, angelic forces, and a supernatural, trinitarian God who performed supernatural, trinitarian activity in real-time with the involvement of human persons.
Thankfully, this same God is not some construct of the first, second or third century. This God is alive and fully intentional in his interactive relationship with human persons that are made in his image. As Francis Schaeffer said many years ago,
"God is here and He is not silent!"
Tis true.
Yet so often we live in the shadow of the cross alone, where God does not appear to be here and he is seemingly silent. Granted, there are seasons where God does remove a feeling of his presence from us in order to mature deeper habits of character in us (Read St. John of the Cross, for example). But the ways of God tend to be such that He is a constant presence that enriches our very existence with his relational interactivity. Yet, even a baby can genuinely experience the constant, if not background presence of a mother without being perpetually breastfed.
And so, how do you
not forfeit the blessings of Easter?
1. Confide, with maturing knowledge, in a really truly good God, a Father who honestly loves people for who they are not for who they should be (Brennan Manning).
2. Follow after - no, run persistently after! - and seek to adopt in order to adapt your life to the sort of flourishing life that you are created to have, a life that is in the power of the risen Jesus.
3. Mindfully live in the reality that the Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead is honestly present to you in order to enable you to access the fullness of Jesus, the fullness of his life-giving-life, the fullness of his ministry, and therefore the fullness of stepping into and remaining in the God-soaked reality of the Kingdom of God.
