April 2024: A Resurrected Life
A thief is only there to steal and kill and destroy. I came so they can have real and eternal life, more and better life than they ever dreamed of.
John 10:10 (Message)
One of the most life-changing experiences happened in 2021. I attended Chuck’s funeral, someone’s father from my House Church. Chuck passed away from a battle with cancer, and it hit our House Church hard. However, his funeral was beautiful. We arrived in a church full to the brim with guests who came to pay their respects to Chuck and his family. While I didn’t know him that well, by the end of the three-hour service, I had become inspired by Chuck's life.
He was a man who loved Jesus, loved his family, and loved his neighbors. The service was primarily friends and family from all over the world coming up to share stories of the kind of man that Chuck was. I was so humbled by what a life lived well as a follower of Jesus could look like.
I have been to a handful of funerals in my life, and the majority of them were frightening reminders that death is inevitable. At these funerals, I have grieved and have become familiar with Jesus’ reminder that the thief is only here to steal, kill, and destroy (John 10:10a). The world we live in is still riddled with the effects of sin, and the grasp of the enemy can feel so suffocating that we lose sight of the promise of Jesus.
In the same verse, Jesus proclaims that He came so that we can have real and eternal life (John 10:10b)! What could such a life look like? “Eternal” is not just the length of the life He offers, while it does include eternal, but Jesus is primarily talking about the quality of life that was going to break through. Jesus is talking about the resurrection life that was going to usher in new creation. Jesus knew that through his death, He would conquer the enemy and our bondage to sin. Through this, the life Jesus offers us in one of freedom, breakthrough, love, and thriving.
While I believe in Jesus. I have given Him my allegiance as my Lord and Savior, and I have oriented my life around His teaching and life. I don’t think I am alone in naming that the eternal quality of life Jesus promised seems elusive. I seem more familiar with death and suffering than freedom and breakthrough.
This year, in particular, has been one predominantly marked by death. Not physical death, but spiritual death. God has constantly highlighted my sin and flesh in light of the cross, and it has brought me down to a repetitive process of repentance. In the last few months, God has shown me how much selfishness, pride, anger, and laziness are still in my heart (and that is merely scratching the surface of my time with Him). Yet, what I have found through this, unwelcomed, excavation of my soul, is a glimpse of the resurrection life Jesus talked about.
Jesus talks about how death is necessary for life further on in John:
Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. Anyone who loves their life will lose it, while anyone who hates their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Whoever serves me must follow me; and where I am, my servant also will be. My Father will honor the one who serves me. John 12:24-26 (NIV)
In these last few months, I have found Jesus’ words to be true. That we all must die. Whether it is at the end of our lives or holding on to life, we try to build on our own strength. Or we can die with Jesus on the cross, to be resurrected in the new creation that Jesus promised. I can assure you the ladder is more painful, but similarly it is the most rewarding. N.T. Wright writes of the resurrection of Jesus like this:
“Jesus's resurrection is the beginning of God's new project not to snatch people away from earth to heaven but to colonize earth with the life of heaven. That, after all, is what the Lord's Prayer is about.”
If we are to see here as in heaven: in our marriages, in our workplaces, in our House Churches, in our cities, and in our nations. It must begin with death. We have died with Jesus on the cross, and we are resurrected with Him (Galatians 2:20). While we have been crucified with Christ, we also are living sacrifices that have a tendency to bring the wrong dead things to life. We need to let God breathe His Spirit into the dead things that he wants to resurrect.
My encouragement to you as leaders, is to get comfortable with death. You may be invited to go to actual funerals of loved ones in your life. You may witness the death of dreams and opportunities. You may experience the death of friendships and other relationships. What is promised is that God will raise a new creation through those deaths.
