The Spirit of Eternal Life, No. 3
RO101-02

© Berean Memorial Church of Irving, Texas, Inc. (1977)

Please open your Bibles to Romans 8 as we continue with verses 9-11. Our topic is "The Spirit of Eternal Life, Segment #3."

The Sin Nature

All thinking human beings are aware of a powerful inclination within them to do the things which God forbids and which God calls evil. In Romans 7:15, we have heard the Apostle Paul put it this way: "For that which I do, I understand not: for what I would, that I do not, but what I hate, that do I." All of us are aware of this powerful inclination to do that which God forbids. Now the Bible very clearly delineates that which constitutes evil conduct. So what God expects of us is no secret. People are in the know. But no matter how well-intentioned people are, they still find themselves breaking the rules of God.

In Romans 7:19, the Apostle Paul put it this way: "For the good that I would, I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do." Even when people face the fact of eternal punishment for the violence of God's laws, they cannot refrain from doing evil. The cause of such helplessness in obeying the divine laws is, of course, as we have learned, the sin nature, which is inherent in every person. Romans 7:20 put it this way: "Now if I do that which I would not, it is no more I that do it, but the sin nature that dwelleth in me." Those who are not born again spiritually are under the total domination of the sin nature. This is the condition of every one of us at the point of physical birth.

No amount of self-reformation, education, or culture can break the hold of the sin nature on the person, and it is important to remember that. Society therefore is filled today with the vilest kinds of evil acts which no human ever can stop. And in our day, it's getting harder all the time to restrain the expressions in society of the sin nature.

The Indwelling of the Believer

Only those who are born again have had the stronghold of the sin nature upon them broken. The believer is under the new authority of the indwelling Holy Spirit. He does not have to be the slave of the sin nature. The presence of the Holy Spirit in the believer's body is the evidence that he has been born again spiritually. Thus, the Christian is able by means of God the Holy Spirit to resist the enticements of the sin nature and thereby to please God by obeying His laws.

Not only, furthermore, does the Holy Spirit indwell the Christian, but so also, we have learned, does the Lord Jesus Christ. This double indwelling takes place at the point of one's salvation. The very physical body of the believer becomes the sacred temple of God the Son and of God the Holy Spirit. God the Father furthermore joins the Son and the Holy Spirit, we are told, within the body temple of the believer, so that the Christian becomes, in fact, the companion of the whole Godhead. Never in the history of believers prior to the day of Pentecost has such a fabulous fellowship and relationship existed between God and man. That's why we Christians are a very special breed of people: to be indwelt by the totality of the Trinity every moment the day. It is because of this relationship that the Christian who uses the divine power system which God has created for us to use in the church age - the power system of the combination of God the Holy Spirit leading through the Word of God - that we Christians become eligible for unbelievable blessings by the divine Trinity. And ultimately, we will reflect the brilliant glory of God forever.

Blessings and Eternal Rewards

There is, in fact, an enormous amount of divine blessing that God has set aside for you and me individually. Most of us will go to Heaven without ever having received it. It's like having some rich relative who has set aside an enormous sum of money for us, and yet we never enter into the use and the enjoyment of that gift because we don't make the connections. And that's the problem with most Christians: they don't make the connections. It is not an easy thing to learn the principle of the Word of God and then to make the connection with the phases with the phases of life, the elements of life, and to implement those into our experience. That's where God the Holy Spirit has to come in to give us discernment, to give us judgment, to give us balance, to help us cycle up that information from the Word of God stored in our human spirits so that we are stable and people who are guided with wisdom in what we do.

While the church-age believer is spiritually alive, furthermore, we have found his physical body bears upon it the seeds of death. The truth of the matter is for all of us, our days are numbered. Each of us has the rendezvous with death sooner or later, and we never know when the soul, at God's command, is going to move out of our bodies. Since this is the case, a believer should view every day of life as a chance to invest ourselves in terms of eternal happiness. That is, in terms of our time, in terms of our energy, in terms of our money, in terms of our thinking, in terms of all that we do. Here again, if we ever could remember the Trinity indwells us, They are there to maximize blessings for us in time and in eternity to open the vault of blessings that God has prepared for us. Then we will stop squandering so much of our time, so much of our energy, so much of our money, so much of our thinking capacity and will call our shots in terms of eternal values.

What a pitiful sight is the Christian; and we find them so often who come to the point where they're checking out of this life, and that's when they begin to review how little they are going out with in terms of eternal preparation. And how much of value they're leaving behind for someone else to squander after them. Divine-viewpoint believers therefore live each day of life so as to maximize its value in terms of pleasing God and investing for eternal rewards. That's where the smart money lies. So much of our years of life are wasted on human viewpoint values, human viewpoint goals, human viewpoint causes. And don't forget that once your thinking, your energy, your capacity, your money - whatever you have - is invested; it's gone. You can never bring it back. You can never redirect it.

The Subjection of Humans to Death

So we pick up our study this morning with that brief review in Romans 8:10. The first part of the verse said, "And since Christ is in you, the body is dead." Why is that the case? The Apostle Paul says very explicitly, "because." This is the word "dia." It is a preposition, and it means "on account of." On account of what? On account of sin. The word "sin" is the Greek word "hamartia." This is one of the several words which is used in the Bible for sin. This one specifically means "missing the mark," and the mark is right here - the bullseye in the center - and that is absolute righteousness. The old plus are status that God demands of every human being if he is to have eternal life in Heaven. So because our bodies lack the presence of absolute righteousness, they have been subjected to death.

Now, this failure of missing the standard of God's righteousness, of course, was something that was brought to the attention of the human race at the very beginning. In Genesis 2:17, God said to Adam, ".but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die. God's standard of righteousness was, "Adam, I'm going to give you a testing point for your volition, and I want you to be positive toward this test point. The test point is don't eat of that particular tree out there that I have identified to you as off-limits. Everything else in this garden you may you enjoy. You may exercise your volition freely. Just do not be negative to my commandment relative to that tree." That was the standard of righteousness that he had to reach. And as you know, he did not, and consequently, he was told that there would be death following failure to obey, and that's what happened.

In Romans 6:23, we have the statement, "For the wages of sin is death," and that is precisely what God had warned would happen. Now the universality of death, furthermore, in the human race indicates to us that everybody is contaminated by the sin nature. If only certain people died, we may suspect that only certain ones had the problem of sin. But in Romans 5:12-14, we have already learned where Paul said, "Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for all have sinned." How? In Adam - that's how. " ... (for until the law sin was in the world: but sin is not imputed where there is no law. Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam's transgression, who is the figure of him that was to come...)."

A transgression is a breaking of the law, but Paul says even before God gave the law, even before God gave the rules so you could explicitly know that you were breaking a certain rule, there was death in the human race. It couldn't have been because you were breaking the rules of God; there weren't any rules. Why was there death? Because Adam was our federal head. He was our representative. When he sinned, we were all contaminated. And that contamination is evidenced by the fact that everybody dies.

So the physical death affects only the body, however, it does not affect the rest of the human being. In Luke 16:23, the story of Lazarus and the rich man, you will see that the rich man was fully conscious when he was in Hades. His body was dead and buried, but the rest of him remained alive, and that's exactly what happens to everybody. Although a person is saved through faith in Jesus Christ, his body is still subject to death.

Steadily, the bodies of Christians are decaying. They're breaking down, and that's evidenced by every ache and every sickness and every pain we experience. So even when you're a Christian, the seeds of death are still there, and they're germinating. Cemeteries are therefore filled with the graves of Christians along with those of the unbelievers so that the statement of the Apostle Paul here relative to the physical body is indeed one that experiences confirm. The body is dead, and the reason for that death is because of sin that entered the human race. That contaminated our genetic structure physically because the sin nature resides in the genes of the father and the mother, but it is transmitted genetically through the father and consequently all of us have the contamination of death upon us.

The Human Body, Soul, and Spirit

But there is a silver lining. The word "but" is the word "de." It means "here on the other hand," or we may translate it as "yet." "The spirit," and here he refers to "pneuma," and the reference is to the human spirit. This is what is referred to in 1 Thessalonians 5:23 where Paul describes the structure of the human being. Paul says, "And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ."

Every human being has a soul constituting a mind, an emotion (a set of emotions), and his will. This is how we are made. Furthermore, we have along with that a human spirit, and this whole thing is encased then in a body so that this is the three parts of man. This is how we're structured. And if you understand this arrangement, you will understand why you need to go to church, why you need to day by day be in the Word of God, why you need to learn doctrine, and why you need to utilize the techniques of the Christian life and the power system that God has created for us. The spirit here stands in contrast to the body.

There are other places where God the Holy Spirit contrasts the human spirit to the physical body. You can find that, for example, in 1 Corinthians 7:34 and in James 2:26. There you will see that the human spirit is contrasted with the human body. And that is what is happening here. The living, human spirit is the point of contact with God. When you have a human spirit, that is your point of contact with the triune God, and for example, that is indicated to us in Romans 8:16: "And the Spirit," (God the Holy Spirit), "Himself beareth witness with our," (human), "spirit, that we are the children of God." It is God who speaks to us through our human spirit, which is our point of contact and communication with Him.

The same thing is to be found in the book of Job. Job 32:8 says, "But there is a spirit in man: And the inspiration of the Almighty giveth them understanding." There is a human spirit in man, and it is the inspiration of the Almighty that gives that human spirit understanding. So the Bible indicates to us that our human spirits are the point of our contact with the triune God. And the way that happens is that God the Holy Spirit teaches our perceptive capacity in our mind. Under the filling of the Holy Spirit, we learn doctrinal phenomena. When we believe it, we store that in our human spirit. And so gradually, we accumulate in this human spirit, which starts off empty at the point of salvation, we accumulate a lot of divine viewpoint. It is this divine viewpoint which God the Holy Spirit, under our being filled with Him, directs back up to our directive capacities of our mind from which we make our decisions and actions.

If you do not have the Word of God in your human spirit, if you're not filled with the Holy Spirit, you do not have any basis for divine guidance. So you can go ahead and look up in the sky and watch the clouds float by and get on top of a mountain and meditate, those of you who are the ascetic type, the papistic type, that you are going to find an approach to God - you can go ahead and kid yourself right out into eternity with that. The only information that God the Holy Spirit gives you, the only guidance He gives you is the result of you having His thinking in your human spirit. That's why every church service is of such enormous importance to every believer. Nobody can make it without it.

Full Knowledge

So, God says that we have a dead body but nevertheless we at the same time have a human spirit which is alive. And the objective of the Christian life is given to us in Colossians 1:9-10, which tell us what it is that we Christians should pursue on the day-by-day basis. Colossians 1:9-10 says, "For this cause we also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you, and to desire that ye," (you Christians in Colossae), "might be filled with the knowledge of His will in our will." And this word "knowledge" is that Greek word "epignosis." Normally, we have simply "gnosis," which is knowledge, but when they put on the "epi," it's a technical word. And that is the word which is used here in Colossians meaning "full knowledge." How does it become full knowledge? When it's up here in your mind, it's "gnosis."

I have learned something about the Word of God. I learned from the Word of God that I should not steal. I know that fact. That's something I understand. When I believe it, God the Holy Spirit puts that principle down in my human spirit, and it's there for my guidance. Now it becomes from knowledge to full knowledge. It's a very important distinction. And what is happening here in Colossians 1:9 is that Paul is praying that all these Christians would get their human spirits filled with the fullness of the knowledge of God. "To be filled with the knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding; that ye might walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing, being fruitful in every good work, and increasing in the knowledge of God," - the epignosis of God. The more divine viewpoint, full knowledge you have, the greater frame of reference you have for understanding more.

And you see, verse 10 says, if you're going to walk worth of the Lord, you've got to have that human spirit full of God's knowledge. If you're going to be pleasing to God, you've got to have that knowledge there. If you're going to be fruitful in your Christian service and not just operating in human good, and if you're going to be developing as a Christian increasing in your frame of reference, you have to have full knowledge down here in that human spirit. It's a beautiful system. God has made that grace system of perception whereby no matter what your IQ is, you can learn God's thinking and secure for yourself the mind of Christ. That's another term for "full knowledge;" it's the mind of Christ in our human spirits.

Being Born Again

So this is the picture that the Apostle Paul is presenting here in verse 10: that our physical bodies are dead but our human spirit is something else. And again, he leaves out the verb for the point of emphasis. He says, "Our human spirit is life." The word is "zoe." This refers to that which is the opposite of death. The human spirit is life, and it is alive. The Christian's human spirit has been made alive at the point of salvation by the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit. When you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you accept His sacrifice as your sacrifice and you accept His provision for your salvation, then your human spirit is born again. The Word of God says you're born from above. In John 3:3, we read that Jesus answered Nicodemus and said unto him, "Verily, verily, I say unto you, except a man be born again," literally born from above, "he cannot see the kingdom of God." That's why you must be born again spiritually to enter Heaven. There's no other way.

Ephesians 2:5 tell us that that's exactly what God has done for every believer. "Even when we were dead in sins, hath made us alive together with Christ (by grace ye are saved)." We were dead spiritually in sins; he has made us spiritually alive. So the believer's living human spirit is now a thing of life itself, and therefore it will in time counter the seeds of death which are in the body. That's why you're physically going to come alive again. And so when you face death, thank God that you have a living human spirit, because that is the seed of life that will overcome the deadness of that body someday.

When your loved ones go out in death, remember that when they have a living human spirit, your sorrow at the moment is a temporary thing. It has a terminal point. Someplace down the line, that person will be resurrected and will be raised again. This is why it's no fun to run a funeral for someone who is obviously an unbeliever, because you know he lies in that casket as one who not only now has a dead physical body but one who has a dead human spirit. He will not be raised to life with God. He will be raised to life in the Lake of Fire. Because you have a living human spirit, your body will not only be brought back to life, but it will be brought back to life with the life of Christ. See, that's the difference so that you will reflect His glory and you'll be qualified physically to live in Heaven.

Reconciliation

And he tell us that "the spirit is life," gives life, it is alive, "because," the word is, "dia," which means "on account of." It indicates the cause of spiritual life, and that is righteousness. "Dikaiosune" - this word refers to being in a right relationship relative to some standard. We call that righteousness. It connotes here having been made right with God by reconciliation to His standard of absolute righteousness. If you wanted to be sure this morning that you got to church on time, you may have gone to your telephone and called Time and Temperature, and as they gave you the time, you checked your watch in order to be sure that your watch was compatible with the official standard of time. If your watch was off, you then adjust the hands and you thereby reconciled your watch with the standard.

That's exactly what this word "reconciliation" means, and what we are told is that man was originally in perfect adjustment to God's standard of absolute righteousness. After Adam's sin, he was no longer conformed to God's absolute standard. As a matter of fact, what he did was turn his back on God. There was a time when God and man faced each other in the Garden of Eden. They were in perfect fellowship. But when Adam sinned, then Adam turned his back on God, and God turned His back on man. So that now, instead of facing one another, they were back-to-back. They were absolutely out of fellowship with one another. But the death of Jesus Christ came along, paid for the sins of mankind, and renewed this enormous wall that existed between God and man. With that wall removed, God is now able to face man, but man - he's still facing the other way.

This is the condition that now exists: the wall is gone, God is again facing you, your back is toward Him. And so the Word of God says that we are called upon to be reconciled to God. He has turned back to us on the basis of what His Son has done. In 2 Corinthians 5:18-19: "And all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation; to wit, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses onto them; and hath communicated unto us the word of reconciliation."

He is saying that God has reconciled us back to Himself. He's made it possible to be back in adjustment. Why? Because he's gotten rid of the sin problem. Sin is no longer an issue. The wall, the barrier, has been removed so that all a person has to do is say, "Yes, I'll turn back to Him. He's facing me again. He's removed the wall. I'll turn back to Him, and I'll reach over, and He will take my hand." The sinner has been forgiven, and he has been reconciled to God's standard of absolute righteousness.

In 2 Corinthians 5:20, Paul puts it this way, "Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us: we pray you in Christ's stead, that ye be reconciled to God." And so, the believing sinner is now reconciled or adjusted to God's standard of absolute holiness by having God's absolute righteousness imputed to him. The believing sinner therefore stands in the position of being justified before God.

Romans 4:5-6, we read, "But to him that worketh not, but believe on Him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness. Even as David also describeth the blessedness of the man, unto whom God imputeth absolute righteousness apart from works." And that's what's happened to us. The barrier is removed, and now we may receive absolute righteousness. And God's absolute righteousness brings with it the regeneration of the believer's dead human spirit so that he is now spiritually alive. When you turn back and face God, that reconciliation brings your spirit to life.

So sin has produced death in a person and absolutely righteousness produces life in him. While the Christian's body is doomed to death, verse 10 tells us, his human spirit is forever alive because of the righteousness - the absolute righteousness - of God that has been imputed to him. We may translate verse 10 this way: "But since Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, yet the human spirit is alive because of absolute righteousness."

God the Father's Involvement in the Resurrection

Moving on to verse 11 (Romans 8:11). Paul then says, "But," and here again introducing further clarification with that word "de." If. It's the Greek word "ei," which is that first-class condition meaning "since the Spirit," and here it is God the Holy Spirit that is in view. "If the Spirit," and it is viewing him as the Spirit of God the Father who sends the Holy Spirit here. "If the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus." The word "raised up" is "egeiro." This word refers to the physical resurrection of Jesus Christ. "If the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus."

God was involved in bringing Christ back to life. This is aorist tense. It's at the point on that first Easter Sunday morning when God was involved in raising the Son. It's active voice - God the Father who raised up the Son. And participle - it's a spiritual principle. And the one that the Father raised up is Jesus ("Iesous"). He raised him back from the dead. The word "dead" is "nekros." And here you see this grave, and here's the dead man, and here's the flowers that he's holding up there in his final moments of repose. And that's where he is - in the grave.

And you will notice that many people who are alive get in the grave because they get in a rut in life. And I don't know whether you've ever noticed it. I've noticed it several times at funerals that the only difference between the grave and the rut is a rut is a grave with the ends kicked out. And many people go through life rutting themselves into what is virtually a grave, but here is the body. It's dead. It's in the grave. It's doomed. And this word "nekros" refers to these people.

Now the Lord Jesus Christ in His deity had the power to lay down His physical life, and he had the power to take it up again. John 10:17-18 tell us that very clearly. In His deity, Christ could have raised Himself, but Jesus Christ had to function as a human being. And in his humanity, he had to be resurrected by God the Father from the grave. And that's what Paul is speaking of here. "But if the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus," referring to God the Father, "from the dead." And the Bible repeatedly tells us that is the Father who raised the Son. Acts 2:32, Romans 4:24, Galatians 1:1, Ephesians 1:17-20 all tell us that God the Father raised the Son and furthermore the Holy Spirit is here closely associated with the Father in the resurrection of the Son so He is called "the Spirit of Him who raised up Jesus." And the Lord Jesus Christ is the One who is raised up because the price was paid.

Jesus as the Living Savior

Therefore you should not view the Lord Jesus Christ as the dead savior; you should always think of Him as the One who is forever alive. The great Roman Catholic system is the great travesty and the blasphemy toward this great doctrinal truth. Anytime you enter a Roman Catholic Church, you are very much aware of one thing: the oppressiveness of death relative to Christ. It's always the dead savior someplace on the crucifix that is portrayed.

Now, the Lord Jesus Christ, this one who is the Creator of the World, permitted sinful men to murder Him on the cross. He did that so He could die as the Lamb of God the Father, bearing the sins of mankind and thereby satisfied the just demands of God against all sinners. But on the third day, He was raised from the dead and then was seen physically alive by hundreds of people. Now the Bible tells us that having once paid for the sins of mankind, He is now forever joyfully alive and seated at the right hand of God the Father in Heaven. For this reason, Jesus Christ is ready and able to save from the Lake of Fire all those who turn from Him and trust in His payment alone for their sins.

On the very first day of the church, Acts 2:21, stresses that truth, "And it shall come to pass, that whoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved." The Savior we have is one who can save you. Now. Today. Why? Because he's alive. A dead savior is incapacitated. But religion today is inspired by Satan to present the Lord Jesus Christ as still dead, and man as still trying to make it with God. God the Father is pictured in the average religious scene as a vengeful deity, still demanding to be appeased by the self-imposed sufferings of sinners. Such self-denial and such penance is an insult, and it's a blasphemy to the finished work of Jesus Christ. And that's what the Apostle Paul is stressing here that Jesus was raised up from the dead.

Lent and Ash Wednesday

All of you religious types here this morning know that this is now the season of Lent in liturgical religiously-oriented churches. It is a period of observation which is one of the most Satanic perversions from the Babylonian mystery religious system which used to have a 40-day period of Lent mourning the death of Tammuz and preceding his purported resurrection. But it is a perversion of the reality of Christ's resurrection and the perfect salvation by grace. You have heard of the great Carnival down in New Orleans celebrating the Mardi Gras. The word "Marti Gras" is French. "Marti" means "Tuesday," and "Gras" means "Fat Tuesday." Fat Tuesday comes before Ash Wednesday, which is the first day of Lent. Forty days later comes Easter Sunday.

On Ash Wednesday, the religious types will go to church. They go to church because now they're going to enter a period of doing something to themselves in the way of penance to show God that they are worthy of salvation. And don't kid yourself that it's for any other reason. It is not just a simple religious exercise. It's not just a simple celebration. It is to try to take another step up toward God because during the period of Lent. You deny yourself something - something that is very pleasant and good that you like to do. For forty days, you vow not to kiss your wife. For forty days, you vow not to eat a Hershey bar. For forty days, you won't do this or you won't do that because it'll make you suffer and thus appease the vengeance of God.

As a matter of fact, if you go to church on Ash Wednesday and really do the thing up right, you will be in a religious institution where they will come to a part of the service where they will get a little metal censer, a pot, and they will burn some palm branches. And they will burn that down to ashes, and then you will be permitted to come by after it has been blessed by the priest to dip your finger in those ashes and to make a cross on your forehead. And you will go ahead with this streak of ashes, this ashen cross, on your forehead. That is Ash Wednesday. And it is the symbolic sign of your willingness to suffer for your sins and to do penance even though the Bible tells us that Christ is no longer dead and there is nothing more to be added to what He has done.

Now, the reason Tuesday before Ash Wednesday is called "Mardi Gras," meaning "Fat Tuesday," because on Fat Tuesday, they have a Carnival. The word "carnival" comes from the word "carne" which means "meat," and the word "val," this part here, means "a farewell." For example, as in, "chile con carne," meaning "chile with meat." And a person who stands up and delivers the farewell address at a graduation exercise, he's called a "valedictorian," meaning the one who stands up and says, "Farewell." So this is "farewell to meat" and to all the pleasant things in life. So you come to the period of the Carnival, and you celebrate this on the Mardi Gras on Fat Tuesday, and Fat Tuesday means this is the final opportunity for gorging, for drinking, for fornicating before going into a forty-day spree of wallowing in religion and self-denial to appease a dead Christ. Most people who make their Lenten vows are not very good at keeping them, but the truth of the matter is that all of this is condemned by the Word of God. Lent and all that it represents is condemned by the Word of God.

Hebrews 9:28, for example, we read, "So Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many; and unto them that look for him shall he appear the second time without sin unto salvation." (Or apart from the sin issue, but for salvation.) He has come once, and he has born our sins. When He returns, sin will not be an issue again.

Hebrews 10, beginning at verse 8: "Above when he said, 'Sacrifice and offering and burnt offerings and offering for sin thou wouldest not, neither hadst pleasure therin;' which are offered by the law;" all these animal sacrifices, "then said He, 'Lo, I come to do thy will, O God,'" Jesus Christ, speaking. "He taketh away the first, that he may establish the second. By which will we are sanctified by the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. And every priest standeth daily ministering and offering oftentimes the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins: but this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down on the right hand of God the Father."

The Old Testament priests had to stay on their feet all the time making another sacrifice and another sacrifice because the animals didn't count for anything. But when Jesus Christ made His sacrifice as the Lamb of God, He could get off His feet and sit down at the right hand of God the Father, because there was not another one to be made. "From henceforth, expecting till his enemies be made His footstool. For by one offering He hath perfected forever them that are sanctified." These who are set apart to eternal life by trusting in Him.

Compare that, this image of death, to John 20:19, where on the resurrection day, Jesus Christ came to His disciples and met them. Now that He is alive, how does He greet them? John 20:19: "Then the same day at evening, being the first day of the week, when the doors were shut where the disciples were assembled for fear of the Jews, came Jesus and stood in the midst of them, and said unto them, 'Peace be unto you.'"

Now what kind of peace is involved in somebody who has to go to church on Ash Wednesday to go through some crazy religious ritual to put some ashes on his forehead and then to place upon himself some kind of self-denial and penance and infliction for a forty-day period lit he comes to Easter hoping that what Easter stands for - new life, peace - would somehow then be applied to him because of what he has done. So let's do away with religion. Let's away with this religious celebration of Lent to pay for our sins. Away with the dead Christ. It's all a Satan's doing.

The Apostle Paul can speak with confidence to us that God the Father raised the Son. "But if the Spirit of Him," God the Father," that raised up Jesus from the dead, dwell in you. This is the word "oikeo." It means "to inhabit as one's abode." This is the continual indwelling. This Holy Spirit does indwell us. It is a statement of fact. It is in you, the bodies of believers, and it is the ground of this resurrection to eternal life which is in Jesus Christ. Because God the Holy Spirit dwells in us, we have the ground for receiving the resurrection ourselves. John 11:25, we read, "Jesus said unto her," to Martha, "'I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead," physically, "yet shall he live." The

Message of Easter

And that's the happy message, the real message of this time of the year, when people want to celebrate the Easter event. And it is one that is terribly corrupted, terribly confused because Satan has come in and capitalized on religious interests and perverted it once more to man looking to himself to make it with God instead of man looking to God who's already done it all and who has made it easy for us to make it by simply accepting His gift. May you approach the Easter season not in terms of the dead Christ but in the rejoicing of One who is alive, One whose Spirit indwells you. Because of that, you are now spiritually alive. Because your human spirit is alive, your body will someday be brought to life.

Dr. John E. Danish, 1977

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