By Xiang Yang, United States
Luke 24:1-9 say, “Now on the first day of the week, very early in the morning, they came to the sepulcher, bringing the spices which they had prepared, and certain others with them. And they found the stone rolled away from the sepulcher. And they entered in, and found not the body of the Lord Jesus. And it came to pass, as they were much perplexed thereabout, behold, two men stood by them in shining garments: And as they were afraid, and bowed down their faces to the earth, they said to them, Why seek you the living among the dead? He is not here, but is risen: remember how he spoke to you when he was yet in Galilee, Saying, The Son of man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and the third day rise again. And they remembered his words, And returned from the sepulcher, and told all these things to the eleven, and to all the rest.”
This Bible passage clearly tells us that three days after Jesus was nailed to the cross, He was resurrected. All our brothers and sisters who truly believe in God believe this fact and praise God’s almightiness in their hearts. However, what else can you see in regard to the fact of Jesus’ resurrection?
1. God’s Word Has Power and Authority
From the Bible we can see that after Jesus was nailed to the cross, the Lord’s body was wrapped in fine linen and His grave was sealed with a big boulder. However, when some women came to apply spices to Jesus’ body, the boulder that sealed off His tomb was rolled off to one side and Jesus’ body was no longer inside. An angel said to them, “Why seek you the living among the dead? He is not here, but is risen: remember how he spoke to you when he was yet in Galilee, Saying, The Son of man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and the third day rise again” (Luke 24:5-7). From the angel’s words we can see that it was God that said, “The Son of man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and the third day rise again.” In the end, this is what God accomplished. This completely indicates that God’s words have authority and power. Whatever God says, it will be so. This is similar to when God created the heavens, the earth and all living things in the beginning. “God said, Let there be light: and there was light” (Genesis 1:3). Every living thing was created by God’s word. When Jesus was preaching, a single word from Jesus allowed the blind to see and the crippled to walk. One word and the winds calm down and the waves subside. One word and Lazarus, who had been dead for four days, resurrected. All these truths allow us to see that the authority of God’s word is incalculable and that God’s word represents God’s authority and power.
2. Revealing God’s Wisdom
We all know that Jesus came to earth in order to complete the work of redemption. In the later stages of the Age of Law, because man’s corruption was becoming deeper and deeper, because he was unable to adhere to the laws and because man’s sins were becoming more and more numerous, there was no sacrifice for one own’s sins. If this continued, man would face the life threatening danger of breaking the laws. Since the entire human race had been corrupted by Satan and fallen short of God’s glory, who would atone for man’s sins? Only God was able to save us humans. However, we were unable to ascend to heaven to take the sin offering. As a result, God incarnated and took on the likeness of sinful flesh and used the name “Jesus” to do His work. At that time, the Pharisees, in order to protect their own status, did all that they could to resist and convict Jesus. In the end, they nailed Jesus to the cross. Externally, it seemed that the Pharisees and the Roman government had nailed the Lord to the cross. However, in reality, it was God accomplishing His work. From man’s perspective, it seemed as if the nailing of Jesus to the cross was equivalent to the suppression of God’s work. Actually, God used the sinning hands of man to nail Himself to the cross in order to complete the work of redeeming mankind. When Jesus was nailed to the cross, He said, “It is finished” (John 19:30). This indicates that God’s redemption work had been completed and that the work that God wanted to do was done. Jesus was then resurrected! Doesn’t this show God’s wisdom? This allows us to plainly see that God’s wisdom is built above Satan’s schemes and that God’s wisdom is fantastic and unfathomable!
3. Jesus Is God Himself
When Jesus rose from the dead, in the beginning, I only recognized that God had the power of resurrection. Afterward, I discovered that this recognition was very superficial and one-sided. Actually, the truth of Jesus’ resurrection indicates that Jesus is in fact God Himself. It is recorded in Genesis, “And the Spirit of God moved on the face of the waters” (Genesis 1:2). “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1). God is of the Spirit. From ancient times until eternity, God will exist. During the Age of Law, Jehovah God did His work through the Spirit. When Jesus came to do His work, since He had to do the work of redemption and there was no way that a spirit could be nailed to the cross, God was incarnated to do His work. In the New Testament of the Bible, the Lord Jesus said, “Believe you not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me?” (John 14:10). Jesus’ words clearly indicate that Jesus is Christ, God in heaven, the Son and the Father. In the past, even though we would call out “Jesus Christ” daily, we did not know what Christ meant. We would shout that Jesus is the incarnate God yet all along we did not understand what incarnation means. Even though Jesus said that He is God Himself, we did not understand. Recently, I read a book online that said, “The meaning of incarnation is that God appears in the flesh, and He comes to work among man of His creation in the image of a flesh. So, for God to be incarnated, He must first be flesh, flesh with normal humanity; this, at the very least, must be true. In fact, the implication of God’s incarnation is that God lives and works in the flesh, God in His very essence becomes flesh, becomes a man.”
“The Spirit within Jesus, the Spirit in heaven, and the Spirit of Jehovah are all one. It can be called the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God, the sevenfold intensified Spirit, and the all-inclusive Spirit. The Spirit of God alone can carry out much work. He is able to create the world and destroy it by flooding the earth; He can redeem all mankind, and moreover, conquer and destroy all mankind. This work is all carried out by God Himself and cannot have been done by any other of the persons of God in His stead. His Spirit can be called by the name of Jehovah and Jesus, as well as the Almighty. He is the Lord, and Christ. He can also become the Son of man. He is in the heavens and also on the earth; He is on high above the universes and among the multitude. He is the only Master of the heavens and earth!”
These words open up the secret of incarnation to us. Externally, Jesus looks like an ordinary person. However, spiritually, He is the God of heaven and the Creator of all things. God’s incarnation is essentially God embodying flesh and coming to earth to do His work. Therefore, the truth of Jesus being nailed to the cross and resurrecting is the revealing of the Lord’s spirit to man and not what we imagine as the death of Jesus on the cross.
Some people perhaps say that it is recorded in the Bible that after Jesus was baptized in the Jordan river, there was a voice from heaven that said, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased” (2 Peter 1:17). Moreover, Jesus called the God in heaven Father. Doesn’t this indicate that Jesus is the son of God? If He is God Himself, how can He called the God in heaven Father? Don’t be worried, the following words explain this conundrum, “There are still those who say, ‘Did not God expressly state that Jesus was His beloved Son?’ ‘Jesus is the beloved Son of God, in whom He is well pleased’ was certainly spoken by God Himself. That was God bearing witness to Himself, but merely from a different perspective, that of the Spirit in heaven bearing witness to His own incarnation. Jesus is His incarnation, not His Son in heaven. Do you understand? Do not the words of Jesus, ‘The Father is in Me and I am in the Father,’ indicate that They are one Spirit? And is it not because of the incarnation that They were separated between heaven and earth? In reality, They are still one; no matter what, it is simply God bearing witness to Himself.” These words indicate to us that Jesus is the heavenly God. Since none of us recognized God when He became flesh, God spoke from the perspective of the spirit and bore witness to His own incarnation. When Jesus called the God in heaven Father, He was saying this from the perspective of the Son of man as well as the perspective of a creation addressing the heavenly God. In fact, Jesus is God Himself! Just as the Bible says, “but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Romans 6:23).
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