Here’s an excerpt from the Introduction of RESURRECTION: The Big Picture of God’s Purpose and Your Destiny
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The stark truth is that we are born into a world at war. Look around and you know it’s true. Our neighborhoods. Our nation. Our world. Even closer to home is the mirror in our bathroom. For it reflects that we are at war within our own selves as well. But what if the wars we are trying to fight go deeper than cultural, racial, gender, socio-economic, and religious differences? What if the wars we fight are just symptoms of a far deeper reality? What if that reality encompasses not just our world, but the entire universe?
The Bible declares that we were created as God’s image bearers, but an enemy has come to destroy us. That enemy is not an impersonal force, but the very personification of evil: Lucifer—otherwise known as the devil. This is an enemy which existed before time began and who has railed against God’s Divine Order in every way possible. The result has been our death and separation from the One who has created us. But God, in his love for humanity, has come to do what we could not do for ourselves: redeem us…
DEFINING RESURRECTION:
The Greek word for “Resurrection” is Anastasis. According to Strong’s Concordance of the Bible, Anastasis means: rising to life; returning to life after death, usually referring to the raising to life of Jesus Christ. Being raised to life again. The base meaning of the word is the act of rising from a prone or sitting position to a standing position.
So, what does this tell us? In the most dramatic of terms, resurrection is the complete reversal of death at the physical and supernatural level! It is the revitalization, renewal, and regeneration of every cell in your body that has decayed and atrophied beyond the point of no return. If there were a word beyond “nuclear” in its description of God’s explosive power to completely transform your life—resurrection would be it!
Resurrection is a bursting forth! It is where God supernaturally infuses his abundant, overflowing and unquenchable Holy Spirit through the very atoms that make up your body; through the very substance of nature and spirit, which makes up the totality of who you are! And by this infusion God reverses what is otherwise irreversible! As we are told in 1 Corinthians 15:42-44, our natural bodies will perish in weakness, but will be raised “as something completely other” in glory, strength and immortality! Resurrection is violent—not in the sense of destruction that leads to death—but in the sense of an overflowing ability to flood death with such a torrent of raging life, that every aspect, particle, and avenue, which causes death, is wiped away!
Resurrection is not only restoring what was lost—imagine yourself in the prime of your life where you were your strongest, smartest and felt most alive—it is also the bestowing upon us what we never had.
Take a few moments and let these words sink in...
We see this in the imagery of rising from a prone (prostrate, lying down) position to standing upright. Our current existence on earth— no matter how strong, intelligent and vibrant we are—is restricted to a “lying down” or “sitting” position. We live under the consequences of the fall and the curse. But when Christ resurrects us with his life, we will be standing up completely under a power and presence we have never fully known before!
In John 11:25-26, Jesus declares to Martha before raising her brother Lazarus from the dead, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?”
Resurrection isn’t just a power that Jesus possesses. Resurrection is Jesus Christ! To partake of “it” is to partake of him! To partake of him is to be consumed and overtaken by “it”. Resurrection is being found in Christ and him being found in you. Not in some metaphorical sense, but in actuality. There are certain aspects of resurrection we can experience now—such as the transformation that happens when we are born again, as well as the process described, in Romans 8, of being conformed into the image of Christ. However, the fullness of Christ’s resurrection power will be revealed when we finally stand before him on That Day.
But what is Christ resurrecting us for? (I seek to answer this question within the pages of this book.) We won’t be raised up to live in a void. Our resurrection is intricately connected to the restoration of the earth and the universe in order to fulfill God’s original intent for creation! Yet, even with these defining parameters I have just provided, resurrection is actually beyond human definition, because what it truly is, we have never experienced before. Even so, I do enjoy using my imagination in conjunction with the Scriptures to picture it to the best of my ability. And I look forward to the day and the forever after when I will experience resurrection with my sisters and brothers in Christ! —AP3
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Allen Paul Weaver III is the author of RESURRECTION: The BIG Picture of God’s Purpose and Your Destiny and The Resurrection Life: A 40 Day Journey with Jesus. Both seek to unpack the Story of our creation, purpose and destiny. Both are available on amazon.com. Find out more about his books and him at www.TheResurrectionLife.com.