- Overcomer Literature Trust
- Swindon
- Wiltshire
THE LIVING ONE.
By Mrs Jessie Penn-Lewis
"Why do you look for the Living One among the dead?"
(Luke 24 v5).
The women went to the tomb to look for a dead Christ, for they did not know Him yet as the risen Lord. As we think about His death, let us never forget that He is the Living One. Some people worship the dead Christ and spend every Good Friday weeping over Him as the crucified One. “Why do you look for the Living One among the dead? He is not here, He is risen”, said the angel who was the messenger. As the women listened they were frightened and perplexed. They went to seek Christ in a tomb and found it empty. Praise God for the empty tomb, because He is not there, for He is risen. When the women went back to the disciples to tell them that He was risen the disciples did not believe it and said it was idle talk, and to us it is very often just idle talk until we know the risen One Himself.
Later we read that the disciples were gathered in an upper room and the doors were shut for fear of the Jewish leaders. They had been to Calvary and surely they had passed through a spiritual "Calvary" by an attack on all their hopes, but they did not become witnesses full of power and strength from God until they knew Jesus as the Living One and were filled with His Spirit. Death is negative, it is life that brings positive power.
It is helpful to think about what the resurrection meant to Christ Himself. In Romans 1 verse 4 we read these words, “who through the Spirit of holiness was declared with power to be the Son of God, by His resurrection from the dead”. It was by the resurrection that He was proved to be the Son of God. We read in Ephesians 1, “that power is like the working of His mighty strength, which He exerted in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every title that can be given” (v19-20). Look next at Romans 6, ”for we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, He cannot die again, death no longer has the mastery over Him. The death He died, He died to sin once for all, but the life He lives, He lives to God” (v9).
Four great truths are made clear in these passages of Scripture. First of all, that by His resurrection, the Lord Jesus proved to be the Son of God. Second, that He was lifted above the powers of darkness into a place of triumph. Third, that death had no more power over Him, and fourth, that He ceased to live on the earth side of Calvary, but went to live with God on the Heaven side of the Cross.
"That I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection", cried Paul. It is possible for us to share the power of His resurrection. Writing to the converts in Rome, Paul tells the whole story and we see that the resurrection of Christ is the pattern of our spiritual resurrection. “Don’t you know that all of us who were baptised into Christ Jesus were baptised into His death? We were therefore buried with Him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life. If we have been united with Him like this in His death, we will certainly also be united with Him in His resurrection" (Romans 6 v3-6), or in other words, we have been brought by the Holy Spirit into a living knowledge of His Cross. This means something more than just an intellectual belief, or even an attitude of strong faith. Scripture speaks of a planting into His death, an assimilation of His death, and a fellowship with Him in His Cross in a very real way.
Therefore, if we have shared the reality of His death, we may be completely sure that the union with Him in life will follow. We are to share His life as well as His death. This fact is repeated in Romans chapter 6 verse 8, “now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with Him”, and death is a means to an end. We must know the power of His resurrection life in our daily life. Do not forget that life should spring out of death. It is true that we must be rooted into Him in His death, but we must also be joined to Him in His resurrection. When we begin to know His death we will need to cast ourselves upon Him for His energising life or we will be powerless in our practical walk. Let us thank God for the light He has given us about the Cross of Jesus Christ, and the light we have about the way He will make us like Him by His death, but let us strive to know the power of His resurrection and the life of living union with Him.
In your darkest hour of conflict, in the hardest testing time we may ever be in, if we are joined to Him we will be able to say, “I am with my Risen Lord, above all this. I refuse to go under this, for I stand with Him in the place of victory. I believe in the God who raises the dead”. Only in this way can faith be matured, until it becomes a faith that can live and triumph in impossibilities.
Let us look briefly at the practical way of proving the power of His resurrection. “He is not weak in dealing with you, but is powerful among you. For to be sure, He was crucified in weakness, yet He lives by God’s power. Likewise, we are weak in Him, yet by God’s power we will live with Him to serve you”, wrote Paul (2 Corinthians 13 v3-4). Practically we are always weak in ourselves. We shall know the power and life of God working in us by its effect in others around us. This takes us away from watching ourselves and our experiences.
There are therefore three things in practical experience. Firstly, having died to ourselves because of His death and resurrection, the life of Christ should now pour out from us to others. Secondly, it is always death to ourselves so that we may not trust in ourselves but cast ourselves upon the God who raises the dead. Thirdly, we can only recognise God's power by the effect it produces, not by our consciousness of it.
In Hebrews 11, we see another aspect of the power of the resurrection, "by faith Abraham, when God tested him, offered Isaac as a sacrifice” (v17) and, “Abraham reasoned that God could raise the dead” (v19). This is a further stage in the knowledge of Christ's resurrection and indicates the way in which God matures our faith. In life the attitude over everything is to be, “Father, I lay it down in the faith that You can raise it up”. Everything can go then to His altar without hesitation. This is the power of the resurrection for all our possessions, and even the gifts of God, faith laying them down, believing that God raises from the dead.
We must remember that Jesus Himself is with us and He is the living Christ within the veil. He is interceding for us every moment, the sprinkled blood is being applied for us. Through the opened heavens we see Jesus the Son of God, standing in the presence of God for us, and we see ourselves there in Him. As we go forward with the opened heavens above our heads, let us say, “I see the sprinkled blood before the Father, speaking for me. The way is clear because God is helping me, there shall never be a shadow between us”.
Let us seek Him who lives at God's right hand, because we are with Him, and are accepted in the Beloved.
From an old ‘Overcomer’.