Title: RESURRECTION BENEFITS
Focus: Citizenship in heaven comes with resurrection benefits.
Function: To move the people to embrace and live out of the riches or resurrection benefits of the Christian faith.
Text: Philippians 3:17-4:1
Heidelberg Catechism: Lord’s Day 17
Six years ago it happened at Columbine High near Littleton, Colorado: two teen gunmen killed 12 students, a teacher and themselves. This week it happened again, but now close to home: sixteen-year-old Jeff Weise from Red Lake, MN went on a rampage, shooting to death his grandfather and the grandfather’s companion. Armed with two pistols and a shotgun, Jeff then went to his high school and killed nine people, wounding seven before shooting himself to death.
As I listened to radio talk show hosts trying to make sense of this horrendous shooting, I heard a number of people making reference to “a hopelessly-lost teenager,” and to “a community of people living without hope and without a clear sense of purpose, because of their poverty and lack of employment.” As a result, the Red Lake Indian Reservation must now “sow” or bury the bodies of 10 people whose lives were snuffed out by a senseless act of violence.
All of this happened during Holy Week, while the Christian church focused on Christ’s crucifixion and death, and prepared to welcome and celebrate Christ’s resurrection. How ironic! While Christians draw hope and power from Christ’s death and resurrection, there are many who continue to live with despair, without hope, and with no answer to life’s most pressing problems, including the reality of death itself.
If we had an opportunity, what would we tell the Jeff Weises in our neighborhoods and world? What would we say to them to bring hope and strength in their lives? In light of Scripture’s teaching, I would say: Change your citizenship. Change your orientation of despair and hopeless to an orientation that is centered in heaven. For citizenship in heaven comes with resurrection benefits.
People live their lives by all kinds of different patterns. I’m not thinking of lifestyles, but rather of patterns that are fueled not only by faith and certain convictions, but also by unbelief and idolatrous world and life views. For example, the pattern of Muslims centers on daily prayers, fasting, and the observance of feast days. Fatalism permeates their pattern of living. Another example: people who claim to live without any faith center their patterns of living on themselves, or on pleasures, or worldly powers that give them comfort and a sense of security. Surely, life on earth consists of all kinds of different patterns.
In Philippians 3, the apostle Paul refers to a pattern that is hostile to the pattern of Christ-like living. He says: “…as I have often told you before and now say again even with tears, many live as enemies of the cross of Christ” (vs.18) These enemies focus their life on earthly things—on things that lure us away from God, away from God’s Word, and away from doing God’s will. Paul says: “Their destiny is destruction, their god is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame. Their mind is on earthly things” (vs. 19)
Christians, however, must learn to live by a different pattern. It’s a pattern that takes seriously the cross of Jesus. Death and resurrection are at the core of that pattern. That’s why Paul says: “Join with others in following my example…and take note of those who live according to the patterns we gave you” (vs. 17).
The pattern of the cross belongs to the way of life that has its orientation in the rule of God in heaven. Paul makes that clear when he says, in contrast to the enemies of the cross, “But our citizenship is in heaven.” Now American citizens have their daily orientation rooted in America. An American has an American passport, for example. She has privileges such as voting and access to American courts. Our American citizenship grounds us in a vast country with specific borders, states, language, and cultures. An American anchors his life in American soil and orientates his life from an American perspective.
But Christians, though loyal to their national citizenship, must learn to live by a pattern that orientates all of earthly life on the rule of Jesus Christ from heaven. Just as the needle of a compass always turns back to the magnetic North Pole, so the needle of the Christian faith always draws us back to our citizenship in heaven. Our passport is our baptism in the name of the Triune God; our identity lies with Jesus Christ; our loyalties are with Jesus’ kingdom; all our responsibilities and privileges connect with Jesus’ rule from heaven. That’s where our citizenship is. And today we learn that our citizenship in heaven comes with resurrection benefits. Listen: “…our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body.”
An interesting word isn’t it? “lowly bodies.” Paul means that our bodies are weak, frail. From the cradle to the grave we struggle to maintain health and strength. Some give up and die young; others, having lived for decades, have no more strength left and die old. But all of us wrestle and fight each day with the power of death that is keen on bringing disintegration to our bodies. Take Terri Schiavo, for example. For more than 14 years she has struggled to survive. Now having been legally but immorally denied the essential care needed to live, she is slipping away. That’s the way it is with our “lowly bodies.”
But remember now, says Paul, that’s not the end of the story for those whose citizenship is in heaven. For “…we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ…who will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body.” In other words, citizenship in heaven comes with resurrection benefits.
Do you remember the Scripture’s account of Jesus’ resurrection appearances? The disciples had difficulty recognizing the resurrected Jesus. Before his death, Jesus’ body was a “lowly body.” But after his resurrection that same body of Jesus had changed into a “glorious body.” The body of the resurrected Lord Jesus is a transfigured, glorified body. That resurrection body of the Lord Jesus Christ is our comfort and hope today. Why? It points to one of our resurrection benefits. And therefore the pattern or compass of Christian living must always be oriented on our citizenship in heaven. For there we find our resurrection benefits.
OUR RESURRECTION BENEFITS
When you take a rock and throw it into a pool of water, you will get a ripple effect. Concentric circles of water form, moving away from the spot of impact, wider and wider and wider. Jesus’ resurrection is like that. It took place about 2000 years ago, but the ripple effects are still shaking the world.
The teacher of Lord’s Day 17 identifies three ripple effects or benefits of Jesus’ resurrection. Those benefits come to all whose citizenship is in heaven. I will give you the three biblical terms first; then I will explain as best as I can: 1. Justification; 2. Sanctification; 3 Glorification.
The Catechism states the first benefit of Christ’s resurrection as follows: “…by his resurrection Jesus has overcome death, so that he might make us share in the righteousness he won for us by his death.” That benefit is all about justification.
Consider:
Jesus paid the penalty of sin, and in that way he secured for us a right
standing before God. Jesus is our righteousness, says Scripture (Phil. 3:9).
Because Jesus himself was without sin, (even though he died for our sins) death
had no power over Jesus to hold him in the grave and subject him to corruption
and decay. By his righteousness and death, the Lord Jesus paid the penalty of
sin. It’s paid in full. Now all those who belong to Jesus are in a right
standing with God: “Not guilty.” So
then, Jesus’ resurrection was necessary, so that he might bring us forgiveness
and life. That’s how Christians today, world-wide, share in Jesus’ first
resurrection benefit. Jesus makes us “…share in the righteousness he won for us
by his death.”
The second
benefit of Jesus’ resurrection for all whose citizenship is in heaven is
captured in the term “sanctification.”
The teacher
of Lord’s Day 17 puts it this way: “…by
Jesus’ power we too are already now resurrected to a new life.” That means,
very simply, that Christians already today, in this life, are raised up, called
out of the life of sin. When God sent his Holy Spirit into our hearts to bring
rebirth through faith in Christ, the Holy Spirit took our compass of life with
its sin orientation, with its focus on self, and the things of the world. And
the Spirit now enables and calls us to live a new life under the rule of Jesus.
Paul puts it this way in Colossians 1:13 (God) “has rescued us from the dominion of
darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, in whom we have
redemption, the forgiveness of sins.” That rescue act of God involves
rebirth, a new life. As Paul says in Ephesians 2 (God) “made us alive in Christ.”
Ever since God made us alive in Christ, the Holy Spirit has been busy sanctifying us or reconstructing us. That construction work is a resurrection benefit. By his resurrection power, the Spirit of Christ “wrings” the neck of the old man of sin within us. Every day, the Spirit moves us to choke the daylight out of sin: we must fight it, overcome it, sometimes flee from it, and ignore its beckoning and lures. We must put off the old man of sin by the power of Christ’s Spirit. That’s part of our sanctification or the work of the Holy Spirit within us, applying Christ’s resurrection power to our daily living.
Listen to the apostle Paul celebrating that resurrection benefit saying: “I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.” Thank God for the resurrection benefit of being made right with God (our justification), and of being under constant construction to be like Christ, our King in heaven (our sanctification)!
The third
resurrection benefit for whose citizenship is in heaven is captured with the
term “glorification.”
The
Catechism puts it this way: “Christ’s
resurrection is a guarantee of our glorious resurrection.” The apostle Paul
touches upon it in the text when he says that we await a Savior from heaven “who…will
transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body.”
We are all surrounded by the harsh reality of death. Death is always jerking around our frail or lowly bodies. That’s why we need to make sure that our compass of Christian faith is oriented toward this astonishing resurrection benefit: Jesus’ resurrection is our guarantee of our own, glorious resurrection from the dead. As Jesus experienced glorification in his transformed, resurrection body, so will anyone whose citizenship is in heaven, where Jesus rules as King.
There’s hope for you and me; there’s power and encouragement for those lost and desperate in our neighborhoods. When Jesus comes again at the end of time, he will complete his work of saving us and all of creation. Until that day, do what Scripture calls us to do: live as citizens of heaven, cherishing the resurrection benefits of Jesus Christ, our King.
In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.