Resurrection 9 Forging Ahead to Claim the Resurrected Life

[HKHaugan]

Resurrection 9 Forging Ahead to Claim the Resurrected Life

To start with, we need to review. We have been given three basic life rights---the right to be a child of God, the right to a new identity, a disciple of Jesus and the right to an eternal spiritual Counselor, the Holy Spirit.

First, when we believe and receive Jesus as Savior and Lord we are images of God being given the right to a new personal and relational identity---children of God the Father. That is the most basic right every human being is given, the right to be a child of God. It is our spiritual right secured for us by Jesus on His Cross and through His Resurrection, filled with a spiritual life which is eternal.

Second, as children of God our Father, we are given a right to a new working identity, disciples of God the Son, Jesus. As disciples we are given three goals: to grow in Jesus, ministering to one another in His Body called church and sharing Him with those outside His Body. Those three are our basic spiritual rights out of which grew the 'civil' rights of our nation---“life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”---from the Declaration of Independence.

Third, as working disciples of Jesus we have a third right, the right to a Counselor who empowers our new relationship, God the Holy Spirit. He gives us His manual of operation, Holy Scripture, to inform our mind.

One thing that seems to be overlooked is the fact of His personal way to get to our self conscious being, and the personal history we experience. He was born as an individual human being with all the limitations we have. Now think about that. He wanted to identify with us personally by starting human life like we did. He was a brand new unique person having to grow and mature like all of us. He submitted Himself to the human process of development living under the authority of a mother, a stepfather, brothers and an ethnic family with a religious identity and supervision. He had to eat and sleep and adjust to the physical demands the body placed on Him. From the knowledge of Scripture, His cultural heritage and the manner of His teaching there is no question as to His Scriptural and relational background. But all of who He was came out of His submission to His Father's will as He wrestled with the influences of His culture both good and bad. He was tempted in every way as we are (Heb.4:15), faced everyday with choices and decisions that challenge the mind, heart and spirit in each of us.

But here's the thing. The amazing reality about Jesus' maturation process was that He never sinned.

Jesus was consumed with being His Father's Son and emulating Him (When you have seen me, you have seen the Father---John 14:7). This is the difference between Him and us that shows the nature of sin. We tend to be consumed with ourselves, with being able to control our circumstances and overcome our insecure minds, lonely hearts and errant spirits.

Sin is what produces our sense of aloneness. It makes us socially obsessed with being right, to fear differences that lead to not being right, looking right and doing right. Our life is not about God but about us unless we stop and see Jesus, the real Jesus, the human Jesus whose fearless life was God's right life lived in the flesh.

Sin drives us to fit in to the attitudes and opinions of others. Jesus lived to fit in to His Father's will for Him no matter where He was or who He was with. Death is the proof of sin and its depersonalizing erosion. He chose to submit to the unjust death of the Cross on our behalf even though He never sinned. His Resurrection showed every choice and decision of His daily life on earth was made through faith and obedience in the attitude of humility before His Father. While He lived alone He was always conscious of His Father's presence. That's what faith is all about. His faith was petfect.

What we want to do now is look at the way Jesus went about Galilee and related in that local part of the world. He spent 100% of His ministry and mission in Galilee. That has to be a clue to where each of us has a major responsibility to spend our time. Except for part of His childhood in Egypt, Galilee was where He spent His whole life in this world. So wherever we are relationally is our world, our spiritual environment. Jesus gave us a real insight into where we should put all our spiritual marbles, our local environment. Here's what He said, “Don't look here or there, for behold, the Kingdom of God is within you (Lk.17:21).”

So let's go to Matthew and see what He did while He was on His way. The world in which we live each day is a kind of Galilee with its wilderness, weather, climate, mountains, desert, pastures, towns, nomadic tribes and social atmosphere. Each of these has a spiritual counterpart. As you speculate on this reality it's got to really be interesting to see the spiritual itinerary by which Jesus lived His life there. Because of sin, the wilderness in the hearts of people and their communities was overrun with fear, pride, compromised minds and corrupt social behavior. The hearts of men were surrounded by the stabbing of thistles and thorns in a jungle of darkness. Demons and evil spirits had entrapped those hearts. Social and personal storms prevailed. They needed freedom, freedom only Jesus could give them, heart freedom. He came into the heart wilderness in which man had become ensnared and shared Himself as the source of light, freedom, hope and love. It all had to do with obedience to His Father's will in every next moment, event, circumstance and occasion.

Heart freedom starts with the attitude resident in the heart. His first major event to recover the attitude of all those lost images of God was to offer them, and us, a new set of Commandments to bring the heart back to its spiritual source and its spiritual awareness, the Sermon on the Mount. It reshapes our heart to be more like His. That sermon is our Spiritual Declaration of Independence. It gets us to be aware of the relational nature of our calling to be the Lord's disciples right where we are. It gives us a person-to-person, day-to-day, place-to-place awareness where we actually spend most of our time. Like Jesus it is an intentional awareness to see every person as an image of God, regardless of where they are spiritually, believer, semi-believer or even a hostile non-believer. Not only intentional but also expectantly open, looking forward to what ever the Spirit is leading us to encounter in every next relational moment. Instead of chanting the ego secular anthem, I Did It My Way, in Jesus we can sing in the Spirit, I'm Doing It His Way.