At present, we are working with the light of truth presented by Dr. Francis Schaeffer from his book True Spirituality where we are discussing the basic considerations of the Christian life, or true Christianity.

Part 9

If Schaeffer’s work in this next section was set to music, this would be the moment for trumpets. We have been considering the importance of giving due weight to the aspect of the new birth into the Christian life, the beginning, where we emphasized…rejected, slain. There is always tension when we contemplate the dying of our old ‘self’ and putting on the new self.  The old self does not want to be declared dead.

But now we turn to the positive dynamic of being ‘raised’… without which the other two can never represent a true, balanced spirituality: raised.  

For we died and were buried with Christ by baptism. And just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glorious power of the Father, now we also may live new lives. (Romans 6:4 NLT).  

My old self has been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. So I live in this earthly body by trusting in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. (Galatians 2:20 NLT).  

After the rejection of self, after the death to self, there is, and there continues to be, a resurrection. 

The Bible says that the day will come when both saved and unsaved men will look upon the glorified Christ. They will see him. Every man will see him, not as a religious idea, but glorified, in a real space-time situation. But these passages not only say that he will be so, but that he is so now. The glorification of the Lord Jesus Christ is not pushed off only into a future moment when he shall be seen by all men. It is not pushed off into that great moment when he shall come in glory and we are told every knee shall bow. He is glorified now. The Ascension of Christ into heaven was not a disappearance into a nothingness, into the world of mere religious ideas. After his resurrection, between his ascension from the Mount of Olives, and his appearance on the road to Emmaus he did not cease to be.  He spoke to them in their own language….Jesus said “Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?” Luke 24:26. He met with his disciples and they touched his new glorified body, he ate with them, they talked together.   

And again there was not a great void into which he disappeared from the time of his appearance on the road to Emmaus until John saw him many years later on the isle of Patmos where John received the revelation to write the book of Revelation. This is Jesus as he is now. He is so glorified, at this present moment. He is alive!!! 

As we contemplate these things, several things must immediately come before us. First of all, as we consider Jesus speaking in the Hebrew tongue on the road to Emmaus, and appearing to John and speaking to him on the isle of Patmos, we have here clear proof of a historic resurrection of Jesus Christ. But there is much more than this. This physical resurrection is the proof of the finished work of Jesus Christ on the cross, proof that the work is really done, that nothing need be added to his glorious substitutionary work for our justification. 

But even this does not exhaust the matter. We are told in the Word of God, by the apostle Paul, that in Christ’s resurrection we see the promise, the first fruits, of our own coming physical resurrection. What we see him to be after his resurrection, Paul insists, we shall be. When I consider the resurrection of Jesus Christ, not merely in the world of religious ideas or ideals, but in the world of space and time and reality, I have the promise from the hand of God himself that I will be so raised from death. This body is so much of myself, in the total personality—the whole man—and it will not be left behind in the salvation that is brought forth through Jesus Christ. His death on the cross is of such a nature that the whole man will be redeemed. In one specific day, the Christian’s body will be raised from death, like Christ’s risen body, glorified.  We will have a new glorious resurrected body because the Word of God says it is so.  We have eternal victory ‘now’ in and through the finished work of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  We will live forever because He lives forever and has power over death.  And this is cause for trumpets!!!   

Thoughts developed or used directly from the work of Schaeffer, Francis. True Spirituality . Tyndale House Publishers, Inc