And then our authors launch into Paul’s Letter to the Colossians.  My favourite part of the New Testament.  And this is no dry treatment.   Here are some samples:

• In discussing the false teaching in Colossae, “What a unique way to combat error – drown God’s people in a revelation of the image of the invisible God, who delivered us from darkness, redeemed us, and made us part of His eternal kingdom.”
• “The Christ that the Colossians knew was simply too small.  That was why they became susceptible to chasing other things – including religious ones – in the first place.  Sound familiar?”
• On Christ as a creator, “This Christ is not only before all things, but the entire universe is held together in Him.  He is the cohesive force, the glue and gravitational pull that holds all created elements together.  He is creation’s great adhesive, the hinge upon which the whole cosmos turns.  Remove Christ, and the entire universe disintegrates.”
• On Christ’s work on the Cross, “…by His death, He slew all negative things.  He brought the old creation to a complete end.  Better, the old creation died having made peace with its Creator.  And then, by His resurrection, He brought forth from the womb of death an unprecedented creation – of which you are a part.”
• In considering Col 3:11, “In a church that is filled with leader-oholics, justice-oholics, commandment-oholics, and doctrine-oholics, it is essential that we comprehend how Paul (the go-to-guy for all matters “doctrinal”) understood his calling as an apostle.  For Paul, his apostolate was not to advance a defining array of doctrines or a checklist of propositions.  As far as he was concerned, our faith is not even a relationship with a set of doctrines or commandments.  Christianity is a relationship with Jesus the Christ.  When things go wrong….it’s because we have lost our “first love”…or never had it in the first place.”  That’s worth chewing on.  Holding Christ central and the focus of greatest devotion is what the the Ephesian church did not embrace – to its great loss.

This is just a sampling of a truly great chapter.  But better than this chapter is to meditate on the Letter to the Colossians and ask the Holy Spirit to grew your love for the Lord Jesus.

Chapter Eighteen: Our Resurrection Bodies

Chapter Nineteen: The Resurrection of all Things

The certain hope of the resurrection has been much on my mind in the last two days as I prayed with a dying Christian brother.  What an incredible testimony.  His body racked with pain, but a calm and certain confidence of the Lord’s love and the realisation of soon being in His very presence.  That is now the reality for my dear friend.  I have been reminded of the words of the great evangelist of the 19th century, D L Moody.  At his funeral, the words he had spoken a year earlier were remembered. He had said:

“Some day you will read in the papers that D.L Moody is dead. Don’t you believe a word of it. At that moment I shall be more alive than I am now.”

And that wonderful biblical truth is explored by our author.  Adrian reminds us of Jesus’ words, “In this world you will have trouble” (John 16:33).  But that is far from the end of the story.  For the person trusting in the Lord Jesus, there is hope (certain confidence) beyond the grave.  It is a “hope that we will be physically raised, not merely somehow survive as spirits.”

The so-called intermediate state (between physical death of a believer and the resurrection) is helpfully described by Adrian.  At death we experience a kind of spiritual renewal  - we become fully aware of what is already true of us.  Our spirits are already with Christ (Eph 2:6).  And we will await (absolutely alive) in heaven our eternal destiny of a physical resurrection – the direct consequence of being connected to the One who is the firstfruits (1 Cor 15:20).

We are reminded by our author that at the return of Jesus, the whole world will be judged by Him.  Everyone will appear before Him, in bodies (John 5:28f; Acts 24:15).  ”Every wrong that has been committed that has not been placed on God’s Son will be put right.  No evil will go unpunished.”  Should that fill the heart of a Christian with dread?  No, in Adrian’s words, “if we are sure of our salvation, far from inducing fear and dread, judgment day should produce a joyful expectation.”

The return of the Lord Jesus will lead to the renewal of all things – all of God’s people will be with Him in an absolutely physical new heaven and new earth (2 Peter 3:10-13, Revelation 21:1-5).

Adrian Warnock has taken us on a journey that has wonderfully demonstrated the truth of the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth and the cosmic consequences of His death and resurrection.  The certain hope of the resurrection and the unveiling of the age to come is to impact every follower of Jesus NOW:

“Christians have the same power that raised Christ Jesus from the dead living inside them.  One day that power will complete the work of saving us, but in the meantime the normal Christian life can be one in which we are aware of the change that the resurrection brings.  We are citizens of the age to come, living in a world that is dead to God.  But we are not dead to Him.  We live to Him.  May God help us live in the light of that fact each day.  One day we will all see that, thanks to the death and resurrection of Jesus, everything has been changed.  The whole creation will have been renewed, and we will be like Him.”

Here are the links to the earlier posts for Raised with Christ:

Chapter One: Christ Has Died! Christ Is Risen! Christ Will Come Again!

Chapter Two: The Empty Cross, the Empty Tomb

Chapter Three: Did Jesus Really Rise from the Dead?

Chapter Four: Resurrection Neglected?

Chapter Five: The Importance of Resurrection in the Bible

Chapter Six: Glimpses of Resurrection?

Chapter Seven: Resurrection before the Cross

Chapter Eight: What did the resurrection ever do for us?

Chapter Nine: Raised for our Justification

Chapter Ten: Resurrected with Jesus

Chapter Eleven: Transformed by the Resurrection

Chapter Twelve: Send a Resurrection, O Lord!

Chapter Thirteen: Reviving Prayer

Chapter Fourteen: God’s Reviving Word

Chapter Fifteen: A relationship with the Risen Jesus?

Chapter Sixteen: Assured by the Resurrected Christ

Chapter Seventeen: Our Mission from the Risen Jesus

Chapter Fifteen: A relationship with the Risen Jesus?

Chapter Sixteen: Assured by the Resurrected Christ

At the end of Chapter Fifteen, Adrian Warnock suggests we ask ourselves: “Do I really love Jesus?  Am I aware of His love for me in such a way that I have a strong desire to be holy?  Am I devoted to Jesus?”  These are very pertinent questions and ones that, although perhaps phrased a little differently, regularly cross my mind.

Our author notes that the goal of the Apostle Paul’s life was a relationship with the resurrected Jesus.  The testimony of Scripture and that of saints of old is that we can experience living in resurrection power.  Martyn Lloyd Jones dismisses a purely intellectual approach to the faith as “dead orthodoxy” and warns against setting experience and doctrine against each other.

In Chapter Sixteen the focus is on the ministry of the Holy Spirit in believers’ lives.  It was the risen Jesus who gave us the Holy Spirit.  Adrian emphasises a truth that I often chew on: we receive the same Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead.

Our author then gets into a discussion about receiving the Spirit, baptism with the Spirit and receiving the Spirit.  In wrestling with these important aspects of the Spirit’s work, I find the following works particularly helpful:

• God’s Empowering Presence by Gorden Fee, and
• He Who Gives Life by Graham Cole.

I really connect with Adrian’s appeal towards the end of the chapter:

“Let’s resist becoming sidetracked by our various differences over these matters and instead simply cry out to God for more awareness and evidence in our lives of the power that raised Christ from the dead.  Then we will know the joy of living our lives not in our own strength but in God’s enabling.”

God sent His son, they called Him Jesus
He came to love, heal, and forgive.
He lived and died to buy my pardon,
An empty grave is there to prove my Savior lives.

Because He lives, I can face tomorrow.
Because He lives, All fear is gone.
Because I know He holds the future,
And life is worth the living just because He lives.

Chapter Ten: Conclusion

Graham Cole sums up in these words:

“Atonement brings shalom by defeating  the enemies of peace, overcoming the barriers both to reconciliation and to the restoration of creation.  This is God’s peacemaking mission.”

I like to think of this peace mission with vertical and horizontal components (just like the Moral Commission): vertical – peace with God; horizontal – peace with one another.

Is this project (that required the blood of the Cross) worth it?  Graham answers:

“Yes!  If it glorifies the triune God and results in a creature as close to being God as a creature can logically possibly become…”

Graham, may the Lord be pleased to greatly bless this book.  The more I have thought about the title of this book; the thesis of the book; the practical call to daily be a peacemaker, and the certain hope in a future state of peace that will never be shattered nor broken, the more I have been both challenged and encouraged.

Read this book slowly; chew on its contents; check out Scripture; and allow the Holy Spirit to continue His great work of transforming the followers of Jesus more and more into His likeness.  For the praise of His glory.

For reference, listed below are the posts on God the Peacemaker:

Introduction

1: The righteous God of holy love

2: The glory and garbage of the universe

3: The great need: peace with God, with one another and for the cosmos

4: Foundations and foreshadowings

5: The faithful Son

6A: The death and vindication of the faithful Son

6B: The death and vindication of the faithful Son (cont.)

7: The ‘peace dividend’

8A: Life between the cross and the coming

8B: Life between the cross and the coming (cont.)

9: The grand purpose: glory

Chapter Thirteen: Reviving Prayer

The author of Raised with Christ: How the Resurrection Changes Everything, Adrian Warnock, continues with the topic of revival, and focuses in on prayer.  And he immediately grabs the reader’s attention by stating that:

• this chapter on prayer is “potentially the most important chapter in this whole book”
• ‘reviving prayer’ will lead to the most dramatic and immediate changes in the average Christian’s experience, but
• we need to overcome our prayerlessness.

Got your interest?  Well, here are the highlights of the chapter – but they’re no substitute for getting into the book yourself.  What has the resurrection of Jesus got to do with reviving prayer?  It motivates us to pray with boldness because we know God is alive and more than able to answer prayer, given that He is able to raise the dead!

Revivals in history started with prayer meetings.  Is there a particular type of prayer that is one of the catalysts for a sovereign Lord to bring revival?  Adrian uses the prayers of Elijah in 1 Kings 17-19 to reveal the nature of reviving prayer.  In sum, it looks like this:

• plainly recognises the situation requiring God’s intervention (“don’t deny it or put a brave face on it”)
• passionate intercession before God, consistent with His biblical revelation
• calling on God to act today as He has in history. viz. “Do it again, Lord!” (see Hab 3:2)
• a heart centred on God’s glory and not our own
• asking God to bring repentance – He does it, not us
• asking God, in a bold manner, to act – and when He does don’t be floored (contra. Acts 12:15)
• be persistent in waiting on God, and discerning as to when the answers from God are beginning to flow.

My own life is not characterised by consistent reviving prayer.  It needs to be.  What about you?  Your church?

The churches in Melbourne need revival.  This wonderful city needs revival.  What about where you live?

The challenge presented by Adrian is right on – ask the One, who is in the business of bringing life where there is death, to send the fire of revival.

Death.  It’s confronting.  LIfe is precious and it hangs by a slender thread.  That’s how Adrian Warnock, author of Raised with Christ: How the Resurrection Changes Everything introduces:

Chapter 12: Send a Resurrection, O Lord!

The great news of course is that “God is an expert in revival.”  What happens when someone turns to Jesus in faith?  A spiritually dead person is united with a life-giving Person.

And with this introduction, Adrian focuses on revivals – when the church en masse experiences more fully the change made possible by the resurrection.  Aussie Stuart Piggin is quoted on the nature of revival:

“It is a powerful intensification by Jesus of the Holy Spirit’s normal activity.”

This is a terrific chapter by Adrian.  He comments:

• ‘revival’ is available to all Christians individually – it is quantitatively, but not qualitatively different, to our normal experience
• both through the Acts of the Apostles and church history, the Church has grown in fits and starts
• since Acts is Scripture, “it must have a role in forming our doctrine and practice” – right on!
• Acts is a “model account of how church mission should ideally proceed”
• the pattern of revival in Acts is also seen in church history:
  • period of intense emphasis on prayer in the church
  • dramatic work of the Holy Spirit in the lives of believers
  • inevitable impact on those outside
• whenever a group of people experience a revival, prayer and the Word of God are emphasised.

And these are the subjects of the next two chapters in Raised with Christ.

“Well, of course, but Jesus always wins in the end. I mean, Jesus loves to run up the odds. You saw what he did the last time he was here. He let them think they had him on the ropes, and then three days later, BOOM! He comes back, they clean up at the table.”

Chapter Ten: Resurrected with Jesus

Chapter Eleven: Transformed by the Resurrection

The author of Raised with Christ: How the Resurrection Changes Everything, Adrian Warnock, continues with the consequences of Jesus’ resurrection.  In Chapter Ten, regeneration and union with Christ are briefly explored and in Chapter Eleven, Adrian focusses on the need for the spiritually resurrected believer to continually deal with sin in our lives. Some points that caught my attention in these two chapters include:

• “salvation is a miracle caused by the same creative power that conquered the grave” – great statement!
• our new birth (spiritual resurrection) is designed to free us from the slave-like compulsion to continue in sin – and we have a part to play in this battle (Rom 6:11ff).  We deal with sin in the power of the Holy Spirit and in response to the grace we have already received – not to win God’s favour
• a Christian is someone who can be described as ‘raised with Christ’
• we are already seated with Christ in the heavenlies – this must not distract us from current life realities; it gives us wonderful assurance that we are “in Christ” and share in His authority
• I love the following paragraph: “Some things that should have happened to us, like death and punishment, happened instead to Jesus.  God considers us as if we really had  experienced what Jesus experienced on the cross.  Conversely, there are things that happened to him that we did not deserve – like resurrection and receiving the approval of God.  Thanks to our union with Christ we share in these benefits.”
• Because of the resurrection, we are already part of the new creation – the renewal of all things has begun in us.
• Focus on the wonder of Jesus and His resurrection life – as we do so, our desires will change.  As an example, our author provides a helpful exposition of the vision of the glorified Lord Jesus in Rev 1:12-18
• “God wants us to fear him but not to be terrified of him….This is the Jesus we come to today – the living one, the fearsome one, and yet the loving one, who delights in reaching his hand out and touching you.  When he touches you, amazing things happen.”  That’s my experience  - trust it is yours.

Acts 23:6.. “…I stand on trial because of my hope in the resurrection of the dead.”

Acts 24:15  ”…and I have the same hope in God as these men, that there will be a resurrection of both the righteous and the wicked.”

Acts 25:19  ”…and about a dead man named Jesus who Paul claimed was alive.”

Acts 26:22f  ”…and so I stand here and testify to small and great alike.  I am saying nothing beyond what the prophets and Moses said would happen – that the Christ would suffer and, as the first to rise from the dead, would proclaim light to His own people and to the Gentiles.”

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