Daily Word

We enter into the Spiritual Reality, the Kingdom of God, through being "made alive and raised up with Christ" from spiritual death. (Eph.2:4-5)

The new birth is a resurrection from the dead, made possible only "through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead." (1 Pet.1:3)

What Jesus is proclaiming here is that He is the Conqueror and Abolisher of death, of the prince and kingdom of death itself.

He who is united with Jesus through faith "has eternal life and does not come into judgment, but has passed out of death into life" (Jn.5:24)

"Death" is the self-life, independent of God, under "the dominion of darkness." I do what I want and think myself and therefore I am of my "father the devil" and "the slave of sin", totally dominated by the visible, physical reality.

This "life" – which is "death" spiritually – is under the judgment of God, and the physical death for this person will be the entrance into "Hades" – the realm of death. "Death" as a spiritual power rules over that person both in this life and in the life to come.

Jesus is "the Resurrection and the Life."

Resurrection and Life are intimately connected in Him. Life is always present in Him. He is the Life from its earliest beginning until its final completion: "the Prince of Life" (Acts 3:15).

He who believes in Him, enters into His World, into the Kingdom of God, into Life, and thus carries the Resurrection in himself. When he "dies" (physically), he rises directly into the Spiritual Reality and will never be in the state of the dead: "he will never see death": "death no longer is master over him" (Rom.6:9), because he lives in the Conqueror of death and all fear of death is gone for ever.

The raising of Lazarus is a prophetic act, demonstrating this glorious fact: "the Glory of God," the powers of Eternal life, has broken into the world of men, who through the Fall ended up in the power of the Devil and are ruled by "the law of sin and death."

But he who believes "will see the glory of God": he enters into the Spiritual Reality, the World of the Resurrection and the Life and may experience that its forces are working in him already now!