You Have Been Made Alive
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You Have Been Made Alive
Not long after I learned about the finality of the cross, as explained in chapter six, I began teaching about it. But I also had learned that the once-for-all forgiveness of Christ on the cross was only one part of the gospel; the forgiveness of our sins was a cleansing that now made new life in Christ possible. I had discovered, through extensive study, that in Christ we have not only died to sin, but also risen to new life. With these powerful truths in my preaching quiver, I began speaking about the finality of the cross and the reality of the resurrection anywhere I could.
Because I was both professor and chaplain at the time, I spoke at chapel once a month. I preached one day with a great deal of energy and fire from the stage: “In Christ we are forgiven. Forever. Jesus died for all of your sins—past, present, and future. God, in Christ, has forgiven you. And God wants you to walk in that freedom.” I felt a jolt of energy on that day, and it made me glad to be a preacher.
The next day there was a knock on my door. It was one of the students who had attended chapel. His name was Stan.
He said, “I heard you preach in chapel that God has forgiven all of our sins—do you really believe that?”
I said yes. Then I asked, “Are you a Christian?”
He said he was, in fact he had grown up in the church but never heard that particular message. He was intrigued but unsure if I was right. I told him I understood his concern.
“I hope you are right,” he said.
I invited him to come to the Campus Fellowship meeting sometime, as I would be teaching on it more and unpacking more passages in the Bible to support it. He agreed, and he began to come every week.
Then a few weeks later he knocked on my door, but this time it was not a happy greeting. He came into my office and sat down without saying a word. He put his hands in his face and began to sob. I sat in silence and waited. His sobbing became intense.
Finally, he looked at me and said, “I am garbage. I am no good. I tried to kill myself last night, and I even failed at that.”
I asked him why he tried to kill himself. He shared that for several years, earlier when he was just a young teenager, an uncle in his family, a man he loved and trusted, began molesting him. His uncle made him feel like it was his fault and that if he ever told anyone he would tell them that Stan had instigated it. So Stan lived in fear year after year as this man held power over him.
“I told him he could not do that to me anymore, and he threatened to go to my parents and tell lies about me. I decided I could not face that, and I could not face another day of him doing these things to me, so I tried to kill myself last night, but I couldn’t go through with it,” Stan said.
“I am so glad you didn’t, Stan. We will find a way out of this, and you will find out that God has a lot in store for you,” I promised.
We have excellent counseling resources at the university, so I helped him make an appointment and he began speaking about his abuse to a therapist who began a healing journey with Stan.
After a few weeks I noticed that he came back to the Campus Fellowship group. I was teaching on the reality of the resurrection. My text that night was 2 Corinthians 5, and I focused on this verse: “So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!” (v. 17).
I used the illustration of a butterfly:
Just as the caterpillar has to “die” when it enters into the chrysalis, the cocoon, so we also die with Jesus on the cross. Jesus’ physical life fulfilled the law. Jesus’ physical death upheld the law. Jesus’ physical burial was proof of his death to the law (the dead are no longer under the law). And Jesus’ physical resurrection is what frees us from the law. That is why in Romans 8:1, it reads, “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”
Then I went on: “But that is not the end. If anyone is in Christ, then you are a new creation. You are now a butterfly! The old has passed. You are forgiven forever, and made new forever.” I asked, “Who here tonight is in Christ?” Nearly everyone put their hands in the air. “And who here tonight is a butterfly?” Nearly everyone put up their hands again.
I looked over at Stan, and his hand was held up high. The next day Stan stopped by my office. He had a huge smile on his face. He said, “Now the gospel makes sense. It is not about what we do for God. It is what God has done for us.”
I said, “You have it, friend! You’ll make a great preacher one day!”
Stan smiled and said, “Well, I don’t know about that. But I know this: I am a butterfly.”
FALSE NARRATIVE: ALL THAT MATTERS
IS GETTING TO HEAVEN
In the late nineteenth century, during revivals of the Great Awakening in the United States, the gospel message was designed to get people to make a decision for Jesus. It was based on one aspect of the atonement—the saving act of Jesus on the cross. It went something like this: “You are a terrible sinner; God is angry at your sin. But Jesus took your punishment for you. If you confess him as the Son of God and accept him as your personal savior, you can go to heaven when you die.” It was reduced to a gospel for hell avoidance. If you did not want to burn in eternal damnation (who does?) then you would simply make a decision for Jesus, and the preacher would consider this as a conversion.
This narrative is not entirely wrong. We are sinners in need of forgiveness; Jesus did die to take away the sins of the world, your sins and mine. Jesus is Lord, and we ought to confess him as such. If we confess him as Lord, we can be assured that we will reign with him in heaven after we die. This gospel is not wrong, it is just incomplete. It is a gospel of sin management, as Dallas Willard taught. It is a gospel for the afterlife, but not a gospel for life—for zoe life, or the abundant life that Jesus said he came to give us (John 10:10). It is not a gospel that naturally leads to inner transformation, to discipleship under Jesus, and to being formed in the image of Christ.
If you ask a group of people, “What is the significance of Christ’s death on the cross?” most everyone will say, “He died for the forgiveness of sins.” But if you ask people, “What is the significance of Christ’s resurrection?” you will get, in my experience, silence. I know this to be true because I have done it with many groups of Christians. Once in a while someone will say, “The resurrection was proof of his deity,” meaning that Jesus rising from the dead proved he was the Son of God. And that is true. But the meaning of the resurrection is much more than that.
How does the resurrection apply to your everyday life? Write in your journal what comes to mind.
A better question is, “How does the resurrection apply to our everyday lives?” This question gets to the heart of the matter.
TRUE NARRATIVE: CHRIST LIVES IN YOU
Jesus rose from the dead to impart new life to those who believe in him. Jesus lived a life we cannot live, died a death we cannot die, and rose from the grave, defeating death—something we cannot do. The issue of our sin has been dealt with on the cross—and it was final. Jesus died for our sins, past, present, and future. There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ (Romans 8:1).
But we have another, equally insurmountable problem: Our problem is not only that we are sinners in need of forgiveness; we are also dead people in need of new life. Jesus died in order to reconcile us to God—we are forgiven forever. Jesus rose from the dead in order to give us new life. Who needs life? People who are dead.
The fall of humanity, which happened in the Garden of Eden, resulted in spiritual death. Adam and Eve had only one commandment to keep, and that commandment came with a clear consequence: “Of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die” (Genesis 2:17). They did eat of the fruit, and they did die. But they did not physically die on the spot; the fruit was not poisonous. According to Genesis 5:4, Adam lived another eight hundred years. So in what sense did they die? They died spiritually. And all who came after them would be the same: physically alive, but spiritually dead.
Paul explains it this way: “For as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ” (1 Corinthians 15:22). In what sense are we dead? We are dead to the things of God; we are dead to God “through the trespasses and sins” (Ephesians 2:1); we are dead to the spiritual realm. When someone is sleeping very soundly we say, “They are dead to the world.” They are not actually dead, but they are dead to the world around them. The television may be blaring, people may be talking, but none of that matters—they are oblivious to it, they are “dead” to it. In the same way, we are born into this world with a soul that has been designed for God, but we are not alive to God. That is because we are under the dominion of sin.
But Jesus broke that dominion. He disarmed the principalities and powers. He nailed our sins to the cross.
And when you were dead in trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive together with him, when he forgave us all our trespasses, erasing the record that stood against us with its legal demands. He set this aside, nailing it to the cross. He disarmed the rulers and authorities and made a public example of them, triumphing over them in it. (Colossians 2:13-15, italics added)
We were dead, but God made us alive together with him. He forgave not some but all of our trespasses (the finality of the cross). The legal demands are not standing against us. By faith, we have died with Jesus. The powers that stood against us—the law we could not keep, the sin we could not stop, and the death we could not defeat—were all dealt with once and for all by Jesus.
JESUS GAVE HIS LIFE TO US
Jesus’ death established our reconciliation; Jesus’ resurrection imparts our new life in him. This is why Paul can say such powerful and profound and life-giving truths as these:
I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. (Galatians 2:19-20)
But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. (Ephesians 2:4-6)
So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! (2 Corinthians 5:17)
This is the missing piece of the gospel, of the good news, that so many people never hear. It is why so many Christians are walking around as “forgiven dead people,” as “dead people walking,” still trying by their willpower to shape up and do better.
Give an example of trying to live by your own willpower to shape up and do better. Can you surrender whatever it is so Jesus can live his life through you instead, because he has already taken away your sins?
Jesus gave his life for us so that he could give his life to us . . . so that he can live his life through us. The Christian life is not hard to live—it is impossible! Only one person lived the Christian life: Jesus. And he rose from the dead so that he could live in and through us. This is how Paul can proclaim, “I can do all things through him who strengthens me” (Philippians 4:13) and “I am grateful to Christ Jesus our Lord, who has strengthened me” (1 Timothy 1:12).
When we acknowledge Jesus as our Lord, and surrender our lives to Christ, we are awakened into a life with God: “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above” (John 3:3). We can now interact with the kingdom of God; it was a world we were dead to but now we are alive to the kingdom. When I first surrendered my life to Christ, a number of wonderful things happened. I would learn that I was not special or gifted or different from other Christians, but that the experience I had was normative, because these capacities are built into the good and beautiful you.
If you were to make a list of what happens when we are made “alive together with Christ,” what would be included?
Here are some of the things that happen to us when we are made “alive together with Christ” (Ephesians 2:5):
Our spiritual senses awaken.
The Bible begins to make sense.
We hunger to be in fellowship.
Former sinful actions begin to leave us empty.
We feel a peace that passes understanding.
When I was journeying into faith late in high school, a good friend who was a Christian gave me a Bible. It was the old Living Bible, which was the easiest to understand of all Bibles. But still I found it puzzling. It was also not great that my friend suggested I begin with Acts and the Psalms. But after I became a Christian my parents bought me a King James Bible—in many ways the most challenging translation, as it was written over four hundred years ago. But amazingly, I was able to read and understand it.
My spiritual senses had been awakened, and the truths of the Bible began to make sense. Also to my surprise, I suddenly had a deep longing to be with other Christians. This was surprising because I detested church as a kid, and I found most Christians a bit odd. But after my conversion I wanted to be with these peculiar people (1 Peter 2:9 KJV). Because, I would learn, they were now my family of faith. I was not a huge partier, but after my conversion parties felt hollow. I was not immune to sin by any means, but sin felt different now. Finally I felt a peace I had never felt before. Even when my life was uncertain I felt peace—I did not know where my life was going, but wherever I was going I was going with God.
JESUS RESTORES THE IMAGE OF GOD IN US
I am fascinated by the work of those who restore art. There was a painting, completed in 1660, by Charles Le Brun. The 355-year-old family portrait was covered in badly tinted varnish and had a lot of scratches and structural damage that had nearly split the painting in half. It took ten months for the restorer, Michael Gallagher, to bring the painting back to its original form. He had to retouch, restructure, and revarnish in order to bring this painting back to life, back to its original form.
You and I were made in God’s image. We are embodied souls, or ensouled bodies. Christianity teaches that our souls are never separated from our bodies. Our embodied souls contain the image of God. But what is the image of God in us? Some will say it is our ability to think or dream, our longing for beauty, or our ability to have dominion over things, as promised in Genesis 1:26: “Then God said, ‘Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion.’” None of these are the image of God in us. Christ Jesus is the image of God: “He [Jesus] is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation” (Colossians 1:15).
You and I come premade to be conformed to the image of Christ: “For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son” (Romans 8:29). The image of God is a part of our embodied souls, but it has been deactivated because of the fall. When we are raised to new life in Christ, the image of God is restored in us. We can now resemble the God in whose image we were made.
When we meet someone’s parents, we can often see the resemblance. Sometimes it is uncanny. People say of our daughter, Hope, that she is a “mini-Meghan” because she physically resembles my wife. If all humans are made in the image of God, we ought to all resemble God. But if an alien were to come to earth and look at humans and ask, “What is your God like?” it would be absurd to say God is just like the humans who are made in God’s image. Because apart from Christ, we are fallen and broken—cracked icons and distorted images.
The only answer to the question “What is God like?” is Jesus. Jesus told Philip, “If you have seen me, you have seen the Father” (John 14:9 CEV). This is how Jesus restores the image of God in us. By rising and giving us new, eternal life, the image of God is restored in us. A sincere Christ-follower, who is acting in love, compassion, self-sacrifice, and forgiveness, is the closest we humans ever come to resembling God. And even then it is not us, but Christ who is in us.
One of the great disappointments in our world today is un-Christlike Christians. One of the leading causes of unbelief is Christians who are not living vibrant lives. I think the primary reason for the lack of maturity is a failure to understand the finality of the cross and the reality of the resurrection. In their place we have focused more on rule keeping and moral behavior, which are important but only as the byproduct of new life in Christ—not as a substitute.
Write down “The finality of the cross and the reality of the resurrection” in your journal. Reflect on these words and write what they mean to you.
In 2 Peter 1:4-9, the author lays out a challenge for Christ-followers to grow in faith, goodness, knowledge, self-control, endurance, godliness, mutual affection, and love. These are the marks of Christian maturity, as are the fruit of the Spirit (love, joy, peace, etc.). But these marks, these fruit, are dependent on our remembrance, our awareness, our confidence in the “cleansing of past sins” (2 Peter 1:9), and our trust that in Christ we are now “participants of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4).
Thus he has given us . . . his precious and very great promises, so that . . . [we] may become participants of the divine nature. For this very reason, you must make every effort to support your faith with goodness, and goodness with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with endurance, and endurance with godliness, and godliness with mutual affection, and mutual affection with love. For if these things are yours and are increasing among you, they keep you from being ineffective and unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For anyone who lacks these things is short-sighted and blind, and is forgetful of the cleansing of past sins. (2 Peter 1:4-9, italics added)
As long as we think we have not been cleansed and we are not partakers of the divine nature, we will be stuck trying to manage our sins and trying, by our willpower, to become like Christ.
When we come to understand our true identity in Christ, barriers to spiritual maturity fall down. Our formation in Christ cannot happen as long as we are disconnected to the life of Christ within us. Oswald Chambers wrote,
The characteristic of the new birth is that I yield myself so completely to God that Christ is formed in me. This is not a command, but a fact based on the authority of God. The evidence of the new birth is that I yield myself so completely to God that “Christ is formed” in me. And once “Christ is formed” in me, His nature immediately begins to work through me.
It is the nature of Christ in me, the restored image of God in me, that is the secret to my maturity in Christ. And the world we live in is desperate for this.
OUR EMBODIED SOULS JUST WANT TO HAVE FUN
The imago Dei inside each of us, then, is the image of Christ. But what is that image like? What would it be like for you and for me to have Christ living in us? For years I assumed that this would be an eternal, cosmic bummer. I mistakenly assumed that if I gave my life fully to Christ, I would never have any more fun. In the words of Billy Joel, “I would rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints.” I assumed all the sinners were the ones having fun, and the saints were sobbing in some sanctuary.
But Jesus said, “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly” (John 10:10). He promised abundant life. He also prayed for his disciples, “I speak these things in the world so that they may have my joy made complete in themselves” (John 17:13, italics added). Jesus came to give us his joy. Presumably, the disciples did not say, “No thanks, Jesus, we will pass. You are a dud. Your joy will not complete us!” They knew Jesus was a person of joy. How did that get lost in our day?
Dallas Willard wrote,
The One who came to give abundance of life is commonly thought of as a cosmic stuffed shirt, whose excessive “spirituality” probably did not allow him normal bodily functions and certainly would not permit him to throw a Frisbee or tackle someone in a football game. But God is not opposed to natural life with all of its pleasures and pains and is even very favorably disposed to it.
What does it mean to have the abundant life Jesus brought? A central part of the abundant life is the ability to seize the beauty of this life, and to live with gladness as a result of it.
Do you agree that our souls cannot endure deadness? Why or why not?
Our souls cannot endure deadness; they were designed for an adventure, and sin is ultimately a dead end because it is inwardly focused. We have been falsely led into believing that spiritually mature people should not play, seek diversion, or engage in helpful amusement. But spiritually mature people are characterized by what they do, not by what they don’t. God has designed us so that our joy would be full and complete, and that can only happen in Christ. A non-believer can have fun, but that is not the same as joy in abundant life in Christ.
The greatest adventure I have ever had is living with Jesus in his unshakable kingdom. Every day is an opportunity to watch God do some amazing work. Bishop Will Willimon once said, “The greatest sin Christians can commit is boredom.” For years I found the Christian life boring, but that was before I learned about the kingdom of God and an interactive life with God. We ask too little and attempt too little, because we think we are alone. But God is intimately involved with us and wants to empower us to live an abundant life of surprise. Your embodied soul was not made for sin, but for happiness and fun and excitement. And all those things can be godly. Holiness and hilarity are not opposed.
OUR SOULS ARE MADE FOR THE EASY YOKE
Jesus invites our souls into rest. He knows that life is hard. He even said, “In this world you will have trouble” (John 16:33 NIV). He did not say we might have trouble, but that we will have trouble. It is a mandatory fact of life. So he invites us into life with him in his easy yoke:
Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. (Matthew 11:28-30, italics added)
Jesus invites us to take his yoke upon us. A yoke means two things. First, it refers to a rabbi’s teaching; the yoke of a rabbi was his teaching. So when Jesus invites us to take up his yoke, he is inviting us to live into his teachings. That is why Jesus said to take up his yoke and “learn from me.” We really can learn how to love our enemies and bless those who curse us and be free from anger, but not on our own.
The second aspect of the metaphor of the yoke is from farming. Animals are yoked together to harness energy. Two oxen pulling together are very powerful, as any farmer back then would have known. To take up the yoke of Jesus is to be united with his power. Paul knew this, which is why he said, “For Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses. . . . For when I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Corinthians 12:10 NIV). Notice that he did not say, “When I am weak, he is strong”; he says, “When I am weak, I am strong.” This is the secret of the easy yoke.
I spent two weeks in Australia working with ministers who had been learning how to live in the easy yoke of Jesus. Dallas Willard had been there many years earlier and taught these men and women how to do ministry by the power of Jesus, not their own power. At the end of my time with them, they presented me with a mug. It had Dallas’s face on it, and a quote of his that read, “You Don’t Have to Make It Happen.” One of the ministers told me why they chose this saying: “Our work in ministry is very hard here in Australia. Dallas said this quote to us many times to remind us that we are not the ones who have to make it happen, but that we are in partnership with Jesus. He is the One who makes it happen.” To this day I treasure that mug, and when I drink from it I smile.
Another of Dallas’s quotes that he often said is this: “Do the next thing you know to be right, and expect God to bail you out.” This is also what it means to live in the easy yoke. We simply trust the teachings of Jesus and put his words into practice (the next right thing) and then we trust God to bail us out if needed. For example, Jesus said we must not lie (Matthew 5:37). Life puts us in difficult situations where lying seems like a good option in order to avoid pain or gain pleasure. But if we tell the truth, for example, in a job interview as opposed to “spinning” the truth, we can then trust in God to help bail us out. If we don’t get the job, we are not in trouble. We live in the unshakable kingdom. God will take care of us, just as he does the birds of the air.
Learning the secret of the easy yoke and learning that I do not have to make it happen has sustained me in ministry. I nearly killed myself early on in ministry, as many other pastors and church leaders do. If the devil cannot get you with the usual sins of the flesh (lust, money, power) he will get you through busyness, stress, and the pressure of thinking we have to make it happen. What I have learned is that Jesus did not come to help me serve God. Jesus did not call me into ministry to serve him; Jesus called me into ministry so that he could minister to others through me. Most of the time, this means I need to get out of the way.
YOU ARE A BUTTERFLY
Stan, the student who came to me many years ago to learn about the finality of the cross and the reality of the resurrection, was so taken by the image of being a butterfly that he told me it had become his primary way of thinking about his identity. He asked me if at our next Campus Fellowship meeting he could tell his story of abuse and how he had found strength in the midst of this suffering. I said sure. That next evening he gave his testimony, and there was not a dry eye in the room. Stan ended his talk by saying, loudly and proudly, “But I know who I am now. I am a butterfly.”
A few months later, Stan shocked me by saying, “I want to talk with the uncle who molested me. I want to tell him that I have been forgiven and made new in Christ. And I want to tell him I forgive him.”
I said, “That may not be a good idea.”
“Why?” Stan asked. “God has forgiven me, and God said we need to forgive others.”
“But are you ready yourself? And are you ready for how he might react?” I asked.
He said he was. I told him if he must do it, then I would prefer he do so with a trusted person.
As it turned out, the singer-songwriter Rich Mullins, who was attending the Campus Fellowship and had heard his story and was very moved, offered to go with Stan. His uncle denied any wrongdoing, but that did not matter to Stan. He offered him forgiveness—not just his forgiveness, but the forgiveness in Christ. Stan gave him his testimony and told him about his love for Jesus.
Stan graduated, and we lost touch for several years. Then one day I received a card in the mail from Stan. In it he said that he had become a Navy SEAL, and that he had gotten married and had a child, and he included his family picture. He thanked me for teaching him about the finality of the cross and the reality of the resurrection, and ended his note by signing, “Stan, the Butterfly.”