But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from among the dead dwells in you, He who raised Jesus from among the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you. – Rom. 8:11
[Emphasis added]
Picking up from Part 5, we are moving on to discuss Romans 8:11.
NOTE: Please go back an digest Parts 3 through 5 before going forward with this portion. It will be important for you to have laid the foundation with what is found there.
In John 7:37-39, we saw how the Spirit was not yet, and the reason given in the scriptures was “because Jesus had not yet been glorified.” Now we must come to understand why.
Just how real is the impartation of Jesus (with an emphasis on His divine-human living) to the believers by the Spirit?
Growing up in traditional Christianity, I always thought of the incarnation and ascension as bookends. In the incarnation, Christ came to earth to live as a man; and in the ascension Christ returned again to the heavenlies to live with and as God.
I cannot explain why Christian teachers never made it more clear that “the Christ” did not simply ascend into heaven, leaving behind Jesus as His humanity. No! It was the Lord Jesus (Mark 16:19) who ascended into the heavenlies—the very God-man. In His ascension, He took His humanity with Him and brought that humanity into the godhead.
Christ’s glorification makes way for the Spirit to dispense the divine humanity of Jesus to those who believe into Him
Luke saw this also and brought the “Body of Christ” to our attention in an entirely different way. He addresses his gospel to “most excellent Theophilus” (lover of God) with the intent of recording in his narrative what Jesus Christ accomplished in the earth among men (Luke 1:1-4).
Then, when Luke greets Theophilus again at the opening of Acts, he says a most astounding thing: “The former account (i.e., the Gospel of Luke) I have made…concerning all the things that Jesus began both to do and to teach until the day on which He was taken up….” (Acts 1:1-2a).
I say this passage is astounding for two reasons: First, Luke—writing by the Spirit—uses the name “Jesus”—the Christ’s human name with an emphasis on His humanity—in saying what was begun with regard to both doing and teaching. The second astounding matter is that Luke uses the term “began” relative to the work and teaching of Jesus. The clear implication of this construction is that Luke believed that the work of Jesus Christ, in His divine-humanity, was not completed though Jesus Christ Himself had ascended.
How could Luke come to such a conclusion?
By listening carefully to Jesus Christ in His earthly ministry. One of the clearest statements is found in John chapter 12.
Jesus had come up to the Passover festival in Jerusalem, but prior to this time He had said to several different persons and groups, “My time is not yet.”
But, John records that “there were some Greeks [probably proselyte Jews] among those who went up to worship as the feast.” These Greeks came to Philip “and asked him, saying, Sir, we wish to see Jesus.”
Upon hearing this, Philip told Andrew, and the two of them came to tell Jesus.
When Jesus heard that the Greeks (the nations) were seeking Him, He “answered them saying, The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Truly, truly, I say to you, Unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it abides alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” (John 12:20-24)
Jesus, the grain of wheat, multiplied in His glorification
As one individual, Jesus could not become the full expression necessary to reach all the nations. He was, after all, sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.
However, if He fell into the ground and died, in His glorification, a larger expression would emerge as His “much fruit.”
How real is this expression of Jesus in His Body as the Body of Christ by the Spirit?
Again, as one growing up in traditional Christianity I took a lot of these matters as little more than religious metaphors. To be ‘the Body of Christ” was, to me, nothing more in reality than a group exercise in WWJD (What would Jesus do?). To this day, I am convinced that the vast majority of Christians still hold this view.
But this is not the teaching of the scriptures.
Look what happens and what is said when Saul (soon to be “Paul”) meets Jesus on the road to Damascus. I am certain that many of my readers will be somewhat familiar with the record.
As Paul approached Damascus, where he was about to continue his work of threatening and murdering disciples of the Lord, “a bright light from heaven flashed around him” and “he fell on the ground,” where he heard a voice saying to him, Saul, Saul why are you persecuting Me?”
Saul, of course, had persecuted many individual disciples of the Lord, so he had no idea who was speaking. Therefore, Saul replied: “Who are You, Lord?” (He may not have known who it was, but Saul was no dummy. If this person had the power to knock him off his beast with nothing more than light, he was going to call him, “Lord.”)
Jesus’ reply is as astounding as Luke’s words regarding Jesus! Jesus—speaking now from the heavenlies as the ascended Lord—says, “I am Jesus, who you persecute.”
Note that He did not say, “I am the Christ,” or “I am the Lord.”
No. He uses His human name, Jesus, thus clearly showing that the man Jesus had not ended His work. Even as Luke properly had said, the work that Jesus began in doing and teaching was being continued as the glorified Son now expressed Himself in “the church which is His Body.” If Saul was persecuting disciples, he was touching and persecuting Jesus (Christ in His humanity) expressed now in the believers through Christ’s glorification and by the Spirit.
This is the real expression of Christ as life in all His believers.
[To be continued]
