The Holy Spirit that Jesus sent to us enables us to walk in fellowship with God. And the Spirit was not limited to a single place at a time. And the Holy Spirit indwelt the believers, resulting in a more intimate relationship. But when Jesus returned to the Father, he sent the Spirit to them. And the relationship he had with his disciples was a physical one. When Jesus was among his disciples, he was only in one place at a time. Scripture records this event in the second chapter of Acts, 50 days after Jesus’ crucifixion. But that when he did, he would send the Holy Spirit to them. In John 16:7, Jesus told his disciples that it was necessary that he go away. And many more of us will eventually follow him. They will be totally unlike what we have now, but they will be like Christ ( 1 John 3:2).Īt Jesus’ resurrection, he took on the humanity that each of his people will have at our own resurrection. 15:35-49), Paul describes what our resurrection bodies will be like. In 1 Corinthians 15:20, Paul said that “ Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.” Later in this chapter ( 1 Cor. After death will come resurrection into the new life God has prepared for us. But we can have confidence that death is not the end. What lies on the other side of death is still largely unknown to us. While we still face death, it no longer should hold any fear for those who belong to Christ. And he freed us from our fear of death.ĭeath is a defeated enemy. Hebrews 2:15 refers to this fear of humanity, “ who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.” But, according to Hebrews 2:14, Christ, in his death, broke the power of Satan, the one who holds the power of death. And for many people, what comes after death, if anything, is a great unknown. Romans 6:9 says that because “ Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again death no longer has mastery over him.” In Jesus’ resurrection, he defeated death, humanity’s greatest enemy and fear. The same resurrection that Jesus’ followers look forward to at the end of the age. What Jesus experienced was a resurrection. And, most importantly, he did not experience death again at some later time. And he seems to have been able to be unrecognizable to those who knew him. They were simply resuscitated.īut Jesus’ restoration to life was fundamentally different. But they were no different after their restoration than before their death.
All these other people were indeed restored to life.
But they were fundamentally different than what happened to Jesus. Several times in both the Old and New Testaments, we find accounts of people who had died and then were restored to life. And it continues to give witness to us today that the grave could not hold him. That the tomb was found empty demonstrated to his first followers that he had defeated death. Yet the majority of serious Bible scholars, regardless of their religious beliefs, deny that Jesus died on a Roman cross, was buried, and his tomb was later discovered empty. And many today carry on that tradition or deny it altogether. There have been many attempts over the years to explain away the empty tomb. Yet when they went out early the following Sunday morning, the stone was rolled away, and Jesus’ body was missing. And a few of his followers had taken note of the location. Jesus had been taken off the cross and placed into a tomb/cave, and a massive stone rolled across the entrance to seal it up. The first thing that anyone noticed about that day was the empty tomb.
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