What Christ’s Resurrection Means for Your Everyday Life
Rev. Aniekan "Mbomboyo" Okokon ·
If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you. — Romans 8:11
For many Christians the resurrection is an Easter doctrine: essential, defended, and then put away for the year. But Paul prays to know "the power of his resurrection" (Philippians 3:10) as a present experience, and he ties it to our mortal bodies — to the life we live in flesh and blood, in ordinary weeks. Here is where the empty tomb reaches.
Seven ordinary places
- Your morning. You wake as one who has already been raised; the day is not a test to pass but a life to live.
- Your work. "Your labour is not in vain in the Lord" (1 Corinthians 15:58). Resurrection means nothing done for Him is lost, including the unseen things.
- Your temptations. The power that raised Jesus is the power at work in your body. You are not fighting with your own strength.
- Your suffering. You share His sufferings in order to share His resurrection; the pattern is death, then life — always life last.
- Your relationships. Forgiveness is a small resurrection: something dead brought back to life. You can do it because He did.
- Your fear. The worst thing that can happen to you has already happened to Him, and He walked out of it.
- Your grave. It is a bed, not a wall. You will rise as He rose, in a body like His.
Living in the pattern
The Christian life has the shape of the Gospel: death and resurrection, over and over, in smaller and larger ways. Every dying to self is followed by a rising to more of Christ. Every loss surrendered to Him comes back as life. This is not a metaphor for coping. It is how the new creation works, because it was born on the third day.
This closes the first season of New Creation Realities. We have looked at Christ, we have looked at ourselves in Him, and we have tried to learn to live from the finished work. The series continues — because the subject does not run out. He is risen, He is in you, and that is enough to live on.