“…that I might know Him, and the power of His resurrection power, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being made conformable unto His death.” Philippians 3:10
Apart from the Lord Jesus Christ, there is perhaps no author in Scripture who has been able to capture the great design, and purpose of man, in so few words as the Apostle Paul. He wrote to the Philippians, “…I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord; for whom I have suffered the loss of all things.” (3:8) Here is a man who, from the moment of his conversion to Christ on the road to Damascus, was called to engage wholly in the pursuit to know God, in Christ, by the Holy Spirit. Paul’s concepts of God were shattered when he discovered that Christ was the Messiah. The things of earth became, as the hymnwriter put it: “…strangely dim, in the light of His (Christ’s) glory and grace.” On that day of his meeting Christ, old things passed away, scales of unbelief began to fall from his heart, and soon after from his eyes, and he began to see eternal reality and worth. Paul had tasted something that was not of this world, which was above all that was of worth in this world. Perhaps the greatest truth that He discovered that day was that it was the will of God that he truly come to know God, His ways, the power of His blessed life. That which he did not grasp at the time, but would increasingly, was the extent to which he could and must know Christ. Paul would express later in his letters that the calling of God was to fulness of salvation, where Christ by the Spirit would fill the life with Himself, fill the believer with the knowledge of His will, and know the reality of Christ’s “resurrection” power. This power was not to be something to be believed in in the face of death, but by its very essence, and the ministry of the Spirit, it was to be increasingly operative in the life. The questions that now need to be answered in the believer’s life are first, what truly IS this power of the resurrection, and how can I come to know it in the daily walk and service to Christ?
As far as we know, there was no one on earth that heard Christ rise from the dead. It was a quiet act of the Father by the Spirit. The Lord Jesus had told His disciples concerning the laying down of his life, “…I lay down my life, that I might take it again. No man taketh it from Me, but I lay it down of Myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This commandment have I received of My Father.” (Jn. 10:17,18) By the Father’s authority, power, and promise, given to the Lord Jesus by the Eternal Spirit, Christ was not only able lay down His life, but to “take it again.” The power of the resurrection resided in two things, first in the essence of it in the Father, communicated and manifested by the Spirit, defying death and hopelessness. Secondly, it resided in the authoritative promise of the Father given to the Son that this power belonged to Christ. Not only was the power of the resurrection to be a fact based upon a promise of God, but it was to be the very experience of Christ rising from the death.
What then of the believer? What is to be the desired effect of God by the Spirit concerning the power of the resurrection “on earth as it is in heaven?” Throughout Scripture the subject of power, the power of God, and that given to men, is a dominant issue, especially in the New Testament, where the matter takes on an amplified meaning. There it pertains to the power of the indwelling Christ, made available to the believer by the Spirit. This is God’s blessed, victorious promise and provision.
Dear Father, Empower us by Christ. In Jesus’ name, Amen.