While there are a lot of things that were a part of God’s bigger plan for Jesus, three of them stand out for us. The first is that He came to live. As He lived, he was modeling life as God originally designed it. For three years Jesus invested His life in some disciples so that He would give them and all future disciples a measure of how one was supposed to be living in a fallen, sinful world. This is what life was intended to look like. If we follow His pattern, then God makes it possible to live life to its fullest.
The second thing Jesus came to do was to die. He came into the world to be a substitute life given for us in death so that He might take our place. This means His purpose here is that we might not have to die. Spiritual death means separation from God. This is exactly what we deserve because of sin. “The wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23). All have sinned and therefore all justly should die for their disobedience to God. But Jesus comes as a replacement for us. One who stands in our place. He is able to do this as the sinless one who does not have to die for His own sins. He is the perfect sacrifice for sins because He did not have sin in himself.
This pattern of Jesus is foreshadowed in the Old Testament sacrificial system when a perfect lamb was chosen and killed in place of the worshipper. There were not to be lambs with crooked legs, lopped ears or scars. They were to be perfect as a model for what was necessary to render appropriate sacrifice to God. Jesus himself comes without sin as the perfect sacrifice for all of us who have sinned. So, He stands in our place, as one who does not need to stand in his own place, in order to take the punishment and death that we justly deserve. Praise the Lord that we do not have to suffer death, i.e., separation from God, because Jesus has taken this role for us on the cross.
The third thing Jesus came to do was to be raised from the dead. It is a symbol of the triumph of life over death. In the resurrection God is saying that death does not have the last word. The worst thing that Satan has to throw at humankind is death. But God has triumphed over the worst sin could do in the resurrection of Jesus.
Not only is arising from the dead a triumph over death, but it is also a demonstration that there is life beyond death. Jesus promised this for the present life in this world as well as a future life after physical death in heaven and at the final resurrection. The resurrection of Jesus is a foretaste of our own resurrection. We will have real resurrection bodies, real resurrection minds, emotions, wills, and life. Some things in the resurrection will be just like our world and the life that we have now, and some things will be different. The model in Jesus’ resurrection is that so many of the good things we enjoy in this life will be repeated and enjoyed in the resurrection at a new level. That includes the delight in relationships, the delight in experiences, the delight in creation, and the delight of life. Every kind of enjoyment in this world or delight or learning or growing or loving people will be raised to a new level in the resurrection. All of that will be available, without the impact of sin, in relation to the same things that we experience in this world.
So, we have something to look forward to. Something to hope for. Something to anticipate. The great news about the resurrection is we have a taste of it now in this world. Think of all the good things that we have to enjoy and delight in now, and then think that they will all be raised to a new, more powerful level in the resurrection. So, we will find ourselves again enjoying life, relationships, work, learning, creation, experiences, imagination, emotions, thinking, etc. in a new, fresh, deeper way. The resurrection from the dead gives us something to look forward to when we will enjoy the resurrection with Jesus in the future. The great news is we can start now enjoying some of the dimensions that are coming at another level in the future. Let’s take advantage of the delight in life that God has given us for this world and live in anticipation of every good thing we have now coming to a whole other height in the future.
NOTE: This article was first published in The High Calling, March/April 2013 issue.