How Far Reaching Are The Effects Of Christ’s Resurrection In Our Lives

How Far Reaching Are The Effects Of Christ’s Resurrection In Our Lives

While we acknowledge we only can be made righteous in God’s sight through the sacrifice Christ made on the cross, the effects and outcomes of our salvation are determined by how, as disciples, we apply the Bible to every aspect of life, including civics.

Christian Buddhism

Buddhism is an Asian religion founded by Siddartha Gautama in northeastern India in the 5th century BC. Buddhism has no creator god, and promotes the concept of karma, which means you get what you deserve from previous states of existence. It also teaches to desire nirvana, a state of freedom from suffering.

Christians who claim healing for every human problem may be acting like Buddhists, who believe the highest spiritual state is the absence of human problems. The Bible teaches, however, there can be multiple sources of human suffering as part of Christian discipleship.

1. Job 1:6-12, Zechariah 3:1-5 and Isaiah 14:12-20 teach us there is a Satanic conflict that can result in our suffering.

2. God could be disciplining us with situations of human suffering (Hebrews 12:6)

3. James 5:13-16 says “¹³Is anyone among you suffering? Let him pray. Is anyone cheerful? Let him sing praise. ¹⁴Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. ¹⁵And the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven. ¹⁶Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.^b”

Note in James 5:15 God provides no judging of one who is sick due to personal sin. The Bible says, matter of factly, “¹⁵And the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven.” The Biblical attitude is quite different from the pentecostal and charismatic churches/fellowships I have been in where the leaders try to apply a “mathematical formula for achieving Christian nirvana” by making sure everyone is healed. In those fellowships, pastors and elders go through a check list of reasons why one either is healed or not healed. These checklist practices, ignore the sovereignty of God, as stated in the three reasons for suffering above.

My real problem with Christian philosophies and practices that place overriding emphasis on personal well-being is that it turns our focus inwardly, overemphasizing that Christianity is all about “me,” — meaning “my speaking in tongues, my healing, my prosperity, and my demonstrations of God’s power working in my life,” and it ignores the issues that pertain to God either blessing or cursing our nation.

After a church service a man who had just come form visiting his ancestral country, remarked to me. “I see what you mean about why nations are in disarray. In the country I am from, most people are Buddhist, and they only are focused on their internal spirituality, and no one is paying attention to how the government is robbing the wealth of the nation with economic policies that keep people poor and divided by class, race and religion, while providing little infrastructure so they can thrive.”

In America, we have ministries full of people focused on demonstrating they have attained their personal versions of Christian nirvana, while their children attend schools that tell them to mutilate themselves and cut off body parts to fulfill their identity of belonging to the opposite of their biological sex!

Christ’s Resurrection & Great Commission

Contrary to the concept of “separation of church and state,” the Great Commission of Christ in Matthew 28:18-20 says we are to make disciples of the nations.

¹⁸And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. ¹⁹Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in^b the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, ²⁰teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

Making disciples of nations is consistent with Biblical history, for if God intended to separate Himself from the states, He would not have drowned Pharaoh’s army in the Red Sea, when that ruler led His state to disobey God. The Bible also says that God judges and blesses nations. Titus 2:14 applies to groups of people who make up nations.

Titus 2:14 Who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works.

Even in environments that appear to be hostile to the God of the Bible, God instructs us to seek the well being of the communities in which we live.

Jeremiah 29:7 says, ”But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the LORD on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.”

The above means that when God disciplined Israel by sending its people into exile, He neither separated Himself from them, nor the state where they resided. He instead instructs us to seek His blessing of the state as His means of caring for us. Parents don’t disown their children when they discipline them and put them in time out. They still care for them and provide meals and shelter. God did the same when Israel resided in a foreign nation.

Blessed is the nation whose God is the LORD

Americans sensed God’s desire for the nations is expressed in Scriptures like Zechariah 2: 11 “And many nations shall join themselves to the LORD in that day, and shall be my people.” Psalm 33:12 says, “Blessed is the nation whose God is the LORD, the people whom he has chosen as his heritage!” Psalm 144:15 says, “… happy is that people, whose God is the LORD.”

The reason 2/3’s of the Bible is Old testament is because God is demonstrating that how He treated those nations is how He treats all nations throughout all times!

So during this season as we solemnly reflect on the death Christ bore on our behalf, and celebrate His Resurrection, let’s extend our faith by realizing we can apply the blessings of salvation and discipleship to see communities, people groups and nations cooperate with Divine directives to be blessed by God!

He has risen! He has risen, indeed!

Pastor Earl