Mar 12
24
“This is the First Resurrection”
“This is the first resurrection. Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection: on such the second death hath no power, but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with him a thousand years” (Revelation 20:5-6).
The first resurrection is a spiritual resurrection. It is the resurrection of sinners from spiritual death to spiritual life in Christ (John 5:25). This first resurrection begins in the new birth. It is completed in the translation of the soul from this body of sin and this sin cursed earth to God’s holy heaven. It will be followed by the resurrection of the body to immortal glory at Christ’s second coming. The Word of God teaches us three things about the resurrection of God’s elect: 1. We have been raised representatively in Christ (Ephesians 2:5). 2. We have been raised spiritually by the power of God the Holy Spirit (John 5:25; Ephesians 2:1-3). 3. We shall be raised bodily when our Lord comes again (1 Thessalonians 4:17).
The new birth is nothing less than a resurrection from the dead. It is a spiritual resurrection. This is the resurrection of which John speaks in Revelation 20:6. Like all other people, God’s elect are born in spiritual death and deserving of eternal death. In regeneration God the Holy Spirit, by invincible, irresistible grace, gives them life in Christ. He raises them from death to life. Never in the Scriptures is the new birth attributed to the freewill of man, or even to his faith. It is the work of God the Holy Spirit. Only the omnipotent God can give life to dead sinners (John 3:3-8). The new birth is always spoken of in the Scriptures as a resurrection (John 5:25; 11:25-26; Ephesians 2:1-4). It is not a decision, but a resurrection. It is not a reformation, but a regeneration. It is not a new start in life, but an entirely new life!
The Word of God gives numerous illustrations of the new birth, this spiritual resurrection, by the power of God. Ezekiel’s description of the deserted infant, cast off, polluted in its blood, naked in its loathsomeness, and dead, but raised to life by the word of God’s power in the time of love, is a vivid picture of the new birth (Ezekiel 16:1-8). The prophet’s vision of dry bones, caused to live by the preaching of God’s Word and the power of God’s Spirit (Ezekiel 37:1-14), is certainly intended by God to be an illustration of our regeneration by the power of the Holy Spirit through the preaching of the gospel. And a clearer, more instructive picture of the believer’s spiritual resurrection in Christ could not be given than the story of the resurrection of Lazarus in John 11.
Here in Revelation 20:6 John gives us a word of comfort and assurance regarding ourselves, even while we live in this world. If we are born of God, if we have part in the first resurrection: — We are blessed (Ephesians 1:3). — We are holy (saints), made holy by the righteousness of Christ imputed to us in justification and imparted to us in regeneration. — Over us the second death, the everlasting wrath of God, has no power (Romans 8:1; 33-34). — Even now, we have been made priests with God, serving him in the most holy place. — Even now, we have been made kings and shall reign with Christ throughout this gospel age (represented as “a thousand years” in John’s vision). — And, soon, we shall leave this world of woe and enter into heaven’s glory and bliss with our Savior. We shall be “forever with the Lord” What a blessed hope this is! (Read 2 Corinthians 4:17-5:9). DON FORTNER
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Are You Hungry
Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled. (Matthew 5: 6)
I read that during the days of the Great Depression in this country there was such a famine of bread that families had to go to soup kitchens or bread trucks and wait in long lines in awful conditions just to get enough food for one meal. They did not have a concern for what the kitchen looked like, or the bread truck, or those who served.
Never did they ever think of not going because the time did not suit them just right. It was not a concern how far they might have to travel or that they were required to go back time-after-time for each meal. No. None of those things mattered for one simple reason: they were hungry. The only thing that mattered was getting the bread.
So it is when God gives a hunger for Christ the Bread .-Clay Curtis.
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Forgiven, Covered, Not Imputed
‘Even as David also describeth the blessedness of the man, unto whom God imputeth righteousness without works, Saying, Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven, and whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin'(Rom 4:6-8).
Paul does not say that David said, ‘blessed is the man unto whom God imputeth righteousness without works’, but that he ‘describeth’ the blessedness of the same man. He describes that blessedness in a little different language. Paul describes this blessedness in its positive aspect, David in the negative. Paul said God imputed something, David said God did not impute something. Both are speaking of the same man.
The absence of the one is the affirmation of the other. If your sins are gone, you are righteous, but there is more to this righteousness imputed to us than just the absence of sin. If God just wiped the slate clean, we would mar it again before you could say “clean.” Nor is this just a perpetual wiping of the slate clean. We not only are sinless, but we positively have a righteousness that is ours, which is the very righteousness of God (Rom 3:22), the righteousness of Christ, “the Lord our righteousness.”
What do you mean we ‘have’ a righteousness? Well, the word imputed is much misused and bandied about to make way for all sorts of wrong thinking. Here is how to clear up all of the wrong thinking about imputed righteousness: stop thinking (and saying) that when something is true in the sight of God, it is yet somehow not true. Imputation is not God seeing something differently than it actually is! Lose that thinking and rejoice! If God considers me righteous, it is because He has made me the righteousness of God in Him Who was made sin for me (2Cor 5:21). It is not complicated, just unfathomable. Do not add to or butcher God’s word in an attempt to understand or explain it. If God says it is so, believe and rejoice.
But, Christ, you are sinful and wretched. According to who? Who said so? Paul challenges anyone to say so: ‘Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God’s elect? It is God that justifieth’ (Rom 8:33). Whoever raises a charge of sin against me, (my conscience, my enemies, whoever) is flying in the face of God. Is this a naïve blindness to my present condition in the flesh? No, it is simply walking by faith, not by sight.
We are sometimes like Elisha’s servant who saw only the enemies and a seemingly hopeless situation. Elisha prayed, ‘LORD, I pray thee, open his eyes, that he may see’ (2Kings 6:17). If God would but open my eyes to see His precious, substitutionary, sin-atoning blood shed for me, then I will see the reality of the matter. My sins are gone. Elisha’s servant did not see a mirage, but a vision of the true, a glimpse of reality. The enemies did not disappear when his eyes were opened, but he saw them overwhelmed by the armies of Heaven. My present sinful condition is still visible to me, but where sin abounded, grace has much more abounded. And it is not ‘as though’ Christ put my sin away and became my Righteousness. It is that He ‘d i d s o.’ Now, God says I am sinless and righteous in Christ, and I say “Let God be true, and every man a liar.”
Postscript:
In Romans 4:7 the word “covered” is used in regard to our sin. Many words are used in scripture to describe how God has dealt with His people’s sin in Christ. Some have used this word “covered” as a way to explain the false idea that no sin was put away, redeemed, in any sense, until the time that Christ died on the cross. It is said that “cover” means to somehow sweep it under the rug until Christ died for it. There is an obvious problem with this since our text says that whoever’s sins are covered, also have the righteousness of Christ imputed to them, sin is not imputed to them and that their iniquities are forgiven. Sin that is covered from God’s sight is gone! Not deferred until a future reckoning. David described this blessedness long before our Saviour came and died. In David’s day, as now, blessed is the man who is forgiven by God because of the eternal redemption of Christ for His people of all ages. Christ’s blood was shed in time, but His cross-work is an eternal work. -Chris Cunningham.
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Complete Recovery – A Great Physician
Tommy Robbins
“Is there no balm in Gilead; is there no physician there? why then is not the health of the daughter of my people recovered?” Jeremiah 8:22
The verse before us propose three questions. Three gospel questions. The answer to these questions reveal the inherit and willing idolatrous heart of all men, especially the elect of God before conversion. This verse reveals the recovery of the same as well. We find these truths revealed not only in this verse and context but throughout the scriptures.
Although the glorious gospel of God’s free and sovereign grace is proclaimed men will not believe it and receive it. Although Christ is evidently set forth as the only propitiation for sin men will not come to Him. Lost, idolatrous mankind will not, yea cannot, come to Christ of their own will because they are in bondage to the idol of sinful self – John 5:40 “And ye will not come to Me, that ye might have life.” John 6:65; “Therefore said I unto you, that no man can come unto Me, except it were given unto him of my Father.”
Left unattended by the grace of God men will continue to grovel before their false god in the darkness of Spiritual death until God says, “Let there be light”! There is a BALM! There is a PHYSICIAN! Man can not recover himself from his damned condition, but JEHOVAH-RAPHA can and will recover His people from their deadly disease – “With His stripes we are healed.” Isaiah 53:5. The Great Physician has guaranteed the complete, eternal recovery of all the Spiritual infirmities of all His sheep, even death. He is the believer’s balm.
He applies Himself to us in love, mercy and grace. Psalms 103:1 Bless the LORD, O my soul: and all that is within me, bless His holy name. Bless the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all His benefits: Who forgiveth all thine iniquities; Who healeth all thy diseases Who redeemeth thy life from destruction; Who crowneth thee with lovingkindness and tender mercies; Who satisfieth thy mouth with good things; so that thy youth is renewed like the eagle’s.