3 Challenges For the Perfectionist

How to fight the desire to be perfect at everything

Scripture: “…rules are only shadows of the reality yet to come. And Christ himself is that reality… These rules may seem wise because they require strong devotion, pious self-denial, and severe bodily discipline. But they provide no help in conquering a person’s evil desires.”Colossians 2:17, 23

Sometimes it’s hard to be honest about our sin and forgive ourselves. It’s almost as hard as forgiving others. Some of us even honestly admit that it’s hard to love God when things in life don’t seem perfect. These feelings show how the pressure of legalism (following rules) and perfectionism (the desire to be perfect) harms our identity and our relationship with God and others. Let’s allow God’s Word lift the weight of these challenges:

1. Being honest about your own sin

You are admired for hard work and results. Does this make it harder to be honest about mistakes? You may seem to have very little to confess. But sometimes it seems like the end of the world when you find sin at the root of your actions. If any mistake brings hopelessness and despair, you may be falling into the trap of perfectionism. Remember that Jesus came to save sinners (1 Timothy 1:15, Luke 15:2). He only called those who knew they were sinners (Mark 2:17). Walking with Him depends on truly confronting and confessing sin (1 John 1:7-9).

2. Forgiving others

Perfectionists tend to judge others by their bad actions and excuse themselves because of their good intentions. In Matthew 23:4 Jesus describes it this way: “They pile up back-breaking burdens and lay them on other men’s shoulders—yet they themselves will not raise a finger to move them.” Jesus’ parable of the unmerciful servant shows that forgiven people must forgive (Matthew 18:21-35). Real love, not perfection, is the mark of a Christian, (John 13:35) and love keeps no record of wrongs (1 Corinthians 13:5).

3. Loving God in spite of

This is the hardest to admit, even to ourselves. But it is the key to the other problems. Is God not keeping His end of the bargain? You pray and work but don’t receive the blessing. You feel your Christian walk should entitle you to the breakthrough. But it never comes. Have you done something wrong and disqualified yourself?

It should free you to know that we do not control God in this way. Remember that while the Old Covenant promised blessings for those who lived according to God's Law, it also promised curses to those who did not (Deuteronomy 27:26). God's New Covenant is mercy for all who believe. No conditions (John 1:12, 3:16). Trusting only in Christ means you have to stop trusting in yourself.

A Real Story of Persecution

Scripture: Remember those who are in prison, as though in prison with them, and those who are mistreated, since you also are in the body.Hebrews 13:3

Many Christians are suffering because they love Jesus. I recently sat down with a pastor named Reverend G. He is from a country in Asia where most of the people are Muslim and the Christians are persecuted. Here’s his story:

Christians: A Hated Minority

“I was born in a Christian family. From my childhood I was really shocked to see how much some Muslims in my country hate Christians. In some areas of my country, Christians are forced to sit on the ground instead of the same level as others. Christian workers are not allowed to eat and drink from the same cups and plates, but use separate dishes. Signs in many hotels and restaurants say “Christians & (other minorities) are not allowed to drink & eat.”

How you can pray: Pray for those who persecute Christians around the world (Matthew 5:44)

Facing Death to Share the Gospel

“Muslims invite Christians to be converted to Islam, but if you invite them to Christianity you can be killed. They may ask you questions about your faith, but if you ask about the Islamic faith, you can be arrested for blasphemy.” Blasphemy means you have shown great disrespect to God. That’s why questioning the Islamic faith is considered blasphemy. “The blasphemy law is a sword hanging over the heads of Christians in my country.”

How you can pray: Pray that Christians do not fear the people persecuting them (Matthew 10:28)

Christians Under Attack

“Many Christian villages have been burned around the country, and many Christians martyred, or killed because of their faith. Recently I was attacked in a market. My family is under great pressure and is extremely frightened. We are staying at a friend’s home instead of our own. That friend has been involved with me in the protests and is also being threatened. We are facing very hard times nowadays, but are happy that we are serving our Lord and Savior. It is a privilege for us.”

How you can pray: Pray that Christians remember great joy is coming (Romans 8:18)

We're Still Here!

How can you be sure to inherit the promised land of God?

What does it take to enter the Promised Land? To enter God’s promises? To enter the Kingdom of God? It’s a very good question to ask at this time of year, during the Days of Unleavened Bread. I’ve been thinking a great deal about this, because when you look at the story in the Bible of Israel’s exodus from Egypt – a great deal of attention is given to that. But it was a forty-year period before they eventually entered the land. When you know the story well, the generation that left Egypt had to die off, and only a very small number of people who came out of Egypt, the children, lived to go into Egypt. And among them, the prominent names that we have from scripture are two by the name of Joshua and Caleb. These were two of the older generation who didn’t die, but lived to go into the Promised Land. Joshua led them in and Caleb was one of the leaders, as well, because they had had faith and confidence in God.

And there’s an interesting point of the story in Judges – Joshua chapter 14, where it says as it came time for them to go into the land and they did, that Caleb made this statement before Joshua and the others. He said, “You know the word which the Lord said to Moses the man of God concerning you and I in Kadesh Barnea. I was forty years old when Moses the servant of the Lord sent me from Kadesh Barnea to spy out the land, and I brought back word to him as it was in my heart. Nevertheless my brethren who went with me made the heart of the people melt, but I wholly followed the Lord my God” (Joshua:14:6-8

). And Joshua was one of them with Caleb at that point.

He says, “I wholly followed the Lord my God”. Not only on that day, but for the entire forty-year period, Caleb and Joshua completely obeyed God and followed his way of life, and as a result, they entered into the land. They were still there. When it came time to part the waters of the Jordan and go in, they were still there.

What does it take to enter into the promises of God? To enter the Promised Land? To enter into the Kingdom of God? It takes an attitude like Caleb had. To wholly follow the Lord but to determine in your heart, “I’m still going to be there.” And to be there, to show up, and obey God, and to be faithful to the calling that He has given. To be able to say when it’s time to inherit those promises, “God, we’re still here.” That’s the attitude that these had, these two men had, and so do we. We must have that, as well.

Think about that as we come out of the Days of Unleavened Bread and get about our life of worship and faith with God.

Bread

The Bible often speaks of bread, but what does bread have to do with our lives and God?

God wants us to benefit from supplying our daily physical bread but more importantly, our daily spiritual bread from the One known as The Bread of Life.

Life flows around bread. For 6,000 years humanity has survived on bread. It was and is the stuff which supports life.

Every year the cycles or ebb of life was consumed with the grains that would be ground into flour to make bread. People did not have grocery stores, or even bakers from which to go to pick up their ready made loaves of bread for thousands of years. They also did not have commercial yeast or milled flour from which to make their bread for most of those years. They had to plant the grain, dry the grain, grind the grain into flour either by hand, or with large mill stones turned with oxen, to have the flour to begin the bread making process. Most breads were raised by use of a sourdough starter which took time to ferment. Historically there was no commercialized yeast to speed up the process.

All this took many days and months, so you can understand that people for many thousands of years thought a lot about bread. I have started making my own bread again after many years. I began by making my own sourdough starter. This is by itself a long process to bring it to the stage where it is bubbly and can make the bread rise. It takes at least a week for this to be achieved and then a whole day making bread because the starter works so slowly. This caused me to reflect more about bread and its role in people's lives.

A woman's life in a fairly large family would have been concentrated on providing that bread daily. Most people ate bread three times a day with a little meat or vegetables added to the diet.

When David was sent to provide food for his brothers during the battles that Saul’s army was involved in, he was sent with grain and 10 loaves of bread (1 Samuel:17:17). This family was also able to send some cheese which must have been a real treat, but this went to the captains and may not have even reached the men under them.

At this time there were no government rations, cans of some kind of meat, or dried packages of ready made meals for the men to eat.

We live in a very different world today in America and most developed nations. Not only do we buy most of our breads from stores, we are totally removed from the process and consuming time it takes to make a loaf of bread. The sprouted flour I have been buying allows you to click on an App so you can see where that grain was grown, but most people don’t even think about where the grain grew, let alone how it was made into a loaf. Many don’t even look at what goes into their bread. It’s just a loaf of bread, okay? Well, there might be more to it than that.

Christ said something profound in Matthew:4:4 “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.” At that time over 2,000 years ago, bread was the average person’s main sustenance.In the story of Matthew:14:13,Christ fed the 5,000 bread and some fish. Occasionally people consumed meat and some vegetable to go with it, but mostly bread. It was dunked into a broth or sour wine as a meal.

If man’s focus is always on getting bread and all that is involved in bringing it about,growing, harvesting, drying, grinding, and then making a loaf to eat, it might be hard to understand eternal life. Just surviving this life consumes you. Yet understanding some of the parables of Christ might have been easier for people who lived for their daily bread.

God wants something more from us who have been called and given His Spirit. He wants to offer us something more precious than this physical life. Christ admonished the people who came to Him by saying “I say to you, you seek Me, not because you saw the signs, but because you ate of the loaves and were filled.” (John:6:26) He then goes on to say in John6:35, “I am the bread of life. He who comes to me shall never hunger.”

Bread is symbolic in the New Testement of Christ and eternal life through Him. We are told not to worry about what we eat or how we are able to sustain our physical lives. (Matthew:6:25) We are also told to seek God and His Kingdom and our daily physical bread will be supplied.

Very few down through the 6,000 years of mankind have understood the need to seek the true bread through faith in Jesus Christ, but at least they could understand the analogies of bread in God’s word and how valuable it was to life. It is interesting that in this day we don’t have to spend very much of our time and thoughts on how to supply our daily bread. Not only is this unique to the history of man, but with people developing special intolerances to grain and gluten that make up so many of the loaves of bread in the stores, it is almost becoming a negative factor in many people's lives. We may now lose the unique understanding of what daily bread pictures in the scriptures.

Christ is that perfect bread that we are told to partake of. God’s word requires time to ingest. We are to pray and ask God to give us this day our daily bread (Matthew:6:11) and this is so much more than physical food. Let us not lose the valuable lesson of bread in our daily lives as the world tries to remove it from us in every possible way.

4 Facts About Persecution

Scripture: “Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.” Matthew 5:11-12

Persecution is when people say and do bad things to you because you believe in Jesus. Why should we rejoice if people kick us out of our home, beat us, or even kill us? Today, many followers of Jesus are persecuted. Here are a few points that give us God’s perspective on persecution.

1. Christ’s Followers Should Expect Persecution

Jesus told his followers, “If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you” (John 15:18). Jesus did not come to earth to become popular, but to die. He did not promise us an easy, trouble-free life, nor did he model this kind of life. The Apostle Paul went on to say, “Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted” (2 Timothy 3:12).

2. God Shapes Our Character through Persecution

Just as coal becomes a diamond through tremendous pressure, God develops us and makes us mature through trials. “Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope” (Romans 5:3-4). God does not say it will be pleasant. In fact, “For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it” (Hebrews 12:11).

3. We Experience Christ More Closely Because of It

“That I may know Him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings, being conformed to his death” (Philippians 3:10). Often we just want the “good stuff” that comes from following Christ. Yet the Apostle Paul tells us clearly that in suffering, we actually have fellowship with Christ. Even for those who don’t face literal death for Jesus’ sake, we are called to die daily to our flesh and our own desires (Colossians 3:3-5, Galatians 2:20).

4. The Rewards are Eternal

There was no earthly benefit for Jesus’ first followers. Almost all of them were killed for their faith (Hebrews 11:35-40). Yet these followers, along with you and I, will experience eternal life with God and have joy beyond description. God’s word says “What we suffer now is nothing compared to the glory [God] will reveal to us later.” (Romans 8:18). We can all look forward to the reward of being with God when we continue to believe in Him despite trouble and persecution.

What Religious Days Do You Observe?

What religious days do you keep? Easter? Passover? What does the New Testament say?

What religious days do you keep? In the New Testament you’ll find a couple of days that are mentioned that are God’s festivals that most Christians today don’t even observe. And yet, we’re given very specific instructions that we ought to be doing that. We can find them over in 1 Corinthians chapter 5, and in this particular passage – verse 6 begins to describe the Passover and the Days of Unleavened Bread. And it says this: “Your glorying is not good. Don’t you know a little leaven leavens the whole lump?” Now, why talk about that? Well, he goes on and says, “Purge out the old leaven, that you may be a new lump, since you are truly unleavened. For indeed Christ, our Passover, is sacrificed for us. Therefore, let us keep the feast,” he says, “not with old leaven, nor with leaven of malice and wickedness, but the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth” (1 Corinthians:6:5-8


).

So the apostle Paul says very specifically, “Keep the feast”. Or some translations say, “Observe it”. Other translations say “Celebrate the feast”. So do you keep the Passover? Do you keep the Days of Unleavened Bread?

You know, back in the Old Testament, even Leviticus 23 tells us these aren’t any old days, that these are God’s feast days. They are the feasts of the Lord. And so, you ought to check it out. Check out what the Bible really says about the days that you should observe, and then when you find what it really says, well, keep it. Celebrate them. Observe the Passover and the Days of Unleavened Bread and all God’s festival days. Check them out – maybe something that you’ll be surprised to find out about.

Christ's Resurrection: Key to Our Salvation

The life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ are key facts of history for a Christian. As the apostles testified, Christ’s resurrection was the culmination of the events of His first coming—and enables the remaining steps in God’s plan to save mankind.

Before He was arrested in the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus promised: “Because I live you will live also” (John:14:19). He had been explaining to His disciples that He was about to die, which would demonstrate His incomprehensible love for humanity. As He went on to say in John:15:13, “Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for His friends.”

The death of God’s Son is the foundational step in God’s plan to save humanity. His sacrifice allows every human being the opportunity to have his or her sins washed away and become the friend of both Jesus Christ and God the Father. And not only can we become the friends of God, but we are invited to live with Them forever as divine members of God’s family! This is possible only through the resurrection of Christ.

Yet although the apostles heard Jesus speak these words, they could not understand what was about to happen or why. Their beloved Rabbi was about to suffer a horrible death to free others from death. He would be buried for three days and three nights and then be resurrected. Because of His resurrection, they too, along with every repentant, obedient and believing human being would also be resurrected at a future time. Everyone will ultimately be given the opportunity to choose the way of salvation to live forever in God’s Kingdom!

Preaching the resurrected Christ, starting with Peter

Once converted through the Holy Spirit, the apostles proclaimed to the world that the resurrection of Jesus Christ was the capstone of His ministry. Yes, “with great power the apostles gave witness to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus” (Acts:4:33). They were so confident in what they’d seen with their own eyes (1 Corinthians:15:5) that they were willing to die for it. They knew it to be the truth. They suffered humiliation, beatings and, later, even death for the name of Christ.

Acts 2 records that Peter and the rest of the disciples were filled with the Holy Spirit 50 days after Jesus’ resurrection, on the day of Pentecost. Starting in Acts:2:11, we read Peter’s first recorded sermon, which was given that day. His message centered around the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Jesus was the miracle worker who “was crucified and put to death” (Acts:2:22-23
). But then Peter emphasized that before His body could suffer decay, God raised Him back to life (Acts:2:24, Acts:2:31-32
).

Because He was crucified on our behalf, the only proper response for us is to repent of our sins and be baptized ( Acts:2:38). God then gives His Holy Spirit to repentant believers so they can “be saved from this perverse generation” (Acts:2:38-40

).

The next chapter records how Peter, accompanied by John, was used by God to heal a man who was lame from birth. Peter asked the crowd, “Why look so intently at us, as though by our own power or godliness we had made this man walk?” (Acts:3:12). He then explained that it was through faith in Jesus’ name that the man had been made strong (Acts:3:16).

When Peter and John were arrested and brought before the Jewish authorities, these apostles were asked: “By what power or by what name have you done this?” (Acts:4:7). Peter simply stated, “Let it be known to you all, and to all the people of Israel, that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead,  by Him this man stands here before you whole” (Acts:4:10, emphasis added throughout).

Once again, the message of Peter was that it was because of the power of the resurrected Christ that miracles were beingaccomplished. Again and again, Peter’s messages resound with the fact that he served the risen Christ. Our “living hope,” he says in his first preserved epistle, is “through the resurrection of Jesus Christ” (1 Peter:1:3). And he adds, “For Christ also suffered once for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but made alive by the Spirit” (1 Peter:3:18).

This timeless message regarding the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ has been carried forth by God’s ministry down through the ages. Anchoring this message is the undeniable fact that we serve a living Savior, Jesus Christ.

Paul proclaims the same message

Paul’s first recorded sermon is found in Acts 13. He traveled first to Cyprus, then on to what is now southwestern Turkey, and observed the Sabbath with both Jews and Gentiles, worshipping God with them in the synagogue. After giving a brief history of the Hebrews, he began speaking of the Savior for Israel, Jesus (Acts:13:23). He spoke of the Roman governor Pontius Pilate authorizing Christ’s execution (Acts:13:28).

Then Paul spoke the words which are repeated throughout the New Testament: “But God raised Him from the dead” (Acts:13:30). Like Peter, Paul too was driven to preach the crucified and resurrected Christ. This message contained a power heretofore not realized.

Jesus and His apostles proclaimed the gospel or good news of the Kingdom of God—the message that God through His Messiah or Christ would set up a literal kingdom to rule over all nations. As the biblical prophets had earlier foretold, when Christ establishes His Kingdom He will rule from Jerusalem and the world will at last know peace; the nations will learn war no more (Isaiah:2:4).

Paul never changed his message.  The final words we read about him are these: “Paul . . . received all who came to him, preaching the kingdom of God and teaching the things which concern the Lord Jesus Christ with all confidence” (Acts:28:30-31
).

Paul started his epistle to the Christians in Rome by stating that he had been “separated to the gospel of God” (Romans:1:1). He said the gospel concerned “His Son Jesus Christ our Lord, who was born of the seed of David according to the flesh, and  declared to be the Son of God with power according to the Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead” (Romans:1:3-4
).

Paul thus explained that both the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ are vital to understanding God’s gospel. He further declared that the “gospel of Christ . . . is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first and also for the Greek” (Romans:1:16).

Christ’s gospel transcends nationalities. His life, death and resurrection are vital for everyone; it is God’s power to salvation—that is, eternal life in God’s coming Kingdom—for every believing human being. Without this salvation all people are headed to the second death—the lake of fire (Revelation:21:8).

Paul continues with the key theme of the importance of Jesus’ resurrection inRomans:5:8-10

:

“But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him. For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life.”

This is a key scripture. Paul wants us to know that while Jesus’ death is crucial for our justification before God and reconciliation to Him (being declared not guilty and placed into a right relationship with Him), that death does not give us eternal life. We are ultimately saved, resurrected to eternal life, by the living Christ!

In Romans:8:34 Paul states: “Who is he who condemns? It is Christ who died, andfurthermore is also risen, who is even at the right hand of God, who also makes intercession for us.”

The word translated “furthermore” is the Greek mallon, meaning “all the more,” “how much more,” “better,” “rather than,” “more than,” etc. So while the spiritual impact of Christ’s sacrificial death on humanity is immense, His resurrected life makes it more so because He lives to make “intercession for us”—pleading for us as priestly intermediary with God.

Paul also makes it clear that Christians live the Christian life only through Christ living in them through the Holy Spirit. As he explains, “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live: yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me” (Galatians:2:20, King James Version). Here we see how vital it is that Christ not only died for us but was also resurrected so that He could live in us—empowering us to resist sin and continue in God’s way.

Paul continues the focus in 1 Corinthians

Paul wrote his first preserved epistle to the church at Corinth to correct, in love, some heresies that were troubling the congregation. Earlier, he had spent 18 months raising up that church and teaching the members the fundamentals of the Christian faith (seeActs:18:11).

His instructions in this letter regarding the observance of biblical festivals date it to the spring of the year in the northern hemisphere. In 1 Corinthians:5:7-8
, we are exhorted to keep the Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread with proper spiritual focus—both of these occurring in early spring. Paul gives further instruction in chapter 11 on the right attitude Christians must have as we partake of the New Testament Passover (as we must still today). 

Notice in this regard that this epistle, written more than two decades after Christ’s death and resurrection, contains no reference to the observance of Easter Sunday. The popular Easter holiday is rooted not in true Christianity but in pagan religion (see “ How Christian Is Easter? ”).

In fact, Jesus was not even resurrected early Sunday morning, as most believe. It is provable that He came back to life on Saturday, rising from the grave around the end of the weekly Sabbath at sunset after three days and three nights, as He promised inMatthew:12:40 (see “ Good Friday – Easter Sunday: It Doesn’t Fit With the Bible ”). The truth of the matter is that the early Church observed the Passover and the Days of Unleavened Bread in a New Covenant context. They never observed Easter. (Again, see “How Christian Is Easter? ”.)

In this springtime epistle, Paul also wrote of the crucial importance of Christ’s resurrection. There were false teachers in the congregation who were denying the reality of the resurrection (see 1 Corinthians:15:12).

He told them when first addressing them that Jesus died for their sins and rose again the third day according to the Scriptures (1 Corinthians:15:3-4
) and that Jesus was seen by Cephas (Peter) and the other apostles as well as more than 500 others (1 Corinthians:15:5-7

). He mentioned this large number of personal eyewitnesses to demonstrate that there was no possibility of fraud. These were all bona fide witnesses who knew they saw Jesus after His resurrection. Paul then reaffirmed that he himself had also seen the risen Christ (1 Corinthians:15:8).

Next he addressed the heresy some were spreading—that there was no actual resurrection of the dead. He anchored his rebuttal through the fact of Christ’s literal resurrection as a forerunner of the future resurrection of all believers. He said that if Christ was not risen, then his preaching and their faith were in vain (1 Corinthians:15:14).

Furthermore, Paul said that if Christ was not risen, then he and the other ministers were false witnesses and the Christian faith is futile, with all of us left still in our sins (1 Corinthians:15:14, 1 Corinthians:15:17). For it is Christ living in us that empowers us to live in obedience to God. And if Christ is not risen, Paul stated, then those who have died in Christ have perished—there is no hope of anyone ever being resurrected. And if it’s only in this present life that we have hope, we are of all men the most to be pitied (1 Corinthians:15:18-19
).

Paul goes on to emphatically state that Christ has risen from the dead and has become the firstfruits of those who have died (1 Corinthians:15:20), the beginning of God’s spiritual harvest of mankind. He explains that while the first Adam, the father of wayward mankind, brought death, the last Adam—Jesus Christ as the beginning of a renewed human race—has brought life.

Paul then spends the rest of this lengthy chapter talking about the resurrection of the dead. Furthermore, he makes it clear that Christ’s resurrection is the guarantee of ourresurrection.

The Kingdom of God is for resurrected believers

The key to the Kingdom of God promised in the gospel message is the resurrection of Jesus Christ. If it weren’t for Christ’s resurrection, there would be no Kingdom of God to come. There would be no messianic King of that Kingdom—and no resurrected followers of His to serve as kings and priests along with Him.

Some think that the message of the Kingdom of God is merely about experiencing God in our lives today. But without a future literal resurrection and ruling Kingdom to come, what would be the point? We would be most pitiable, as Paul said.

While we can experience a foretaste of the Kingdom of God today through personally living by God’s Word, Paul announces that the Kingdom is ultimately yet to come and that inheriting it requires a resurrection or change to immortality:

“Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; nor does corruption inherit incorruption. Behold, I tell you a mystery: We shall not all sleep [in death], but we shall all be changed—in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. So when this corruptible has put on incorruption, and this mortal has put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written: ‘Death is swallowed up in victory’” (1 Corinthians:15:50-54



).

It is God who gives us this victory through the risen Christ (1 Corinthians:15:57). Our living forever has been made possible through the One who said that He is “the resurrection and the life” (John:11:25). His life, ministry, death and resurrection have made eternal life possible for humanity! We’re reconciled to God by Jesus’ death but saved by His life—by His living in us to lead us and interceding for us as High Priest.

Jesus will come back to rule as King under God the Father. In the coming Kingdom of God, the resurrected Messiah and His resurrected followers will lead the rest of mankind, those who are willing, to repentance and ultimately experiencing the same change to immortality. Let us never forget the awesome importance of Jesus’ death and resurrection!