Resurrection From the Dead, Part 2

 

July 6, 2018

 

The whole concept of being raised from the dead and walking and living in Resurrection Life is something that is more theory and mysticism in many parts of the body of Christ than reality.  Most Christians still believe that death is a certainty for them and they expect to die.  The fact that Jesus kept our appointment with death and redeemed us from death with His resurrection from the grave is “spiritual” in the minds of most believers – NOT literal.   My objective in sharing this series is to awaken God’s people to the fact that death is not a certainty for those who can grasp this revelation.

 

When I was seven years old and awakened one morning with Jesus standing at the foot of my bed, He began to lay out His plan and purpose for my life.  One of the things that He did say to me was that I would not die, “nor know death as men and women know death,” and that I would be here to enter into the millennial reign of the Lord Jesus Christ.

 

At age seven, death is not something you think about at all.  The promise was there and it was firmly lodged in my spirit, but the real significance of what Jesus was saying took many years to really take hold.

 

Take another look at what Paul writes in Hebrews 9.

 

Hebrews 9:27-28:  And as it is appointed unto men once (hapax: one time) to die, but after this the judgment (krisis: tribunal of justice — either for or against): So Christ was once (hapax: once and for all time)  offered to bear the sins of many; and unto them that look for him shall he appear the second time without sin unto salvation.

 

Some of you will remember my sharing of being transported in the Spirit to the crucifixion and seeing all the sins of the world, past, present and future gathered together like one huge cloud —  a hurricane or gigantic tornado, if you will — and centered upon the Cross as Jesus took those sins upon Himself.

 

The picture below scarcely does justice to what I saw, but it gives you an idea of what took place.  Sin has that same effect upon the world today.  It brings catastrophe, destruction, disease and death.

 

Once Adam disobeyed God’s Word and ate of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, he had sinned.  In so doing the genesis of death commenced.  Thus Paul makes the point that Jesus fulfilled the necessity for our death, keeping our appointment for us.

The appointment of death for the human race became ingrained into the very substance and nature of our existence with Adam’s sin.  Death was the destiny of every living being on the planet.  And, with death came every disease, sickness and infirmity.

 

Under the Law, provision was made for healing from sickness and disease.  Under the Law, atonement* for sin was taken care of by the shedding of the blood of lambs, bulls and goats and offering up burnt offerings.

 

Under the Law, atonement for sin existed, but not remission** or erasure.  The blood of animals was simply a prophetic forerunner of One whose death would forever erase the sins and finish off the death sentence for all who accepted His death.

 

[*Atonement is a translation of the Hebrew word: kaphar.  This word means: to cover over, to pacify, to extend mercy, to reconcile or placate.  It differs radically from the picture of remission as you will see in the following paragraph.]

 

[**Remission is a translation from the Greek word: aphesis.  This word is taken from its root: aphiemi; and it means to send away, to erase, to wipe out so completely as to forget it ever existed.

 

A corollary Scripture is found in Psalm 103:12: “As far as the east is from the west, so far hath He removed our transgressions from us.”]

 

As the Word so clearly demonstrates, Jesus didn’t just cover over our sin, He eradicated it to such a degree that it was buried in the sea, away from even the memory of the Father.  (See Micah 7:19)

 

Three times in the Word (see Acts3:19) we are told that our sins were blotted out.  The Greek word occurring here is exaleipho.  It means to wipe out, to obliterate from memory.

 

That means that Jesus kept our appointment with death.  He removed the necessity of our keeping the appointment and in the process eliminated:

 

(1) the curse of death,

(2) the disease, sickness and infirmity that comes with it,

(3)  and the curse of having to work for a living. 

 

We describe this last one as “poverty.”  You’ll recall what God told Adam:

 

Genesis 3:17-19:  And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in [painful toil and] sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life;

Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field; In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.

 

In simple terms, we define the word, "Blessing," as the empowerment to prosper.  The word, "curse," is the inverse of the blessing.  It literally means the removal of the empowerment we have in God to prosper, to bless and to be blessed.

 

Minus the empowerment to prosper, we are left to our own devices.  A curse is nothing more and nothing less than the removal of any empowerment to prosper.

 

That’s the curse that Jesus eradicated by keeping our appointment with death.  The apostle Paul, being a lawyer by training and schooled in the Law of Moses, described our deliverance from the curse in legal and judicial terms:

 

Romans 8:1-2:  There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death.

 

Are you seeing it?  Are you beginning to grasp just how powerful Jesus’ act was on our behalf?

 

Somehow we have to break the mindset that “death is a given.”  Everyone of us as believers — and that’s the operative word: believe — need to get it engraved in our minds, our souls and — mostly — our spirits that the Law of the Spirit of Life in Christ Jesus has totally set us free from the Law of Sin and Death.  It has to become part and parcel of our existence.

 

This recent flu epidemic that has swept the nation, taking thousands of lives, is nothing more and nothing less than a scare tactic of Satan designed to make us feel totally vulnerable and to raise our death consciousness.  My own episode of being hospitalized with both the flu and pneumonia during the Christmas/New Years holiday period was a classic example of how the medical profession and the pharmaceutical industry endeavors to load you up with medications to “treat you.”

 

They don’t have a “cure mentality.”  The pharmaceutical industry in particular wants to keep you right on the edge so they can continue to treat your symptoms.  When I was in the hospital, the operative phrase heard often was, “if we don’t treat you with these medications, you could die.”  I was told that my heart was failing and that I was close to death.

 

Baloney!

 

I had a visit with the Chief Cardiologist this past week.  He is a believer.  He has a different philosophy.  His word to me was, “Your heart is getting stronger, and I can see the day when we can take you off all these medications.”  We are in complete agreement!  I will not succumb to a lie of the Enemy that says, “You will die.”  I WILL NOT!  I’ve been set free from the Law of Sin and Death.

 

We don’t ever think of the concept of Resurrection as being a transition, but when you think about water baptism, that’s precisely what is taking place.  We transition from death to life through our obedience to Jesus’ command, and the pattern He set before us with His own baptism.

 

Take a look at a vivid description of what takes place in baptism in Paul’s letter to the Ekklesia in Rome.

 

In writing to the Romans, Paul says, “Don’t you realize that those of us who have been baptized — immersed — into the  Anointed One and His Anointing have been baptized into His death?”  (Romans 6:3,  RAC Translation and Amplification)

 

Let me pick up with the amplified translation from Romans 6.  We’ve used in this description and translation in years past.

 

And Paul continues: “Therefore, and as a consequence thereof, we are buried and put into the grave through baptism so that our old man sees death.  It follows, therefore, that in the same way Christ was raised up from the dead by the visible Glory of the Father, we also should walk and live renewed and refreshed (with His breath) of life.”  (Romans 6:4  RAC Translation and Amplification)

 

Here’s where Paul spells things out in specific detail.

 

“For if we have been planted together, germinating as seeds in the likeness and form of His death, we shall also spring forth in (and with His) resurrection:  Knowing this, that our old man and corrupted DNA is crucified with him, that the body (of law) of sin might be annulled and destroyed in order to free us from having to serve and be under the Law of Sin and Death.

 

“For he who has died is freed from sin (and the laws which determine that which is sin).  Now if we are truly dead with Christ, we believe and know that we shall also live with Him:

 

^“Knowing that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death has no more authority, dominion, control or power over Him.  For when He died, He died killing off sin and death once and for all: and by virtue of the fact that He lives, He lives in and for the destiny and purposes of God.”  (Romans 6:5-10,  RAC Translation and Amplification)

 

Consider the following:

 

For all those who are in Christ Jesus, we were with Him when He was hanging on the Cross!  All of our sins, along with the sins of our fathers, our grandfathers, our great-grandfathers, and every generation before them came upon Jesus as He hung there.  When He died, He took those sins with Him to the grave.

 

During the three days his body lay in the grave, He took our sins, our iniquities, our sicknesses, our infirmities, our diseases and the curse of death that hung over the human race and laid them all at Satan’s feet!

 

THAT, folks, is exactly what happens with us in water baptism when we are buried with Him!  We are with Him. We are IN Him!

 

EVERYTHING of our past — including the sins of our fathers, and the iniquities visited upon us as a result — gets laid at Satan’s feet.  He gets back what He so treacherously dumped on us!

 

Now comes the Resurrection!  Listen to how the apostle Paul puts it as he writes to the Philippians.

 

Philippians 3:8d-11:  “That I may win Christ, And be found in him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith: That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death;  If by any means I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead.”

 

Do you see it?  In water baptism we are in Him — NOT in our own (self) righteousness which gets measured by the Law with its penalties and curse.  Rather, we are in Him by, through and because of His faith; and that faith comes from Father God by means of the anointing that is in Jesus.

 

The objective here is that — as Paul puts it — we have know and have the revelation of Him, His onoma, His character and makeup.  But there’s much, much more!  It isn’t simply that we have a revelation of Jesus in water baptism: we also receive a revelation of the miraculous power and might released in His resurrection.

 

And still there is more!

 

We get to be a partaker of the sufferings He endured — the beatings, the stripes, the disfigurement that occurred when His beard was ripped out of his face, the unutterable pain that occurred when the crown of thorns was shoved into His skull

 

Gotta stop for now.  See you next week.

 

In case you are missing out on real fellowship in an environment of Ekklesia, our Sunday worship gatherings are available by conference call – usually at about 10:45AM Pacific.  That conference number is (712) 770-4160, and the access code is 308640#.  We are now making these gatherings available by Skype.  If you wish to participate by video on Skype, my Skype ID is regner.capener.  If you miss the live voice call, you can dial (712) 770-4169, enter the same access code and listen in later.  The video call, of course, is not recorded – not yet, anyway.

 

Blessings on you!

 

           

           

Regner A. Capener
CAPENER MINISTRIES

RIVER WORSHIP CENTER
Temple, Texas 76504

Email Contact: CapenerMinistries@protonmail.com

 

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