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
All Coffee Break articles are
copyright by Regner A. Capener,
but authorization for reprinting, reposting, copying or re-use, in whole or in
part, is granted –provided proper attribution and this notice are included
intact. Older Coffee Break archives are available at http://www.RegnersMorningCoffee.com.
Coffee Break articles are normally published weekly.
If you would like to have these articles arrive each morning in your email,
please send a blank email to: AnotherCoffeeBreak@protonmail.com
with the word, “Subscribe” in the subject line.
To remove yourself from the mailing list, please send a blank email to AnotherCoffeeBreak@protonmail.com with the word “Unsubscribe” in the subject
line.
CAPENER MINISTRIES is a tax-exempt church ministry. Should you desire to participate and covenant with us as partners in this ministry, please contact us at either of the above email or physical addresses, or visit: http://www.RiverWorshipCenter.org.