Apr 21

Mark 16: ¹⁹ So then the Lord Jesus, after He had spoken to them, was taken up into heaven and He sat down at the right hand of God. ²⁰ And they went out and preached everywhere, while the Lord kept working with them and confirming the message by the attesting signs and miracles that closely accompanied [it]. Amen (so be it). (AMP)

 

As I re-read the message of Easter this year, I was struck by how many opportunities there might have been to save Jesus from the cross.  If Pontius Pilate had just listened to and acted on his own internal voice of reason or even his wife's encouragement, He might have been saved from a terrible death.  Yet He came to die.  It was God's plan all along.  Jesus couldn't finish His work on Earth without experiencing a cruel death.  After all, the sins of the entire world were placed upon him, those sins must die or we have no hope of a relationship with God.  Jesus knew this all along and had been dropping hints to His disciples for quite some time.  The good news is that in dying, he crushed sin.  In rising he demonstrated his command over life giving us hope.  I maintain without rising, there is no hope at all in the world.  There is no hope for a good fishing season, no hope for a good hair day, no hope that I have on two matching socks.  There is simply no hope at all without the resurrection. 

Finally, our hope is made complete in the ascension.  Jesus made it plain to the disciples that He had to leave (John 16:7).  Without his departure, they couldn't have someone better: the Holy Spirit.  Why is God's Holy Spirit better than Jesus?  First, recall that God is triune and they are all the same, but the benefits to us are different.  Jesus lived with and ministered to the disciples.  As long as he was around, he could point them in the right direction.  When God sent His spirit, it indwelled the apostles.  They never lived another second of their life apart from God! 

We have an almost morbid fascination with life in this world.  Jesus had the advantage of knowing that life didn't end in physical death, but that in the end, He would be in Heaven seated at the right hand of God.  We have an opportunity to share in His victory.  All we must do is accept his offer of grace.  Our acceptance, however, comes with a price - we must surrender our attachment to everything we know to be true and latch on to the hope of what faith tells us to be true.  Life is not all about living to the fullest we can imagine in this world.  It is about living in His will such that we live life in eternity to the fullest He can imagine.  Given the choice between life as good as I can make it, and eternal life as good as God can make it, I pick God!