The Best is Yet to Come

"If you only look at us, you might well miss the brightness. We carry this precious Message around in the unadorned clay pots of our ordinary lives. That’s to prevent anyone from confusing God’s incomparable power with us. As it is, there’s not much chance of that. You know for yourselves that we’re not much to look at. We’ve been surrounded and battered by troubles, but we’re not demoralized; we’re not sure what to do, but we know that God knows what to do; we’ve been spiritually terrorized, but God hasn’t left our side; we’ve been thrown down, but we haven’t broken. What they did to Jesus, they do to us—trial and torture, mockery and murder; what Jesus did among them, he does in us—he lives! Our lives are at constant risk for Jesus’ sake, which makes Jesus’ life all the more evident in us. While we’re going through the worst, you’re getting in on the best!"

― 2 Corinthians 4:7-12

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Dear Kate,

What do you expect from a dead body coming to life again?

The closest we could get, even by using the best of our imagination, is us having a near-death experience.  And we would ask questions: How did it happen?  Why not over and done with already, why a "second chance"?  For what purpose?  And who purposed it?  I certainly didn't (and couldn't) do anything to take that back step.

Yet that's the outer limit of our imagining, at the threshold between life and death: If it was a real death, not us playing dead, toying with some what-ifs, then coming to life again would not be taking a step back to continue where we left off.  Why are we to come back to a world that is seemingly the same as it has always been, instead of us going forward, flipping over to somewhere different, "better," "heavenly"?  Dying once is hard enough; why this sick joke to die again?

"We’ve been thrown down, but we haven’t broken," Paul answered our first question.  If people are to look at our resurrected bodies, they "might well miss the brightness," because they are "not much to look at."  And that appearance of ours has everything to do with the Why of our resurrecting: to "carry the precious Message around in the unadorned clay pots of our ordinary lives."

The One True King was inaugurated overnight with a crown of thorns, and now beckoning us to die and live again.  Our best is yet to come.

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"If we’ve left the country where sin is sovereign, how can we still live in our old house there? Or didn’t you realize we packed up and left there for good? That is what happened in baptism. When we went under the water, we left the old country of sin behind; when we came up out of the water, we entered into the new country of grace—a new life in a new land!

That’s what baptism into the life of Jesus means. When we are lowered into the water, it is like the burial of Jesus; when we are raised up out of the water, it is like the resurrection of Jesus. Each of us is raised into a light-filled world by our Father so that we can see where we’re going in our new grace-sovereign country. 

Could it be any clearer? Our old way of life was nailed to the cross with Christ, a decisive end to that sin-miserable life—no longer captive to sin’s demands! What we believe is this: If we get included in Christ’s sin-conquering death, we also get included in his life-saving resurrection. We know that when Jesus was raised from the dead it was a signal of the end of death-as-the-end. Never again will death have the last word. When Jesus died, he took sin down with him, but alive he brings God down to us. From now on, think of it this way: Sin speaks a dead language that means nothing to you; God speaks your mother tongue, and you hang on every word. You are dead to sin and alive to God. That’s what Jesus did."

Yours, Alex