Our daily life must reflect Jesus’ resurrection

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Even long after feast of Easter is over, Christians are called to keep it alive in their lives, throughout the year. It like living marriage after the wedding. Jesus did not just come to earth only to die and rise again. He came so that we could live our lives fully with Him each day (John 10:10). . That is the significance of His name “Emmanuel” (God-with-us). Each Christian should be able to say: Christ died for me.

 Now, how will I live for him today?

This reflection inculcates Paul’s faith and spirituality in us. Paul wants to know Christ. He wants to know the power of His resurrection. He wants to be a partaker in His sufferings. And he wants to be conformed into the image and likeness of Jesus Christ (Romans 8:29).

Power over physical world

Following his conversion to Christ, while on his way to Damascus to persecute Christians, Paul became fascinated by the kind of power, which has the ability to overcome sin and make one righteous or right with God. For him, it was the act of the resurrection that became the indisputable evidence that identified Christ as the Son of God with power. He ended up longing for a vital and vibrant relationship with Jesus, which meant that he conforms his life to Jesus.

Jesus’ capacity to raise Himself out of the dead showed that He  had power over the physical world and also over the spiritual world. He had power over the human realm and death, and He had power over the demonic realm and all the demons who wanted to hold Him captive. Paul wants to know Christ and follow Him so closely that when death does come to, he also wants to die like Jesus. The accomplishment of His resurrection raises all believers in Him from spiritual death to a new life in Christ.

Suffer for Christ

But Christ was perfected through suffering. We too are to walk the same path of suffering; the way of the cross (Matthew 16:24). We must keep our eyes fixed firmly on Christ our perfect example and learn obedience through all that we are called on to suffer, for His sake. We are to trust Him to take us through to the end, so that we are perfected as He was, without spot and blemish.

Paul saw in Jesus the righteousness that he had been trying to achieve on his own, but in vain. It was the kind of righteousness not gained by hard work and keeping the Law of God but was gained by faith in Jesus Christ. Compared to his new life, Paul considered all his past achievements as rubbish.

Paul says he is ready to give up anything to gain Christ in a more intimate way even his own life. We too must begin to let go of the things in this world that promise us security, significance and safety, etc. As we do that, Jesus will become more and more clear. The better we see Him the more of Him we will want. The things of this world will automatically begin to lose their brilliancy and Christ will shine all the brighter.

Prefer Jesus

Paul’s spirituality reminds us that we were created for God’s glory; by treasuring Jesus above all things.

Yet, as sinners we tend to prefer to treasure lesser things more than Jesus. Whatever sin we struggle with, at the moment of committing it, we have loved the sin more than we love Jesus. Let us pray for the grace to be able to profess with Paul: “It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. So I live in this earthly body by trusting in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” (Galatians 2:20).