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Lives of Faith and Grace Series
6 Ways to Live Out the Resurrection in Your Everyday Life
The Resurrection Is Happening
We often think of the resurrection as either a past event or a future hope, something that happened to Jesus long ago or an event that will occur at the last trumpet sound. However, the Scriptures tell us that the resurrection has not only happened and will happen; it is happening.
Jesus says that the one who hears his words and believes has already passed from death to life (John 5:24). Paul asserts that God has already made us alive together with Christ (Eph. 2:4–6) and we have been buried with him in baptism and raised with him through faith (Col. 2:12–13; Col. 3:1).
To put this another way, our bodily resurrection is still in the future, but our spiritual resurrection is already present. So how do we live out our resurrection in our everyday lives? Here are six ways.
The Hope of the Resurrection
Patrick Schreiner
In this accessible study, Patrick Schreiner explores the history, theology, and ethics of the resurrection, helping both Christians and seekers understand what is true, good, and beautiful about Jesus’s victory over death.
1. Believe Jesus’s Words
Jesus says that there is a way to pass from death to life. The only pathway to life is through believing in his words (John 5:24). Believing his words is not only the entry point to resurrection life but the continual act of the raised. Jesus’s words to us are found in the Scriptures. Therefore, as we read the Scriptures and believe, we receive life from the one who has life in himself (John 5:26). They are living and active because they come from the one who is eternal life (Heb. 4:12; 1 Pet. 1:23). We thus live on every word that comes from his mouth (Deut. 8:3). His words are life to us, even in the present.
2. Get Baptized
In baptism, Christians are inducted into resurrection life. Paul reflects on this reality, affirming that when Christians were baptized, they were baptized into Jesus’s death. In the same way, as Christ was raised from the dead, so also Christians are raised to walk in newness of life (Rom. 6:3–4). Baptism involves being submerged under the water. It is a type of death, a drowning. Yet it is also a sign of the resurrection, for as we die, someone raises us up out of the water. Our old self is crucified in baptism so that it might no longer be enslaved to sin (Rom. 6:6). Baptism is a sign and a means of grace as Christians begin being alive to God. Through this ordinance, Christians declare their new life in Christ and thus begin living a resurrection life.
3. Practice Life
Christians practice resurrection by practicing life. We “seek the things that are above” and despise death everywhere we see it (Col. 3:1). Therefore, we go on the offensive against death. Part of how we practice life is through our virtuous public deeds. Historically, Christians were instrumental in the growth of adoption and foster care. In the ancient world, it was common for unwanted children to be discarded or drowned. Children were viewed as property; therefore, parents could do what they wanted with them. Early Christians, however, advocated for rescuing these babies and often adopting them. For example, in the second century, there was a letter from an unknown Christian to a figure called Diognetus. In this letter, he defends Christians, saying, “They marry and have children, but they do not expose them.”1 To expose a child was to leave them outside to die. Early Christians would rescue these exposed children and thus spread life throughout society.
Jesus says that the one who hears his words and believes has already passed from death to life.
4. Practice Death
Christians not only spread resurrection life by virtuous deeds but also by practicing death. Jesus said that Christians give up their lives in order to save them (Matt. 16:25). The best way to practice resurrection in the present is to kill the sin within. The apostle Paul rightly says, “For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live” (Rom. 8:13). He correlates putting sin to death with living. In another letter, he states, “Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry” (Col. 3:5). Paradoxically, the way to live is to die. As Karl Barth, quoting Nietzsche, pithily reminds us: “Only where graves are is there resurrection.”2
5. Commune with the Raised
Even though we might think that practicing the resurrection is mainly something we do on our own, the Scriptures show that we must do this in community. The church is the garden where resurrection life grows. This is why the earliest Christians didn’t meet in the synagogues on the Sabbath like the Jews. Instead, they began meeting on Sunday because that was the day Jesus had risen from the dead. The context for resurrection life is the church. Christians are called to practice resurrection in preparation for eternity. This preparation takes place in the local church. Despite its faults and flaws, the church is our spring training for the eternal season ahead. If we don’t practice before the season, we won’t be prepared for what lies ahead.
6. Love Other Christians
The main way Christians can practice resurrection in the church is by loving one another. In 1 John 3:14, it says, “we know that we have passed from death to life, because we love one another.” Upon the imminent arrival of Jesus’s cross and resurrection, he calls his disciples to love one another in a sacrificial way (John 13:34; John 15:12). “If we love one another, God abides in us” (1 John 4:12). This means that his life indwells our life, thus giving us life. Love for other Christians is the great resurrection sign. If we do not love, we know that the life of God is not in us.
Notes:
- Diognetus 5.6. The Epistle to Diognetus (with the Fragment of Quadratus): Introduction, Text, and Commentary, ed. Clayton N. Jefford (Oxford University Press, 2013), 145.
- Karl Barth, The Epistle to the Romans, trans. Edwyn Hoskyns (Oxford University Press, 1957), 416.
Patrick Schreiner is the author of The Hope of the Resurrection: How Jesus’s Defeat of Death Changes Everything.
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