The power of the cross – death defeated

Jesus was the only one qualified to change the matrix of a kingdom where the Prince of this World, the enemy of our souls, rules and tries to keep man separated from God. And change the matrix he did. When Jesus died, brutally killed at the hands of those who were offended and angered by the things he said and did, the order of things was shaken to the core. When Jesus didn’t stay dead but came back to life, the matrix was once again irrevocably changed.

In what ways did everything change?

Firstly, because Jesus defeated death, death also has lost its power over us.

Death could not hold Jesus. It had no power over Jesus. Jesus was the only human for whom death was not a natural consequence. The life that was in Jesus, the life that came from living saturated by God’s Love, the lift the came from living in right connection with God, having never turned away from God, overcame death.

But there is more! Because Jesus overcame his own death as a human, he also overcame death for all of mankind! Death has no lasting hold on us either! Yes, of course our bodies die when physical death takes place. The wonderful truth however is that the effect of death has been reversed – Scripture tells us that our bodies will rise again, just as Jesus did!

Paul, writing to the believers in Corinth explains it in this way (1 Corinthians 15 – [my paraphrase]): “(Whether you choose to believe it or not) Jesus really was raised from the dead. And as such he is the first of everyone who has died or will die. Death came into the world through one man (Adam). Now the opposite, the resurrection from death, has also come through one man. Because of Adam we all die. Because of Jesus, we will all, eventually, be made alive again. But all in good time. You see, Jesus was only the first one ... Some people ask ‘How are the dead raised? With what kind of body will we come back to life?’ What a ridiculous question! When you plant a seed in the ground, it dies and what grows from the seed you planted looks nothing like what you put in the ground. In a similar way God will give us a new body according to what he has determined. Like a seed that is sown and dies, so our bodies die. And just like that seed grows into something new, so our bodies will become a kind of spiritual body, one that can’t be destroyed again. And when the time comes for us to receive our new bodies, when the mortal is clothed with immortality to put it another way, then what was written in Scripture will come true: ‘Death, where is your victory? Where, death, is your sting?”

That is good news!