Reflections
How are the dead raised up? and with what body do they come? Thou fool, that which you sow is not quickened, except it die. (I Cor. 15:35-36)
This verse contains a principle about resurrection that is applicable to our Christian walk: Abandonment to God includes a relinquishment of knowing the specific outcome of our abandonment. We are merely to sow — we are to lose ourselves by faith into a death into the hands of Christ — but we don’t determine what is raised. We cannot know in what, “body,” that which dies is raised. In other words, we cannot know specifically what is on the other side of death and resurrection — at least not until we actually experience it.
Abandonment to God is FIRST an abandonment into a death of MYSELF to God. Situations are secondary. We tend to focus on our circumstances and want God to change them. But God wants to change us. Indeed, God wants us to live free of being controlled by circumstances — He wants us free to walk in Christ regardless of circumstances — and losing ourselves to God in our circumstances is a step in that direction.
We know generally that if we lose our lives that we will find true life in Him – but until this actually happens, it is all expectation and not yet realization or actual experience. It is foolish to think we could fully grasp what is not yet raised; what we have yet to experience. The birth has not yet happened. We cannot know the child.
Abandonment to God in faith is like that. Resurrection life in Jesus Christ will be only a doctrine or theory to us unless we lose our lives into His hands. But if we do that — we will experience Him. Then we will say, “I heard about You. I read about You. It was all good. But now I SEE YOU. Now I realize You.”
Abandonment to God is the outcome of faith — really the only outcome. But the full outcome of abandonment is never realized HERE in this age. That is because the full outcome is full glorification in Christ. Thus, what seems like a little faith HERE may carry great life within that is only released THERE — in the next age. God may be forming Christ in us NOW, but the fullness of what He has formed will be released in the resurrection THEN.
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