Hello, brother. Hello, sister.
Before we start on this one, I’d like to remember the fundamentals: That Jesus walked among us on a mission to accomplish five main goals:
One, to demonstrate what happens when the kingdom of heaven interacts with the kingdom of the world (meaning, overpowers it);
Two, to teach about the Father and his kingdom, about himself, about heaven and angels, and the roles of every entity on the stage;
Three, to give his life, shedding his innocent blood as an atonement for sins;
Four, to resurrect from the dead so that we would be born again;
and Five, to ascend to the Father so that the Helper could come to help us.
Let’s apply some scripture to statements Three through Five, to strengthen our understanding and continue on to something new from there.
I’m thankful that the Church seems to know goal Three well. (though, often as if it’s the only show in town) Jesus says it, point blank, at the last supper in Mat 26:28, “for this is my blood of the covenant, which is being poured out for many for forgiveness of sins.” Let us take a moment to humbly remember: it is the Father’s generous gift to us that we’re even aware that we need to be forgiven. It is also his gift that we believe him when he says he sent his Son to earth to reconcile us to himself. He loves us first; with a gift of sight we see our condition and with a gift of faith we understand and believe a message that makes no sense to an earthly mind. Apart from him, we’d be as selfish as possible, and we’d be building our own little kingdoms the best we can. Grateful to him not just for the blood that atones, but for our self-centered brains being opened to believe in it. “No one can come to me unless it is granted him by the Father.” (John 6:65)
Revelation 5:9 says of the Lamb who was slaughtered, “and you purchased for God with your blood from every tribe, language, people, and nation.” Do you find it interesting that someone besides God legally owned us, and we were kinda for sale, and Jesus had to make a purchase “for God” through his obedience to the plan? God wouldn’t steal us from our owner; he wouldn’t just wave a magic finger and say, “Look, I’m in charge of everything everywhere so we’ll just make it how I want it; poof, and poof!” That would make him a deceiver. Oh, dang, you mean there’s an economy and buying and selling in heaven – and even the Father uses the store sometimes?? Oh, dang! Heavenly Economics 444 coming soon.
Goal number Four: He resurrected from the dead so that we can be born again. We’ve discussed this before, 1 Peter 1:3, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.”
His death on the cross didn’t give us rebirth as the body of Christ. That bloodshed was all about atonement for sin: the Father giving his Son’s blood to pay what was owed to Satan because we had sold our dominion to him for a meal. (oh dang! i hope you caught that) Goal Three – the payment – cleared the way for Jesus to take dominion back from Death and Satan – and he proves it by resurrecting! By becoming the firstborn from the dead! Goal Four, his resurrection, made possible our second birth as Christ.
Finally there’s goal number Five: Ascension, so that the Holy Spirit, who Jesus names “the Helper”, can be unleashed to help us govern the heavens and the earth. Jesus taught this in John 16:7, saying, “Nevertheless, I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you.” Straightforward as it gets. And he’s saying it to a bunch of sad dudes, because he’s also telling them that nobody will see him again. Kinda like when dad is dying and you’re supposed to take over the family business that you’ve been groomed to take, but he’s always been there doing the CEO stuff and you’re terrified that you can’t do it like he did. But he knows that not only will you be able to do it, but eventually do it better. Obi-Wan stole all his moves from Jesus and the Helper.
(i’m sure the many thousands of you who inherited companies from their father can completely relate to my analogy smh)
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Now let’s talk about upgrades. This article is about something new for us, to empower us with even more confidence and new tools for our job as ambassadors. And for that, we focus on Number Four of our Big Five: what The Resurrection accomplished.
Look at Matthew 27 starting at 50, documenting the crucifixion. This happens at the ninth hour of the day, “And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice and yielded up his spirit.” We’ve talked about the audience of principalities that were desperate to kill him but didn’t see the resurrection coming when they influenced men to put Jesus to death. The perishable body of the man Jesus being planted, and the massive, inexplicable power of Christ’s life within that seed being released to all men. I’ve said before: Jesus didn’t stop at the cross. He was far more interested in what came after atonement.
It’s pretty cool to see precisely when the resurrection happened, and to understand it.
Matthew 27:51 describes what happened at that moment when Jesus yielded up his spirit:
And behold, the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. And the earth shook, and the rocks were split. The tombs also were opened. And many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised, and coming out of the tombs after his resurrection they went into the holy city and appeared to many.
Colossians 1:18 and Revelation 1:5 both call Jesus “the firstborn from the dead,” and the moment Jesus died, tombs were opened and the bodies were raised, right? The Holy Spirit is saying it point blank through Matthew: The Christ was released from the dominion of Death and the Grave immediately upon Jesus’ death. He was the firstborn from the dead, and then other “saints who had fallen asleep” were raised from the dead, so if that second part happened at the ninth hour, it all happened at the ninth hour. It just takes until the morning of the third day for people to find the stone rolled away and the body gone and the angel explaining that his body had already been raised.
Since we’re always so focused on things we can see with our natural eyes – like the physical body, just like the disciples were from Friday to Sunday – we don’t often think about what the risen spirit of Jesus was doing over that weekend. This is something Peter explicitly addresses in 1 Peter 3:18 (which we’re about to get to). Before he would raise someone from the dead, Jesus would call them “sleeping” right? And people would laugh. He tried to teach us that a person’s spirit is still very much at hand, and able to listen to spoken words when their earthly body has died. The spirit of Lazarus heard Jesus say, “Lazarus, come out!” right?
So when Jesus’ body died, wasn’t his spirit certainly at work? Therefore we can believe that he was firstborn from the dead, followed by a whole bunch of other people whose tombs opened at that ninth hour, even though his physical body hadn’t yet reflected this.
So what was he doing in the spirit during that time?
There’s this odd little part of the Roman Catholic Nicene Creed, which is a recitation of the early Church’s beliefs about Jesus. Right after saying, “He suffered, died, and was buried,” it says, “He descended into hell.” 1 Peter 3:18-19 insinuates this to be true by saying, “having been put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit, in which he went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison.” If you know me a little, you know how I love things the original twelve apostles wrote because Jesus taught them all kinds of crazy stuff in person that we don’t get to hear in the gospels. The kind of stuff that made them mumble to each other to see if anyone understood it because they were afraid to ask him what he meant. Then later on they would remember things he taught and it would make sense. Recall, as an example, John 2:22, “When therefore he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this, and they believed the Scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.”
Jesus tells us in Rev 1:18, “I died, and behold I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of Death and Hades.” It seems that the very moment his body “yielded up his spirit” (as Mat 27:50 says), that spirit descended to hell to complete the purchase. The token that was given to seal this transaction were keys that Death and Hades had received from Adam – and had held (and used!) to that point.
You don’t buy anything without obtaining some form of physical token, so you have proof that a transaction has occurred. The seller may be giving you a piece of paper or a pair of car keys or a bagel sandwich. In Jesus’ case, the token is a set of keys. Then you find Peter explaining that Jesus went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison… What do you suppose he proclaimed to them?
Maybe let’s remember the first thing he said in the Nazareth synagogue after he returned from being tempted in the wilderness. In Luke 4:18, the prophetic gift in some guy hands Jesus the scroll of Isaiah and he finds these words: “He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives.” Then he prophecies, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”
So if you can believe that Jesus is a prophet and that all these things he taught are literal and purposeful, then you know that he didn’t simply speak to earth and men when he spoke, but spoke to angels and demons simultaneously. He prophesied of his own purpose in Nazareth, and at the moment of his body’s death it seems his risen spirit was in hell proclaiming, “Hey! Little lambs! Come with me, I’ve got the keys to your prison doors and now you are liberated! Death had these keys, and you’ve been locked up asleep in here, but now you can come out – follow me!” And the tombs also were opened. And many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised.
This is what Jesus taught in the synagogue, and then what he did, and then Peter explains years afterward.
So, then. We covered all of this to set the backdrop for the point of it all.
Reminding us that Jesus knew his purpose, and that he didn’t stop at the cross but was more concerned with what was to happen after the cross, let’s look at the first thing he says after the resurrection.
John 20 recounts what happened on the Sunday that Mary Squared, John, and Peter found the stone rolled away and no body to be found. When we get to verse 17, Jesus is almost done doing the Five Things he came to do – he has demonstrated, taught, atoned, and resurrected. And the very first thing resurrected Jesus has on his mind, he says to Mary:
“Do not cling to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father; but go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’”
This is the resurrected Jesus, now calling us brothers. Massive upgrade. Matthew’s gospel confirms that in 28:10, where Jesus meets the two Marys as they ran to tell the disciples of the angel’s message, and he tells them, “Do not be afraid; go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee, and there they will see me.”
The resurrection, which again, 1 Peter explains caused us to be born again, caused us to become equally the Son of God with our brother Jesus. Born again. You get a new father and mother. Born into a heavenly family – and not a metaphor.
Gal 3:26; for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith.
Rom 8:15-16; but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!” The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God…
…and on and on like that.
It’s so important that we really start to think of ourselves as Jesus’ brothers. That we go beyond putting him on some pedestal and being stuck there clinging to his feet and feeling unworthy to untie his sandals. Literally the first words out of his mouth were, “Do not cling to me…” Then he reveals the upgrade to brotherhood.
I really think we have accidentally watered his words down through our culture: since we call each other “brother” and “bro” incessantly; all the while the inner dialogue being, “Beneath it all we are all of the same human race, a brotherhood of man. It’s an affectionate analogy.”
Jesus was not making an analogy or being poetic, he was being literal and I can prove it:
I hear many Christians excited and thankful that Jesus called us “friends”. And that’s wonderful, for sure, and true. We should be excited and thankful for that, and not diminish it. But the circumstance of that friendship isn’t ever discussed, and I wanna make it clear.
In John 15:14 “You are my friends if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you.”
This is happening at the last supper. They’ve got like, what? An hour or two left with him? They’ve been following Jesus for three years – and what has he been calling them up until that last hour? “Servants.”
And they call him “Teacher” and “Lord” all the time. Rabbi. And he calls himself that, even up through that evening. In Mat 26:17, the disciples are asking where he wants them to prepare for him to eat the Passover, and he tells them, “Go into the city to a certain man and say to him, ‘The Teacher says, My time is at hand. I will keep the Passover at your house with my disciples.’”
Then in conversation during the supper, in John 13:13 he says, “You call me Teacher and Lord, and you are right, for so I am.” He has clearly defined the relationship for years. Imagine yourself hanging out with someone who calls you their servant and nothing beyond that – for even like a month. Bet you wouldn’t be coming back for season 2. Unless you’re a paralegal lol.
Taking a step beyond that, do you notice why he’s calling them “friends” in that last hour? It’s not because they did something epic together, or they had this rapport from three years of swimming and chumming around, or they had gotten each other out of tight spots together. It’s because he had taught them everything that the Father had told him to teach them. That’s kind of a weird reason. “You’ve been my servants all these years, and you’re right to think that, but now that I’ve taught you everything you were supposed to hear, you’re my friends. Friends are the ones that got all the lesson plans. Okay we’ve got like an hour and then we’ll be split up and then you won’t see me anymore.”
We’d hear that and be like, “Hello, weird.”
But goal number Two, to teach, upgraded us from servants to friends.
So three years of “Servants”; let’s say three hours of “Friends”; thirty-eight hours thinking he’s dead just when they finally got to be friends; and then suddenly it’s “Brothers”. That’s why I know Jesus was using the word “brothers” literally, with great intent, after his resurrection. He had been clearly defining boundaries and roles the entire time.
Tell me, do you have trouble visualizing yourself on that equal level with Jesus? I do. Does it break your brain hearing Jesus say to you, “I’m going to my God and your God”? Mine does. But that’s what he said. Together we’re trying to grow into something far more potent, driven by an identity we don’t currently have, but that he wanted us to have. The identity that propels us to John 14:12, “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I am going to the Father.”
And now for the best part: an extremely practical outcome of this situation. We have an additional job that only became available to us after the resurrection and our rebirth into brotherhood. Let’s look at the next thing that was on Jesus’ mind immediately after the resurrection.
He appears to his brothers as promised on Sunday evening, and adds to the list of jobs that an ambassador of the kingdom of heaven does. Until now, it was “Heal the sick, raise the dead, cast out demons, and when they ask what on earth is happening, teach them that the kingdom of heaven has come near.” There were four instructions to running the family business until he added something that only the resurrection accomplished: “As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you… If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld.”
Listen, I really do love us. I hate to keep calling us self-centered, but I’m self-centered, and you are, and literally everyone tends to be. When we read this, we seem to jump to the thought, “We should forgive people who have wronged us.” Like when Peter is asking, “Lord, how often will my brother sin against me, and I forgive him?” But I propose to you that this new instruction is about the form of forgiveness that Jesus demonstrated in Matthew 9:2. Meaning, it has nothing to do with you or what’s happened to you, or who did something against you. It’s forgiving the sins of “any”.
And when Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, “Take heart, my son; your sins are forgiven.” And behold, some of the scribes said to themselves, “This man is blaspheming.” But Jesus, knowing their thoughts, said, “Why do you think evil in your hearts? For which is easier, to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Rise and walk’? But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins” – he then said to the paralytic – “Rise, pick up your bed and go home.”
Put that in our job description. “As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.” We’ve been given authority – through the resurrection – to forgive sins in the first person.
And if we think to ourselves, “Dude, that’s for Jesus, not for me and you – he’s the Son of God,” that’s exactly why I’m saying to you, if you’re a brother to the Son of God, you’re also the Son of God.
Additionally, if we can’t accept this, unfortunately Jesus says that we think evil in our hearts because we cannot believe that we have the authority on earth to forgive sins. Unbelief is the only sin, right? He taught us in John 16:9 that the Helper “convicts the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment: concerning sin, because they do not believe in me;” Let’s continually pray to our Father to cleanse us of unbelief!
There’s very good reason for our enemy to want us to think, “That was only for Jesus.” Note that in the paralytic story, Jesus directly forgives the man’s sins and that is the golden event of the story. The physical healing is like tossing them all a peanut. It’s subordinate to the forgiveness. Understand: He validates the greater thing by offering the lesser.
Like, imagine you have a billion dollars and you tell someone “Look, if you don’t believe me, here’s a thousand I have in my pocket right now that you can just have.” That’s what he’s saying about his authority on earth to forgive sins. But in the room, everyone got impressed with the thousand dollars and missed the point – the greater part that happened in the spirit. Are we catching the theme? People latch onto the things they can see and touch. Let’s pray to not be like that.
If forgiving “the sins of any” is the more powerful part, how the demons cower at the thought of us all being set loose with faith to do this!
To encourage you, I can tell you that I’ve tried this out and it works. I’ve been in two situations where someone asked for healing prayer that a series of other prayer attempts hadn’t healed. This part of the job description came to my mind, so I went with it. I told them, “Your sins are forgiven,” more than once before moving on to saying anything else. I even said to one woman’s back, “Your sins are forgiven, back muscles. Your sins are forgiven, spine.”
They were both healed and grateful but sorta confused, and wanted me to explain why I had said that. The conversations went something like,
“I try to make sure I stay right with the Lord as much as I can. Why were you saying I needed to be forgiven?”
I answered, “When we call for healing, we’re talking to the angels and demons as much as we’re talking to the body. I felt the Spirit remind me of this, so I was speaking to spirits around you, not to your brain.” Then I taught this principle from John 20 that I’m writing about now. They’d be like, “Oh. Okay, well, it worked when nothing else had! Praise God!”
Now, I’ve taken some time to ponder the mechanics of this and I’ve got my theories. Imagine someone sick who doesn’t consider themselves religious, has no idea about church, and doesn’t really know if they believe prayer will heal them. Hearing something third-person, this other guy who forgives their sins, who they can’t see and don’t know and don’t really care about, isn’t really that potent.
“Jesus forgives you, even if you feel like you’re a good person and you’re doing pretty good.”
“Sure, thanks I guess…”
Hearing directly from someone who speaks as if they have authority is shocking. I think the paralyzed guy on the mat was shocked. By Jesus’ definition, he probably thought evil in his heart, too! It’s waaaay different when someone looks you dead in the eyes and says, “Your sins are forgiven.” Meaning, “by me.” First-person power. But that’s the kind of first-person power that heals the sick and casts demons out of people, right? The instruction was never, “I give you authority to tell demons that I cast them out.” Therefore… You get it.
So that’s our next thing! The resurrection unleashed the ability to be born again through faith. You are a literal, not figurative, brother or sister of Jesus. With that comes the authority to forgive any sins; All The Sins. The ones that have nothing to do with us. Shock the demons to clear the atmosphere for the kingdom of heaven to become the new reality. They’re really not expecting this – for real. When the Helper reminds you of this, try it out; then come back here and tell us about what happened!
You have my deep gratitude for spending so much time here with me. I know these articles go all over the place. You’re very kind to me. Thank you.
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