“He knows not how.” I agree. I don’t know how it actually works, all I know is that somehow seed has within itself the power to bring itself to pass again. Only it comes back much more plentiful than it began. I’ve watched it happen all my life with natural seed, just like you have. I’ve also watched it happen all my Christian life with spiritual seed as well. You’d think we’d understand by now.
Jesus planted the ultimate seed into this earth when He allowed Himself to be our Passover Lamb, and be sacrificed for us. This has come graphically home to all of us who have in recent times seen “The Passion of Christ.” I for one believe as many others do, that even this film, and it’s timing, was ordained of heaven. Somehow, someway, God is going to get us back to the cross, and to the revelation it cries out with. Jesus didn’t stay on the cross however, nor in the earth they put Him in. Hell couldn’t hold him or hold back the power of that sacrifice. Jesus is spoken of as the firstborn from among the dead (Colossians 1:18), and we are some of the bloom, the harvest, of His initial planting. Thank God for it!
Sacrifice, sometimes horrific as it is, and the death that follows it, is the only way to life. Life is what God intended us to experience; abundant, overwhelming, incredible life. Jesus said He came for this reason, that we might have abundant life. Yet the way to life was always through death. I’ve often asked students and congregations what their first word association was when I mention the word sacrifice, and to a one they all declare, “death!” Yet again, nowhere in scripture, was the intended understanding of sacrifice ever to end in death, but in the portrait that the only way you can get to life is through a death. Real life that is.
God is asking us all to die to something. We must have it settled however that it’s not that He wants us to forever abide in the experience of the pain of sacrifice, but rather the release of life that is to follow. Whether it is the sacrifice of praise, of prayer, of fasting, or laying something down in obedience to His prompting, His desire is to get us to life, not just existence! Therefore we must have faith in His power of resurrection towards us.
At Easter we celebrate His death and resurrection. In the Kingdom of God we celebrate His death and resurrection every day. This resurrection power actually abides in each of us as Christians right now. Paul did his best to communicate this in his Ephesians 1 prayer (Ephesians 1:16-23 Amplified Bible):
15 For this reason, because I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints (the people of God),
16 I do not cease to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers.
17[For I always pray to] the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, that He may grant you a spirit of wisdom and revelation [of insight into mysteries and secrets] in the [deep and intimate] knowledge of Him,
18 By having the eyes of your heart flooded with light, so that you can know and understand the hope to which He has called you, and how rich is His glorious inheritance in the saints (His set-apart ones),
19 And [so that you can know and understand] what is the immeasurable and unlimited and surpassing greatness of His power in and for us who believe, as demonstrated in the working of His mighty strength,
20 Which He exerted in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His [own] right hand in the heavenly [places],
21 Far above all rule and authority and power and dominion and every name that is named [above every title that can be conferred], not only in this age and in this world, but also in the age and the world which are to come.
22 And He has put all things under His feet and has appointed Him the universal and supreme Head of the church [a headship exercised throughout the church], [Ps 8:6.]
23 Which is His body, the fullness of Him Who fills all in all [for in that body lives the full measure of Him Who makes everything complete, and Who fills everything everywhere with Himself] (Emphasis mine)
Paul declared his hope that through the power of God’s Spirit we might actually come to know and understand for ourselves that the very same power that God released to raise Jesus from the dead, dwells in us! God the Father demonstrated His power to resurrect life out of death in the raising up from the dead His own Son.
It may be difficult for some to comprehend, but this is the reason that we’re called to embrace “death” whether it is to self, which is commanded of us, or any other area we’re spoken to about. It is not that God enjoys the thought of our personal pain or torment as we enter the discipline of obedience, it is rather His knowing that the end result of our labour of love towards Him is going to bring forth much fruit! Remember that Jesus, “for the joy that was set before Him,” endured the cross, despised the shame, and is now sat down at the right hand of God in a place of rest.
Jesus had His focus, on the end result of what His obedience was going to produce, and that brought Him the joy that strengthened Him to fulfil His call.
We’re called to do the same. Let us at this Easter season see ourselves as seed as well. Let us not be afraid of going “under the earth” for a season in “death.” Let’s plant our lives into the Kingdom and see what sprouts up. |
