To His Glory Music

Lord, You have called me to live in grace. But I in my sinful flesh want to live according to the law, because I can control that and because I can make my own law. I am uncomfortable with grace because I cannot understand it, I cannot fathom it. I want to live in a commodity and service economy. I serve You so You provide the commodity of salvation and relationship. This is NOT living “in the grace of Christ.”
Forgive me for this. Help me, by Your Spirit, to live in the grace of Christ today and to love others by the grace of Christ.

Imagine how different your day will be today if you focus on thankfulness instead of your troubles? To be sure, God cares about your troubles. But this is about your attitude and concern. Imagine it...

Life on the new earth in the new Jerusalem is the life you have always wanted—without the tears, death, mourning, crying, and pain that make life miserable (Rev. 21:4). This is possible because it is life in “the unfiltered presence of God.” At last, “God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God” (v. 3).
From
“Risen” by
Steven D. Mathewson

We do not serve the third or fifth greatest being in the universe. We do not serve one whose supremacy will end when he retires or when a greater being appears on the scene. Thanks to the resurrection, the Lord we serve is supreme over all. In him, all things hold together (Col. 1:17)—your cardiovascular system, the water cycle, the institution of marriage, and everything else we depend on for life. Like the sun at the center of the solar system, the glory of the risen Lord holds together all the aspects of our life, which revolve around it!
From
“Risen” by
Steven D. Mathewson

You and I will be raised one day. That is for sure. Whether we are raised to life in God’s presence or raised to face God’s judgment depends on our response to God’s Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, in this life. No wonder we stand fast in the gospel. No wonder we approach the task of proclaiming the gospel with a sense of urgency. People’s eternal destinies are at stake.
From
“Risen” by
Steven D. Mathewson

The resurrected Christ is the one who will bring this justice. We long for his judgment because it will bring peace and restore our relationships to what God designed them to be. The peace justice brings is more than the absence of war. “It means complete reconciliation, a state of the fullest flourishing in every dimension—physical, emotional, social, and spiritual—because all relationships are right, perfect, and filled with joy.”
From
“Risen” by
Steven D. Mathewson

We can assume that what Jesus taught about the kingdom of God between his resurrection and ascension shows up in the teaching of the apostles in the New Testament. We learn much about the kingdom of God in the New Testament letters. We learn that the kingdom is a matter of “righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit” (Rom. 14:17). We also learn that even though the kingdom of God involves suffering (2 Thess. 1:5; Rev. 1:9), it is a matter of power (1 Cor. 4:20), it cannot be shaken (Heb. 12:28), and it is eternal (2 Pet. 1:11; Rev. 11:15).
From
“Risen” by
Steven D. Mathewson

This promise is especially significant for two reasons. First, it provides encouragement for carrying out Jesus’s mission. No matter how difficult their task, Jesus’s followers can count on the presence of their crucified and risen Lord. Second, the promise of Jesus’s presence advances a key theme in the developing story of the Bible: the presence of God.
From
“Risen” by
Steven D. Mathewson

When we, as Jesus’s followers, go to “make disciples of all nations”—the main command in Jesus’s commission—by leading them to Christ (signified by “baptizing”) and building them up in Christ (signified by “teaching them to observe” what Jesus taught), we do so with the full authority of Christ behind us!
From
“Risen” by
Steven D. Mathewson

The angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. He is not here; he has risen, just as he said.”
Matthew 28:5-6
Remember that Jesus “has risen, just as he said” when you wonder if he is really with you as he promised (Matt. 28:6). Remember that Jesus “has risen just as he said” when you doubt his promise that God will take care of your needs for food and clothing if you seek first his kingdom (Matt. 6:31–33). Remember that Jesus “has risen, just as he said” when you question the reality of his coming “with power and great glory” (Matt. 24:29–31). Because Jesus rose from death just as he said, we can trust all of his words and his promises.
From
“Risen” by
Steven D. Mathewson

“For this very reason, Christ died and returned to life so that he might be the Lord of both the dead and the living.” (Romans 14:9)
Because of Jesus’s resurrection, I can rejoice and have confidence about my future life after I die. I take to heart what the apostle Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 13:12: “For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.”
From
“Risen” by
Steven D. Mathewson

Whenever I am tempted to wonder if I have given my life to a lost cause, I remember how the resurrection of Jesus Christ put his glory and honor on display. That is why my faith and my hope are in God!
From
“Risen” by
Steven D. Mathewson

The need for new birth is so desperate that it can only happen through the work of the Holy Spirit (Ezek. 36:27; John 3:5–8) and through the word of truth—the gospel of Jesus Christ (James 1:18; 1 Pet. 1:18–23). The need for new birth is so desperate that it took the resurrection of Jesus Christ to make it possible.
From
“Risen” by
Steven D. Mathewson

Hebrews 13:20 makes it clear that “The God of peace . . . through the blood of the eternal covenant brought back from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great Shepherd of the sheep.” Jesus lives, then, to serve as “the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls” (1 Pet. 2:25). Even more, Jesus, the Lamb, will serve as our shepherd in our eternal home (Rev. 7:17). As our shepherd, he will remove sorrow and will lead us to springs of living water.
From
“Risen” by
Steven D. Mathewson

If you are a believer in Jesus Christ, be encouraged that Jesus, for whose return you wait, is not coming to pour out wrath upon you. Rather, because he “has already suffered the end-time wrath for his people at the cross,”the risen Christ will return to rescue us from that wrath and to enjoy the Lord’s presence forever (1 Thess. 4:17).
From
“Risen” by
Steven D. Mathewson

We are not to live like we used to live, because we are no longer the earthly people we used to be. We are to kill the old ways of life, which spring up like weeds. We can and must do this because we have been raised with Christ—the one who was raised through the power of God from death.
From
“Risen” by
Steven D. Mathewson

The fact that the resurrected Christ will one day be fully revealed is our cause for encouragement when we face discouraging, hopeless patches of life. To use a line from Tolkien’s The Return of the King, “everything sad is going to come untrue.” Think about that. Anxiety, depression, fear, persecution, suffering, and decay will all come untrue when Christ returns. The apostle John says as much when he writes: “Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2).
From
“Risen” by
Steven D. Mathewson

The resurrection of Jesus Christ changes everything! The reality of our future resurrection as followers of Christ has been pulled back into the present and has reoriented our desires. Gerry Breshears says, “As a regenerate person, what I deeply want to do is godly. While doing what is godly may not always be my strongest desire, it is my deepest one (Gal. 5:16–17).”
From
“Risen” by
Steven D. Mathewson

We crave experiences and knowledge. We want our lives to make a difference. We want to live life to its fullest. Unfortunately, we sometimes look for fullness in all the wrong places. True fullness is tied to the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
In Colossians 2, the apostle Paul calls on Christians to be faithful to Christ Jesus as Lord (vv. 6–7) and not let anyone take them “captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the elementary spiritual forces of this world rather than on Christ” (v. 8). The reason, according to verses 9–12, is that true “fullness” is available only through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
From
“Risen” by
Steven D. Mathewson

Paul’s longing is to know Christ, experiencing the power of Christ’s resurrection even as he shares in Christ’s suffering in the daily events of life. Paul is not some kind of ma*****st, one who derives pleasure from pain or mistreatment. But he understands that both the suffering and the resurrection of Jesus give shape to the way we experience the Christian life. Above all, Paul wants to face his present sufferings with resurrection power.
From
“Risen” by
Steven D. Mathewson

Grace and mercy are two sides of the same coin. Grace is God giving me what I don’t deserve. Mercy is God not giving me what I do deserve.
Now God’s mercy and grace do not stop with the cross of Christ. They are also expressed through Christ’s resurrection. Ephesians 2:6–7 makes it clear God has raised us with Christ and has seated us in the heavenly realms so that we can experience future grace.
From
“Risen” by
Steven D. Mathewson

This is simply remarkable! The power of God we experience in our lives is the same power by which God raised Jesus Christ from death. Paul piles on words for power to make his point. The power he prays we will know is literally “according to the power of the strength of his might which he worked in Christ, raising him from the dead” (vv. 19–20).
As believers in Jesus Christ, we have resurrection power! Oh, how we need to grow in our experience of it, because the struggles we face in life are not merely human conflicts.
From
“Risen” by
Steven D. Mathewson

Instead of wondering if God is present and powerful enough to help us, we can remember that he is the God who raises the dead—giving us confidence and courage to press on. Knowing that the God who raised Jesus from death will one day raise us to new bodily life gives us “strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow” even when our present circumstances seem overwhelming.
From
"Risen" by
Steven D. Mathewson

The term therefore in 1 Corinthians 15:58 signals that Paul is drawing an implication from everything he has said about Christ’s resurrection and ours in this chapter. Rather than giving in to cynicism or despair over the sinful behavior of the church, Paul urges loyalty to the gospel. He does this in two ways.
First, he calls believers to stand firm and let nothing move them.
Second, on the positive side, Paul calls believers to give themselves fully to the work of the Lord.
The resurrection is what gives it all significance and meaning and success. Christ’s resurrection, as well as ours, gives victory to the cause of Christ. We will see limited success in this age. But the ultimate success of the gospel will come together when we are raised as Christ was raised.
From
"Risen" by
Steven D. Mathewson

Paul’s point throughout his letters is that the law plays only one role when it comes to our reception of God’s salvation: to point out our sinfulness and point us to Christ (Rom. 3:20; Gal. 3:24). Yes, Christians can continue to learn from the law (2 Tim. 3:16–17). As John Calvin says, it “finds its place among believers in whose hearts the Spirit of God already lives and reigns.” But the condemning function of the law of Moses has been overcome. Jesus alone satisfied the righteous requirements of the law to set us free from the law of sin and death (Rom. 8:1–4). We will realize this freedom fully at our resurrection when the law no longer empowers us to sin.
From
"Risen" by
Steven D. Mathewson

The wonder of the resurrection is that we will live forever in bodies that are not subject to the ravages and decay of sin! When the kingdom of God fully arrives, the bodies of believers in Jesus Christ will be changed. Some believers will be alive at the second coming of Jesus Christ. The dead in Christ will be raised (1 Cor. 15:52). Both will have their bodies “changed from their present state to the one required for God’s future.”
From
"Risen" by
Steven D. Mathewson

According to Romans 8:29, God’s plan is for his children to be conformed to the image of his Son, Jesus! This goal will be realized when we are raised to life in spiritual, imperishable bodies like the body of the man from heaven—the resurrected Christ. Then, as we live life in the new earth in these resurrected bodies, we will perfectly represent God by putting his character qualities on display.
I find this encouraging when I get discouraged with my pitiful attempts to represent God in my present condition. I want people to see the beauty of Jesus in me, but I am far too selfish, fearful, and prideful to represent him perfectly. But one day I will represent him perfectly when I am better dressed. One day I will wear the very image of the heavenly man, Jesus Christ, the one who is the image of God!
From
"Risen" by
Steven D. Mathewson

Our resurrected bodies, then, will be bodies that have been created for the realm of the Spirit—just like the resurrected body of Jesus. These bodies will be imperishable, meaning that they will never decay! There will be a glory and power to these bodies that will enable us to live life on God’s restored earth. We have an amazing life to look forward to in these spiritual bodies because Christ has been raised!
From
"Risen" by
Steven D. Mathewson

The resurrection of Jesus Christ, and its guarantee of our future resurrection, delivers us from this self-indulgence. It gives us something to live for beyond our own purposes and plans. God has wired us to live for something larger than our own small stories. The writer of Ecclesiastes refers to this when he says that God has “set eternity in the human heart” (Eccles. 3:11). We have a sense that our work and even our lives possess eternal significance, even though we cannot figure it all out. Here the resurrection changes our perspective. It points to and makes possible a better life—something beyond this one, a life more incredible than we can ever imagine.
From
"Risen" by
Steven D. Mathewson