If Jesus really rose from the dead all that time ago, if it really happened….well, what does it mean to us today? What’s the relevance? What’s the point?

This week on the program we are taking a bit of a look at this whole "resurrection" thing, because on the one hand it’s so central to everything that Jesus talked about, and everything that Christians believe. But on the other hand, well, it can be hard to relate to that. I mean, how does it fit into real life today?

I’m not sure where you are in terms of believing in Jesus and in particular in His resurrection. But let’s assume for a moment that He did rise again from the dead; that’s certainly where I’m at, it’s kind of at the centre of everything I believe. Well, if He did rise from the dead, what does that mean to you and me, here and now, what relevance is there in all of that? Can the resurrection of Jesus Christ have an impact on your life and my life, here, now, today?

Good questions! I mean why have a resurrection at all? Why did God plan it that way and why did He make it central to believing in Jesus? Yesterday we saw how the Apostle Paul said it was absolutely essential. Without faith in that there’s no point. In Romans chapter 10 verse 9, he says:

If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead you’ll be saved.

And in First Corinthians 15:17 he says:

If Christ hasn’t been raised, then you faith is futile.

OK, well, that’s the theology, if you like, let’s take that at face value. But why is it so important? Why does God put it right at the centre of believing in Jesus – eternal life!

I’m a pesky bloke; I keep asking these questions because people never really explained this stuff to me, in terms that I could really understand and grasp. And that made a difference in my life. All these Christians were talking about this whole "resurrection" thing like it was really important and I thought "that’s great, but why?" Believing in Jesus for me is a process, it’s a whole life long thing. At some point I took a step of faith to believe in Him. I didn’t understand everything, but what I discovered was there were lots of different parts of my life that just didn’t fit with Him – selfishness, anger, being judgmental, all stuff that actually stunted my life.

It’s crazy how we want to hold onto that rubbish for dear life. But you know we do and it turns out all along, it’s robbing us of life. I used to spend most of my time being angry with people because they didn’t measure up to my standards – I’m a perfectionist – and they didn’t see the world my way, and so I’d be angry with them all the time. And you know it robbed me of life; instead of peace and joy I always had anger and resentment in my heart. It’s not rocket science but so many people do this stuff.

It’s one thing to believe with our head or our hearts in Jesus but it’s quite another to believe with our lives. And to do that requires change and that’s where the resurrection comes in. The Apostle Paul writes this in Romans chapter 8, he says:

If the Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through His Spirit that dwells in you.

Let’s unpack that for a minute. There was the death and the crucifixion of Jesus where He paid for our sins. He paid for the fact that we turned our back on God and we went our own way, and we missed the whole point of creation which was to have a relationship with God. And before you jump down my throat and say, "sin" is an old fashioned word. That the Greek word that the Bible uses for sin, literally means, "to miss the point”, and we looked at that last week.

God is a loving God but He’s a just God and we have all fallen short of His standard and His plan – we’ve all missed the point. And when we believe that Jesus died for us, the slate is wiped clean; we are forgiven completely by God, we’re forgiven; we’ve a fresh start. And that’s fantastic! But you and I know that getting rid of that rubbish that God calls ‘sin’ is a life long process. Come on, we are naturally selfish, we naturally hang on to the things – I wanted to be self-righteous – I still have someone pull in a car in front of me and I’ll be angry with them and I want to blow my horn and I want to…you know, that’s me.

Someone does wrong and somehow we want anger and revenge and we want to pay them back, and Jesus said, “Well, you want to believe in me, believe in me with your life. Show me, go and love your enemy, in fact, go and pray for your enemy.”

I don’t know about you but that way of living just didn’t come naturally to me. It’s a process of changing but changing those things is hard. It’s very, very hard, and in fact, in some areas, it’s downright impossible. We just want to hang on and hang on and hang on and let the poison get in our system and ruin our lives. Paul bemoans that very thing in Romans chapter 7, he says:

I can will to do what is right, I just can’t do it. Who will rescue me from this body of sin and death?

Then he says, “Jesus Christ". The resurrection is about bringing Jesus back to life. See what Paul wrote about in Romans chapter 8, we read about it before:

If the Spirit of God who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ from the dead with give life to your mortal bodies also through His Spirit that dwells in you.

The resurrection of Jesus is something that’s a deep mystery but it lives on in us through the presence of the Spirit of God. If we place our faith in Jesus; we say I believe He is the Son of God; I believe He died for my sin and I believe He rose again, and then God does something amazing; something supernatural; something powerful.

God puts His Spirit inside us and that same Spirit does the same thing in us – He brings life. He starts to deal with that rubbish inside us. He starts to convict us and to heal us and to fill us and to change us in ways that we can never do ourselves. The resurrection is learning to live again. When we believe in Jesus in His death, we put the old person inside us down with Jesus on the cross but when we believe in His resurrection we have new life – resurrection life.

If the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your body also through His Spirit; bringing life back into our bodies, colour into our cheeks, colour into our world. How many people need that change in their lives today? How many people are looking for that change in all sorts of strange places, people who are broken inside, people who have been abused, people who are suffering from low self-esteem, people who are dealing with anger, and people whose marriages are falling apart?

Come on, we need the resurrection of Jesus Christ to be real in us and there is a power that comes only from God to change us. Not some theory, this is an actuality. The same Holy Spirit who breaths life back into Jesus dead body is the Spirit who will come in us and bring victory over the sin of our humanness and breathe life back into our bodies and victory over our sins.

Come on, this is great stuff; this is a great plan; it’s God’s plan. It’s here for you and me now!