The Resurrected Life

"That I may know Him, and the power of his resurrection" (Philippians 3:10).

Christian, do you know the power of the resurrection of Christ? Are your thoughts those of one who is risen with Him, set on things above where Christ is sitting at the right hand of God? Are you, as being raised up with Him, dead to sin, dead to the pleasures, to the greatness, to the fading glory of the world which crucified the Lord of glory? Do the things of the world—those things which, as far as man was concerned, caused the death of Jesus—no longer exercise any influence over your thoughts and over your life?

Do you desire to be something in the world? Ah! you do not see yourself as dead in Christ (2 Corinthians 5:14,15). The darkness which surrounded the cross is still upon your heart. You do not breathe the fresh air of the resurrection of Jesus, of the presence of your God. Oh! dull and senseless people of God—people ignorant of your real treasures, of your real liberty! Yes, to be alive with Christ is to be dead to all that the flesh desires.

But if the risen life of Christ, the joy of the light of His presence, the divine and tender love of which Jesus is the expression and the object, beam on you; if the things which please you are the beauty of holiness in the heavenly places, and the universal and perfect homage rendered to God by hearts which never tire, whose adorations serve but to renew their strength, and all things full of the glory of God, giving occasion to praises, whose source never dries up, and whose subjects never fail—if these things please you, then mortify your members which are upon the earth.

The friendship of the world is enmity with God. Christian, do you believe this? Death has written its sentence on all things here: by cherishing them you only fill his hand. The resurrection of Christ gives you a right to bury them, and to bury death itself with them in the grave, the grave of Christ; that "whether we live, we live unto the Lord" (Romans 14:8), inheritors with Him in a new life of all the promises. Remember that if you are saved, you are risen with Christ. May He, from whom all grace and every perfect gift proceed, grant you this.

—J.N. Darby

The believer must know where the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ have forever set him, before he can be an intelligent worshipper, an acceptable servant, or an effectual witness. —C.H. Mackintosh