Monday, February 11, 2013

Raised with Christ

Eph 2:4-7
 But God is so rich in mercy, and he loved us so much, 5 that even though we were dead because of our sins, he gave us life when he raised Christ from the dead. (It is only by God's grace that you have been saved!) 6 For he raised us from the dead along with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms because we are united with Christ Jesus.
NLT

One thing I cannot stop saying is that God indeed loves you. it is because of His pure love for you that you have been saved.
In the first chapter of this book (Ephesians) Paul establishes that your salvation and my salvation is a function of a pre plan and predestination of God even before the foundation of the world.
If this truth was not established earlier, it would be difficult to reconcile the fact that we, who were not physically in this world when Jesus died on the cross of Calvary, were raised from the dead along with Christ, and are seated with Him in the heavenly realms.
You have to understand at this point (as we established in earlier devotionals) that God and the spirit realm is not bound by the phenomenon of time. God does not exist in the realm of time, so He does not do His things in the realm of time, God operates in the realm of eternity, and even the devil and demons do not operate in this realm. It is only those who have eternal life that can operate in this realm; they are no longer bound by the limitation of time. Jesus is the one who gives us eternal life. He does this because He has this life and we are joined to Him.
We explained  in earlier devotionals that God exists right now in the past, present and the future. I remember when we talked about the blessings with which God has blessed us, spiritual blessings in heavenly realms. I remember we established that the spiritual realm is higher and better, and it controls the physical realm, we also said the realm of the heavenly (heavenly places) is higher and better than the spiritual realm, that this realm controls the spiritual realm.
For example, we humans, when we were born can operate in both the physical and spiritual real. This is the reason why we are superior to animals. Animals only have physical life, but we have both spiritual and physical life. That is why people can go for witchcraft meetings and have astral projections etc.
Those who are not yet born again cannot operate from the realm of the eternal. The realm of the eternal is senior to and much higher than realm of the spiritual, even though they are both higher than the physical realm.
It is because we have spirits that we have spiritual life and we can operate in the spiritual realm, and that is one of the reasons why we are senior to and higher than the animals, because we can operate in a life that they do not know or understand.
The realm of the eternal can only be by those who have eternal life. Eternal life is the kind of life that God has. It is not bound with time, and that life is senior to and higher than the spiritual realm. It is the realm of the heavenly places. The Devil cannot operate in this realm.
Because we who are joined to Christ now have this eternal life, we were crucified with Christ and this didn’t happen in the realm of time, so even though we were not physically born when Jesus Christ died on the cross, we were in Him when all these happened because we (who are born again) have eternal life…
Eternal life is a quality of life that makes us able exists in the past, present and future (Just like our father God who was, who is and who is to come-all at the same time). That explains why you were crucified with Christ.
Just like you are superior to the animals because you have spiritual life that they don’t have, you are superior to the devil and demons because you have eternal life that they don’t have. In case you doubt this truth, see Eph 2:6 “And hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places, in Christ Jesus”.    
Eph 1:20-22
Which he wrought in Christ, when he raised him from the dead, and set him at his own right hand in the heavenly places,

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