My life is in You, Lord

Holy Week is near - our annual remembrance and celebration of Jesus' death, burial and resurrection. This is not only Jesus' story - it's the story of all humanity. For by grace, and in love, Jesus united himself (and remains united) to all humanity as our representative and substitute.

This is the gospel truth.

The one who died on the cross on Good Friday, was buried dead in the tomb on Holy Saturday, and then emerged alive from the tomb on Easter Sunday morning was (and is) fully human and fully divine.

Jesus' resurrection (glorification) did not mean that he ceased to be human. Indeed, he remains "flesh and bones" (Luke 24:39) - fully human (though now a glorified human). And Jesus continues to be fully God. As the unique God-man (God-in-the-flesh), he continues to be our representative and our substitute.

Thus the story of Holy Week is Jesus' story and ours. Notice what Paul says about this in Romans 6:3-14.
...Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death? 4 Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.

5 For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection, 6 knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin; 7 for he who has died is freed from sin.

8 Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him, 9 knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, is never to die again; death no longer is master over Him. 10 For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God.

11 Even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus. 12 Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its lusts, 13 and do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness; but present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God. 14 For sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under law but under grace.

When Jesus died, we all died in him. When he was buried, we were all buried with him. And when he rose from the tomb to new, glorified life, we all rose with him to newness of life.

And now all are invited and enabled by the Spirit to embrace the resurrection life that is ours in Jesus. Indeed, Jesus is our life, forever. But God will never force that life upon us. But he does offer it as a present reality - and as we embrace it, it grows and grows within us. Forever.

This Holy Week and every week let's celebrate the one who died for us and now lives for us (and with us). Jesus: He is risen indeed!