72 - Christ’s Victory

On Sunday, five days before He was crucified, Jesus said this: “Now judgment is upon this world; now the ruler of this world will be cast out” (Jn 12:31).

This world is under God’s judgment because of sin, and the “ruler of this world” is the devil. So on that day Jesus was announcing that His death on the cross and His resurrection would potentially release all humans from these two forms of bondage: the judgment of God and the control of the devil. He was announcing that He had come, like a warrior, to set us free from condemnation and bondage.

On this “resurrection day,” as we celebrate Jesus’ victory over death, we need to realize that His victory means our victory. Through His cross and resurrection a great spiritual transaction took place: The barrier of sin that prevented God from helping us was removed, so that He could be merciful to us and give us an entirely new dimension of God’s Spirit so that the devil’s control over us would be broken. The cross removed our condemnation, and the resurrection released God’s power. When we put our full trust in Jesus Christ; when we completely surrender our will to Him and let Him become our Lord; when we receive the indwelling of the Holy Spirit whom the Father has freely given to us in Christ, everything changes. The forces that tried to ruin us in the past don’t cease to exist, but they have been defeated. As we learn to lay hold of Christ’s victory we discover that we are, at least, able to begin walking on the path God planned for us before we were born. We discover who we really are. An entirely new person emerges who makes very different choices and pursues very different goals. Finally we are able to act like the son or daughter whom God saw when He fearfully and wonderfully formed us in our mother’s womb (Ps 139:13-16). Until a person has been set free from the condemnation that their sin has brought upon them; until a person has been set free from the deception and oppression hurled at us by “the ruler of this world”; until a person has been set free from the cravings, passions and confused thinking that arise from these dying bodies we live in; and until a person has been set free from the anxiety and depression that haunts us because of our fear of death (Heb 2:15), a person is unable to experience what it means to be “His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them” (Eph 2:10). But once Christ’s victory is released in that person’s life, once those forces that held us have lost their grip, God immediately goes to work healing, restoring, guiding, training, correcting, disciplining, teaching, comforting and strengthening until we become who we were meant to become.

There are no exceptions to this process of restoration. No one is too old or too young. No one has sinned so badly that God cannot rescue the design He placed in that heart. Yes, we might end up being who we were called to be in jail, or in the midst of a family that our past behavior devastated, or in a body that’s been damaged by neglect or terrible choices, but the gifts and calling of God are not changed by our circumstances (Ro 11:29). Like seed planted in good soil they instinctively begin to emerge, and we learn to express them in whatever opportunities we have left, that is until we ourselves are resurrected into the new bodies that Christ’s victory has made possible. Then someday we will step into a whole new season of ministry as His representatives in the new kingdom of God (Rev 20:6).