Above and Beyond

"Jesus can't die. Ever."

IN PLACES WHERE death was, life came. The soil mended, plant life flourished, creatures large and small wandered past. Battlefields once gray now grown green show only their return and not the damage once done. Except for a marker placed by man, no one would notice them.

Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, Photo by John Kostyk on Unsplash

Outside Jerusalem now, there are city streets and businesses, cultures that have crowded in. Children play and people worship and eat and rest and work. Where Golgotha was is solemn ground, but no crosses, not anymore. No death, no blood. No sign of anything that was, except for remembrances. The Man who walked there, who was God, who is God, who died there, who hung and bled and cried out to heaven, is gone to heaven.

But not dead.

Not a man gone from time, who we think about and study and move on. Not one we worship His deeds and repeat His words and hold in esteem, for memory’s sake. He isn’t a memory. Not a grave, grown over, not a tomb, sealed for all time. Priscilla Shirer upon visiting the Garden Tomb outside Jerusalem one year said it best, in my thinking. “Nothin’ to see here, folks!” No body, no bones, nothing but a stone shell. Because the Son of God who died for our sins, who was buried in the tomb of a rich man, isn’t laying there, wrapped in linens.

Skull Hill as seen in 1901 from the northern walls of Jerusalem's Old City. Photo from The Garden Tomb Association on Wikimedia Commons.

When Lazarus was raised from death, and Jesus called Him forth, he came out wrapped in grave clothes and had to be unbound. But Jesus’ grave clothes were left behind because He didn’t need them. The symbolism is stark. Lazarus died a second time, an older, wiser man. Jesus can’t die. Ever. He is above death. He will never need grave clothes. He will never see death except in His defeat of it and our welcome into heaven, once we’ve passed through it. It is nothing to fear now, for the saint. Just a doorway to richer, more abundant, better things.

But though we will reach that day and go through it, here, today, in the now, we are above it and beyond it. Because Jesus gave us the keys to it, and His name of authority to live above it. Our bodies decay one day at a time. But there is no need for us to accept affliction from it, nor mental decay, nor mobility difficulties. No need to struggle to pay our bills, to grow weary from relationship troubles, or government turmoil. Those keys were won at His expense, and the same power that raised Him from the dead works in me and you.

The Spirit who raised Him asks us to walk with Him, in step, foot-by-foot into glorious, wonderful blessings. That is also why Jesus came. To defeat death and open the doors of heaven such that we cannot contain what He would give us. He came so we’d see Him, drink our fill, and overflow.

“Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.” (Psalms 23:5)

“The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.” (John 10:10)

“Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us,” (Ephesians 3:20)

Tomb art graphic image by Ch Photography at Unsplash


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Suzanne D. Williams, Author
www.suzannedwilliams.com
www.feelgoodromance.com