“…and they can no longer die; for they are like the angels. They are God’s children, since they are children of the resurrection” (Luke 20:36).
Last Sunday I mentioned an expression, which presented to me with a renewed force, maybe because we were reflecting on the importance of the resurrection. The expression is, “children of the resurrection” (Luke 20:36).
The phrase comes to us from our Lord Jesus Himself…from His wisdom and knowledge. Jesus was a special teacher…a different kind of teacher. Remember, Nicodemus approached Jesus with these words, “…Rabbi, we know you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the miraculous signs you are doing if God were not with him” (John 3:2).
From this conversation we see that Jesus was a teacher not only full of knowledge and wisdom; not only a scholar of the Law and the Scriptures; but most importantly He was a teacher of the movement of the Holy Spirit.
We all come into existence by being born…from below.
God’s children come into existence by being born from above…or again.
And that birth from above is the work of the Holy Spirit.
Remember the valley of dry bones? When the Holy Spirit moves, the dry bones become persons again. When the Holy Spirit moves, “dust particles” come together into shape and become a living being.
The Holy Spirit is the life giving Spirit.
“Children of the resurrection” comes as an explanation of the more general “children of God” (Luke 20:36). With Christ being alive we are those who live our lives “alive with Him”. Being a child of the resurrection is more than a label or a status – it is a description of the life we live.
“We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life” (Romans 6:4).
As we wait for the age to come, let us live as children of the resurrection!