Triumph of the Will
Introduction
Australia has experienced many revivals (https://renewaljournal.com/2016/02/28/local-revivals-in-australia-bystuart-piggin/ ). What is troubling is that there is little evidence from these moves of the “newness” of life that is called to accompany the Church’s union with the resurrected Jesus in an awakening. What are people expecting when they intercede for “revival? Mass conversions, healings, signs, wonders and miracles? Unlike these phenomena in Acts, the impact of so many moves of God are exceedingly short, most “revivals” burn out after a couple of years leaving little behind. The deeper work the Lord wants to do in our time involves a much more profound connection to the glorified life of Christ. Only a fuller revelation of the resurrection can impart a new level of power to the Church for visible holy living (Tit 3:4-7).
A Naked Life
In prayer recently the Spirit directed my attention to the nature of resurrection life in 1 Cor 15:37 where in expounding the transition from the present corruptible body to incorruptible life the apostle describes the death “a naked seed” (1 Cor 15:37). God will do this by his own unaided power at the last judgement (1 Thess 4:16), but prophetically the “naked seed” speaks of presently cooperating with God in putting off all life’s inessentials. Jesus said, “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. 27 Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.” (Luke 14:26-27). The thought of disassociating one’s deepest identity from our nearest and dearest sounds like violating the Ten Commandments. This is as offensive to “good people today as in Christ’s time. How is it possible to obey this injunction, “let those who have wives live as though they had none” (1 Cor 7:29). Paul, and Jesus, didn’t cutting off loving relationships, but not being controlled by any temporary reality. If “creation itself is on tiptoe with expectation, eagerly awaiting the moment when God’s children will be revealed (our resurrection)” (Rom 8:19, 23), mature discipleship as a stripping of worldly concerns depends upon our forthcoming resurrection being more real to us than any passing thing (Rom 8:18). Resurrection power must ne hyperreal to us now. How was this so for Jesus?
Resurrection of the Will
At the centre of the death and resurrection of Jesus is his perfect submission to the will of his Father. This is concentrated in the words overflowing from his heart, “Abba, Father, all things are possible for you. Remove this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will.” (Mark 14:36; Luke 6:45). Having decided with the Father in the power of the Spirit to create and uphold the universe (Gen 1:1-3; John 1:1-3; Heb 1:1-3) the Son knows there is no limit to his dear Father’s power in himself. However, compared to what the Spirit is asking in Gethsemane (Heb 9:14), all God’s previous acts are minuscule. The weakness into which he must descend on the cross (2 Cor 13:4) is the absence of the presence of the glory of God as eternal Father (Phil 2:7-8). In taking our sin on himself (2 Cor 5:21) Jesus falls into our shortness of the glory of God (Rom 3:23). His enters fully the full prodigal experience of a “far country” away from the love of God (Luke 15:13). The anguished cry, “My God….why have you forsaken me?” (Mark 15:34), testifies Jesus willingly endures the “flaming fire…away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might” (2 Thess 1:8-9). He wills to go to a place that no lost soul could ever will to go (Ex 32:32; Rom 9:3). This is how Jesus reconciles enemies to God as Father (Eph 2:13). Through willing to share a voluntary orphaning, Father, Son and Spirit have “taken away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). Then three days later in the presence of the Father the Holy Spirit breathes into Jesus’ spirit (Luke 23:46) the power of will to raise himself from death (Luke 23:46; John 5:26). As the cross was a united triune “No” to the fallenness of “the present evil age” (Gal 1:4), the resurrection is their triumphant all-willing “Yes” to eternal life for Jesus and all who will yield themselves to him and his risen power.
Living By the Power of God
Paul understood discipleship as union with the death and resurrection of Christ who was “crucified in weakness, but lives by the power of God. For we also are weak in him, but in dealing with you we will live with him by the power of God.” (2 Cor 13:4). The apostle lives by “resurrection power” (Phil 3:10 cf. Rom 6:5; 2 Cor 6:7). This energy (Eph 1:19) is more than that once exercised in creation, preservation and prior miraculous deliverances (Pss 29; 104; Ex 15). Divine resurrection power incorporates the exercise of a human will to annihilate sin, Satan and death so creating indestructible life (2 Tim 1:10; 2 Tim 1:10; Heb 7:16). The fruit is undiminishable joy in the Holy Spirit (Heb 12:2; 1 Pet 1:8). As the “circumcision of Christ” (Col 2:11) the cross cuts off all identity markers that impede “life in all its fulness” (John 10:10). This level of sanctification must be solely supernatural resurrection power working in your will (John 17:19; Phil 2:13) to put to death all your ethnic, religious and intellectual credentials outside of Christ (Phil 3:10>3:4-9). Like Paul, but happy to suffer the loss of “all things’ to know resurrected life in Jesus (Phil 3:8, 11). Our pampered self-centred churches lack such wisdom.
Spirituality, false and true
Nine months after the famous Cane Ridge Revival (1801) the illegitimacy rates spiked in Kentucky. Was this the case of intimacy of one kind of intimacy, spiritual, leading to intimacy of another kind, sexual? Such a mix dates back dates back to the Jezebel- Nicolaitan conspiracy in the Early Church (Rev 2:1-7; 12-17). Sounds plausible, but it is the exact opposite of what we would predict in the case of a pure and holy move of God. The antidote for such confusions in an “intimacy” worshipping culture like ours is the same as it was in Paul’s day, not a new moral code, but a new presence of God. “Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality,3 10 nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. 11 And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.” (1 Cor 6:9-11). This new presence is the union of Spirit-Word in crucifixion-and-resurrection (Rom 8:9-11; Heb 9:14). Only when this takes place in the Church shall this famous prophecy prove true, “When the Word and the Spirit come together, there will be the biggest movement of the Holy Spirit that the nation, and indeed the world, has ever seen.” (Smith Wigglesworth). Only then shall the marks of revival on Australia be as indelibly real as the glorious scars of our Lord (Luke 24:39; John 20:27; Gal 6:17; Rev 1:7). Given the cost, are we up for this?