Isn’t this the exact description of what happened to our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ when He submitted to the death on the cross for our sins, was first brutally beaten and undone before buried in the grave?
To anyone looking in from the outside, and even those who’d walked with Him during His three-year ministry of preparing the soil for the Church to be planted and born, it would appear that all of His work was for naught.
He was crucified and pronounced dead after all. Nothing but destruction was left. Christ and His work had been completely undone.
But in fact, it was finished!
“But now Christ is risen from the dead, and has become the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.” ~I COR. 15:20
From the ‘undoing’ and destruction of Christ’s body on the cross, from His burial in the grave and rising with all power in His hands, was the Bride of Christ–you and I–born and blessed to reign in this life.
But in order for us to receive this gift of restoration with God the Father, the old had to be undone and the new to break forth. The veil had to be torn just like the outer shell of a seed buried in the darkness of soil must crack and break away before new life and a new creation can be known.
Christ’s undoing became our birth. Our undoing, as we die to Christ, prepares the way for others in the Body to be born.
And what enabled Christ Jesus to endure such terrible destruction? The Joy set before Him–you and me!
“…looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.” ~HEBREWS 12:2
Christ is our example. Christ is our courage. Christ is the One through which we can do all things. And just like Christ, we are called to be transformed and conformed into His very likeness and that requires the destruction of our old selves; our old ideologies and methodologies (ROM. 8:28-29, 12:2).
Transformation can be scary. It can be painful. But it is also glorious and beautiful. Like Mary’s alabaster flask, the breaking open of that vessel released a glorious fragrance that filled everything around it. When the acorn is buried and cracked open in the obscurity of darkness and submitted to the pressures around it, then does it release the new creation from within that becomes a towering tree.
It is when it is transformed that it achieves its greatest expression.
The same is true for you and me. When we allow our Heavenly Father to open us up and reveal the glory He has placed inside us, the experience is just as great.
~Dream. Imagine. Believe. Do. CONQUER!
-Candice Coates is an author, blogger, and contributor to Ambo TV. This article originally appeared on her website www.icameforthesoup.com.