Life out of death

When Jesus was crucified, in a sense His disciples also died. Of course in a real sense we all are crucified with Him if we are His, but here I mean that they died in the sense that all their hopes were dashed, all their ideas about what the Messiah was to be for them were dashed. They were plunged into confusion, fear and doubt, doubt of their own ability to judge these things at least, a kind of death, a death to self.

In a sense this is how the cross is to work on all of us, daily killing us to conform us to Christ, and we must submit to it as Christ submitted to the cross of Calvary if we are to benefit from its work. In fact we are to "take it up" willingly. God sends situations to all His own that will kill us, kill the flesh, if we submit willingly and don't fight them. Disappointments, tragedies, insults, enemies. And what is the purpose? That we may live with Him in the Spirit. The flesh profits nothing, it must die that the spirit may live.

The prerequisite for resurrection from the dead is death.

And after resurrection comes the ascension and after the ascension comes Pentecost.

I've been thinking about Pentecost a lot lately. How we need it, how desperately we need that complete immersion in the fire of God. These days so much theology stops short of it. Those who embrace it are likely to go off in wrong directions these days, but the doctrinally correct get stuck far short of it.