The act of God by which new life is given to the dead; has occurred in previous historical events and also is anticipated with vague dread as a promised future event.
There are three things to say.
1)Resurrection itself is an action that can ultimately be done by God. God does it for us; we don’t do it for ourselves. Christians don’t believe so much in eternal life – that some part of us lives on after DEATH – as in resurrected eternal life – God is the one who gives life and takes it away. God is the one who brings the second, eternal life. And when we think about resurrection, we usually think about Jesus, who was killed and resurrected from the dead three days later. And while that event plays a huge part in the subject of resurrection, since it is the basis of our HOPE for eternal life, it isn’t all we’re talking about here.
Jesus’ ressurrection prefigures our own: a fancy way of saying that God has promised to do for us what God already did for Jesus. Now some might wonder if we mean that in an actual physical way (if we will come out with holes in us like Jesus) or in a spiritual way (our souls will be raised.) And the answer to that is, “Yeah, sure.” To cut this down to a nutshell we just trust this PROMISE: God raised Jesus; God will raise us, too.
Finally, every single day, we are being resurrected. In a very real way, we die in our sins every single day. Our lives are dead and worthless through our constant SIN and rebellion. However, in the act of continual FORGIVENESS granted us through God’s GRACE, we are reborn new, forgiven, resurrected humans. This is an actual resurrection. Our sins kill us, but God’s forgiveness makes us alive again.
Pastor Bauer +