“Having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God, who raised him from the dead.” (Col. 2:12, ESV)Christ is risen!
Dear brothers and sisters!
“You will not be the same again!” We hear and say this statement in many different situations. It is associated with the natural life processes: you can enter your second childhood, but you can’t become a baby again. It is especially frightening in situations where the habitual and normal state of things gets broken: disasters, illnesses, loss of limbs, failure of internal organs. It is no less frightening when our ideas about the world order, good and evil, love, human relationships, friendship collapse, when the world in which you are used to living and which was not so bad falls apart.
“You will not be the same again,” Adam might have said, looking around himself, looking at himself when he was cast out of paradise. This is also what the disciples of Christ thought when, immediately after Calvary, they remembered His suffering and death and were afraid to go outside the room in which they were gathered. Sometimes this statement is akin to the feeling that there will never again be anything good, fair, pure and real.
Without the knowledge of Christ’s Resurrection, all our goals are meaningless, our values are low, our reference points for life are blurry, and our hopes are futile.
The message of the Resurrection also proclaims to all who hear and accept it that we will no longer be the same! In the reality of the Resurrection there is no room for indifference, anger, hatred, lies or fear. “You were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God, who raised him from the dead.” (Col. 2:12, ESV) Now in the Risen One, “we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” (Eph. 2:10, ESV)
Abide in the state of the new creation, remember that you are His children, be in harmony at all times and in all things with the status and nature of the Risen One! Let His words and thoughts be yours! The old sinners will not enter the abodes of heaven. “But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.” (Phil. 3:20, ESV)
Christ is risen indeed!
Vladimir Provorov, Archbishop of The Evangelical Lutheran Church of Russia