On This Day: Pruned to Bear Fruit in the Beatitudinal Valley

   "I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in me, he is thrown away like a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned. If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples." (John 15:5-8)

   There are times when I am feeling negative emotions to the point of despondency, but suddenly I look around and realize where I am: in the Beatitudinal Valley! That always reminds me that it is a blessing when we find ourselves feeling poor in spirit about what we are reading in God’s word.

   As I considered this in relation to a dubious track record in the “bearing much fruit” category, God again blessed me with another Beatitudinal Journey that reminded me who I am, and for whose glory I am alive.

   If "bearing much fruit" requires saving lots of souls, or building up lots of disciples into living for Christ, or helping people spend a lifetime seeking God in his word and prayer, I am obviously a failure.

   If "bearing much fruit" means looking to others like we are filled with "love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness and self-control" (the fruit of the Spirit) then this would be strike two.

   However, if letting myself meet God in the Beatitudinal Valley so he can bless me with a genuine journey into real fruit bearing is how I will "bear much fruit", then recognizing where I am on the downside of the valley gives me hope that the upside is ahead.

   The Beatitudes are the way Jesus began his Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7). They are eight statements that begin, “blessed are…”, and then describe the qualities people will find in themselves when God is blessing them. Yes, this is the focus, that Jesus is describing what it looks like to be blessed by God, NOT what we must do to earn God’s blessing.

   So, if any of us feel “poor in spirit” in relation to bearing much fruit, that willingness to admit how poorly we are doing is a blessing from God.

   And if any of us go deeper into “those who mourn” what is wrong with us, it is further evidence that the Father is at work to bless us by grace through faith.

   When we find ourselves going even further into meekly acknowledging that we cannot fix our problem of bearing so little fruit and so we must submit to Jesus Christ who can “transform” us into his image, that meekness is a blessing of God to break our attachment to self-effort and lead us to fully rely on his Son.

   When we submit to Jesus Christ and find ourselves hungering and thirsting for the righteousness of bearing much fruit to the Father’s glory, we are being blessed. This downside of the Beatitudinal Valley brings us to valley bottom where God satisfies our longings by grace through faith in ways no amount of doing good works or trying harder could ever accomplish.

   This results in God blessing us to become his “merciful” children with “pure hearts” in our single-hearted devotion to him. We become the “peacemakers” whose pure hearts want nothing more than to see everyone we meet come to experience peace with God through the good news of Jesus’ kingdom. And we become such an annoyance to the world, the flesh, and the devil who do not want people glorifying God by bearing much fruit, hence their incessant efforts to “persecute” Jesus’ church into oblivion.

   Since I am sharing this on the morning of Easter Sunday (Resurrection Sunday), it is fitting that we would celebrate the new covenant in Jesus’ blood by seeking with all our hearts to bear much fruit in this world to the glory of God the Father, and the glory of Jesus Christ our Lord who has provided so great a salvation.

   And then we go from here to abide in Jesus Christ as branches abide in the vine, and to praise the Father for any ways he deems fit to prune us (knowing that much more is required than pride would ever admit). If we truly hunger and thirst to bear much fruit to the glory of the Triune God, we welcome every pinch of Father’s pruning shears as a gracious and necessary good to make us like his Son.

 

© 2026 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8

Email: in2freedom@gmail.com

Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.)

 

On This Day: The Children Who Know What Only God Knew

   “These things I have spoken to you while I am still with you. But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you." (John 14:26-26)

   My journey through the Last Supper account in John 13-17 is amazing me with how many ways Jesus told the disciples they would see him again after his death and they couldn’t grasp it because of what they expected the Messiah to do to deliver Israel from the Romans. There are big lessons in that regarding how we often cannot accept what God is teaching us in his word because we are already clinging to something contrary we were taught by our family, church, or Bible college.

   The thing that hit me like an arrow finding the bull’s eye is how Jesus’ teaching about the Holy Spirit presents evidence that we are born again. It focuses on Paul’s elaboration in I Corinthians 2:9-11. The primary focus for the moment is this:

But, as it is written,

“What no eye has seen, nor ear heard,

    nor the heart of man imagined,

what God has prepared for those who love him”—

these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. (vss 9-10)

   Paul is writing after the fact of what Jesus was telling his disciples on the night of the Last Supper. As Jesus’ promised, the Holy Spirit had come, he had been teaching the church through the apostles all about salvation and the righteousness of faith, and he was constantly reminding the church of what Jesus had already taught during his earthly ministry.

   Paul quotes from the Tanakh (the Hebrew Scriptures we call the Old Testament) what was being fulfilled in the work of the Holy Spirit. There were things no one had seen because they were hidden in God. There were things no one had heard because God hadn’t yet told anyone. And there were things no one had imagined God to be doing (as shown very clearly with the disciples during the last supper and the few days Jesus was dead) because God’s thoughts and ways are higher than our thoughts and ways.

   Paul makes clear a few verses later that “the natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned” (vs 14). This is why Jesus told Nicodemus that he had to be born again to see and enter the kingdom of God. This is why Jesus said that people had to become like little children in order to see Jesus and hear what he was saying. The point is the same all the way through, that in and of ourselves we are dead in our trespasses and sins and cannot know and do the will of God.

   And that’s when it hit me. Because I do know and do the will of God, and because I do know the things once hidden in God, the only explanation is that I have been born again and taught by God. In fact, what Paul writes in this section is, “Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given to us by God” (vs 12).

   Today I needed this comfort of knowing that knowing what only God knew is a clear sign of the new birth. I can be transformed by the “renewal of the mind” given to us in regeneration because “we have the mind of Christ” (vs 16). God has been pleased to reveal this to me as a little child so that, even though I could never keep up in a debate about doctrine, I know that I know what once only God knew.

   And now that I know that, I want to make it known to all who will hear Jesus’ voice, that we can still be those who are taught by God and know what only can be known by the word and the Spirit of Jesus Christ our Lord.

 

 

© 2026 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8

Email: in2freedom@gmail.com

Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.)

 

On This Day: When Burial Plans Go All Wrong

   But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they went to the tomb, taking the spices they had prepared. And they found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they went in they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. While they were perplexed about this, behold, two men stood by them in dazzling apparel. And as they were frightened and bowed their faces to the ground, the men said to them, “Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen. Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men and be crucified and on the third day rise.” And they remembered his words, and returning from the tomb they told all these things to the eleven and to all the rest. (Luke 24:1-9)

   I found it interesting this morning to come to Luke 24 knowing that my journey through Luke is running parallel to the days of this Easter weekend. So today is Resurrection Sunday of Easter weekend and Luke 24 is Luke's account of that event.

   What stood out is that the first thing Luke writes is about the women who went to the tomb with their burial spices. In other words, that first Resurrection Sunday, they were planning a FUNERAL! 

   The disciples had already settled that Jesus was dead and there was nothing they could do about it. They were devoted. They loved Jesus. They were sacrificial. They were serving. But they were filled with grief because of what they had believed (with lots of physical evidence to affirm this).

   However, their worship of Jesus was based on their wrong beliefs. Hold on to that thought as we continue!

   So, I see very devoted, loving, dedicated women doing a whole bunch of unnecessary work to show their love for Jesus by preparing his body for long-term burial. They were grieving. Their loss would have been the most intense ever since the expectation of the Messiah's coming was the greatest longing of the Jewish people. For them to be 100% convinced Jesus was the Messiah meant they had let their hopes rise to the highest pinnacle of expectation. But Jesus' crucifixion was too graphic, too torturous, too real, for them to believe anything except that he was dead. So they planned to worship him with the best burial anyone had ever received. Jesus deserved it.

   What was extra fascinating to me was to see that this was the very way I was beginning my day, like someone had died and I didn’t want to go to the funeral! I was confronted with how many ways we can do the wrong things in “worship” because we believe the wrong things about Jesus. We don’t believe he loves us, so we live like orphans. We don’t think he cares about what we’re going through, so we handle everything ourselves. We don’t think he has answers to the world’s challenges of “Did God actually say?”, so we keep quiet and don’t tell anyone what God actually said! Whatever we believe directs how we behave.

   I'm still praying through this for myself this morning. Especially the way the women who were worshiping out of so much grief never would have brought burial spices that morning if they had understood and believed what Jesus had said. 

   I mean, think about it: even his enemies knew he said he would rise on the third day because that's why they were guarding the tomb! But none of Jesus' disciples could believe something so wonderful after what they had witnessed of his suffering and death.

   The point for me today is that it was such a beautiful picture of how the messengers turned the women’s attention from what they were thinking to what was true. No time to feel bad about it, just get on with finding Jesus! He is alive! Just go attach to him! Get in his word! Listen to him! Take his words to heart!

   Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. (Colossians 3:16)

© 2025 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8

Email: in2freedom@gmail.com 

Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.)

Home Church Video ~ "The Story of Easter in the Message of Baptism" ~ Romans 5-6

Easter is a commemoration of the death of Jesus Christ on Good Friday, and a celebration of his resurrection on Easter Sunday. This makes it a good time to remind ourselves what our baptismal confession of faith in Christ has already done for us, particularly in terms of cutting ties with our past and entering into the newness of life that is ours through faith. 

Join our home church as we make a quick survey of Romans 5 and 6 in order to see how thoroughly Jesus Christ has set us free through his redemptive work. It may be just what we need to remind ourselves of our freedom to join God in his work every day of our lives.

© 2019 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8

Email: in2freedom@gmail.com

The Reason For the Easter Weekend

A four day weekend for the Easter Bunny? I don’t think so.

  

Actually, the reason for Easter weekend is something for greater. You would like me to explain? I would love to!

  

Let’s start here: If you had been suffering in a Nazi concentration camp during the Second World War, and your life had become a depressing fog of hopelessness as people suffered and died all around you, and along came the Allied forces to deliver you out of that prison camp, tell you the war was over, and you were now free to go home, THAT would be a good reason to have an annual celebration of the event.

The Easter Bunny? Not so much.

  

Now, what if the suffering in a Nazi concentration camp had a spiritual counterpart that applied to all people who had ever lived? And, what if this deadly concentration camp held every human being captive, with every one of them dying in misery and hopelessness?

  

And, what if, at some time in history, something happened that had the capability of saving any person out of that horror camp so that they could have their life back and return home?

  

And what if the person who designed and created this rescue mission was still offering humanity the opportunity to be saved from this prison camp, and continuously gave his gift to all who would receive it? 

  

Let’s add to this.  

What if there was a very distinctive reason that the celebration had to include a Friday and a Sunday? What if the rescue mission involved a most unusual and powerful event on a Friday, and an equally unusual and powerful event on a Sunday, and people who wanted to commemorate and celebrate what was done for them needed a longer-than-usual weekend to express their love and appreciation to the one who provided for their rescue?

Would you concede that, if something impossibly and horrifyingly wonderful happened on a particular Friday, and something impossibly and excitingly wonderful happened on a particular Sunday, that a long weekend celebration might very well be a very good way of continuing the joyful memorial?

Now, let’s speak of this in terms of the details of the rescue mission. The real prison camp is the powerful and deadly world of sin and death that ruins lives everywhere and always. Sin is the powerful tyrant that enslaves every human being to its whims and wishes, cursing us all with its cancerous poison, and guaranteeing a deadly and horrifying and hopeless end to all our lives, no matter how good or bad they have been.[1]

In the way that a torturous and abusive and murderous prison camp steals people away from their homes and homeland and enslaves them to its cruel punishments, sin takes us away from the Father who created us to be his children, ruins our relationship with him through lies, soul-torture, and propaganda, and secures our eternal condemnation to the horrors of hell.[2]

As in all wars, there is a price to pay to liberate POW’s. In this case, the wages of sin is death.[3] Therefore, the price required to liberate souls from sinful condemnation was the death of one who was not among the prisoners. This also had to be one who could die for more than one person. He would need a human nature in order to die for human prisoners, and he would need a divine nature in order to apply his death to numerous people, whoever wanted his gift of Freedom.[4]

Since God was determined that he would have children in fellowship and friendship with him, he designed and enacted a plan in which his only true Son, sharing the same divine nature as his Father, would enter our world as a human being, fully retaining his nature as God, in order that he could both die for human beings, and die for all human beings who would receive his gift.[5]

As this Son of God came into our world in the person known as Jesus the Christ, God could then provide an eternal person and a human person who could die for lost, forsaken, sin-poisoned prisoners of war in a way that would save as many as would receive his rescue mission.

In historical terms, because Jesus’ death for sin took place on a Friday, people commemorate that gift by observing a day called “Good Friday”. While death itself is not a good thing, the fact that God’s Son would die for our liberation was the goodest thing that has ever been done for us.

However, that is not the end of the story. On the third day after his death, Jesus was raised from the dead to complete the plan of rescue. People would not only have someone who paid for their sins, but someone who was alive to share the newness of life that was now available.[6]

Do you think that someone dying for you, rising again for you, living for you now, and promising you the assurance of life after death, would constitute a fairly good reason to have a whole long weekend to celebrate?

At the very least, that is a far better reason than an Easter Bunny!

© 2017 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8 ~ in2freedom@gmail.com

Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers.)

Editor’s note: This was originally written as a way to share about Jesus’ death and resurrection with some young friends and I present it for your encouragement as well. A printable quarter-fold version can be found at the link in the footnote if you would like to share it with others.[7]

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[1] Romans 3:23 declares that all people have sinned; Romans 6:23 declares that the wages we earn from our sin is death. Ephesians 2:1-3 tells us how hopeless this deadly condition is. John 3:18 tells us that everyone who does not believe in Jesus is condemned already, and John 3:36 says that this includes the wrath of God remaining on them because they are guilty of all their sins.

[2] John 10:10 shows that Jesus came to give life, but the thief comes only to steal, kill, and destroy any hope of us coming to Jesus and receiving his life. In Matthew 10:28 Jesus describes hell as a place where both soul and body are destroyed.

[3] Romans 6:23

[4] The fact of Jesus being both divine and human is revealed in passages such as these: Matthew 1:23 speaks of the birth of the Christ child and explains his name as “God with us”; John 1:14 says that “the word”, meaning Jesus the eternal Son of God, “became flesh and made his dwelling among us”; Colossians 2:9 says that “the whole fullness of deity dwells in him bodily”.

[5] Ephesians 1:3-14 gives a beautiful description of God’s determination to adopt us as his children, and what he provided in Jesus Christ for this to happen. I Timothy 1:15 states that Christ Jesus came into the world for the express purpose of saving sinners. John 1:9-13 speaks of how Jesus came into the world, but the world neither recognized him nor received him. However, those who did receive him are given the right to adoption as the children of God.

[6] The gospel records of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, all give details of Jesus death and resurrection. Romans 1:1-6 introduces this to us in summary form, as does I Peter 1:3.

[7] Page 1 (main inside page once folded): https://www.dropbox.com/s/embvkbhh57roofw/The%20Reason%20For%20Easter%20-%20Main%20%28Inside%29%20.pdf?dl=0

Page 2 (front, back, inside once folded): https://www.dropbox.com/s/ca00x4j12427cxi/The%20Reason%20For%20Easter%20-%20Cover%20%2B%20Inside%20Covers.pdf?dl=0

The Death That Wins the War

The death of Jesus the Christ is not mocked and derided because it lacks historical verification. Neither is it denounced because it is some failed rescue mission of an incompetent mythological deity.

Rather, the death of Jesus Christ is maligned, and insulted, and attacked, and denied, for one very simple and deadly reason.

The death of Jesus Christ attacks the most important person in the world: ME![1]

God’s Book makes much of the death of Jesus Christ because of its magnificent achievement. For those who receive it, we can confidently testify, “He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.”[2]

However, it grates on the mind of the prideful self of man to admit that such a rescue mission is required. If we celebrate a victory in which the domain of darkness is defeated, and all the POW’s are brought into the kingdom of God’s beloved Son, we must admit that the best any of us have ever done is handle our prideful little lives in the domain of darkness.

And, our prideful and selfish little selves do not like that!

Which is another reason that God’s children celebrate how completely Jesus’ death has set us free. Not only does it offer salvation from sin and death, but it graciously delivers us from the prideful self that has no ability to see the good in such a deliverance.

Yes, every child of God knows this, that it is by the gracious favor of God, his loving initiative on our behalf, that he puts to death our prideful selves in the death of his Son, and gives us, “the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.”[3]

In other words, the death of Jesus Christ not only gave us the sacrificial and substitutionary death of our Redeemer, but it presented us with the death of our pride, and the death of our blindness, and the death of our darkness, and the death of our ignorance, and the death of our arrogant belief that we are simply okay without him.

This is why Jesus introduced the characteristics of his kingdom by declaring, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”[4] It would not be the proud of spirit who entered his kingdom, for their prideful selves would always be blind to the true condition of their sin. Instead, the grace of God would bring prostitutes, and drunks, and tax collectors, and sinners of all kinds, to admit their tremendous need (the same need as the proud who are too blind to see what is wrong), and to enter in to Jesus’ comfort.

Jesus continued, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.”[5] This identifies the fact that those who arrogantly denounce any sense of their deadly condition before God will only have the temporary reward of whatever meager happiness they squeeze out of their self-centered life experiences. On the other hand, those who mourn what is wrong with them experience the full comfort of salvation out of sin, and deliverance into the comforts of God’s love.

When Jesus added, “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth,”[6] he identified that it would not be the strong and self-dependent who would inherit all that belongs to the Savior who created the heavens and the earth. Rather, it would be those who admitted in their hearts that they do not have the wherewithal to fix what is wrong with them, who would receive the gift of God’s grace,[7] the adoption as sons,[8] and the inheritance that is laid up for us in heaven.[9]

And, when Jesus declared this glorious promise, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied,”[10] he denounced those who were so satisfied in their own good works that they felt no need of him, and declared eternal hope over everyone who would hunger and thirst for the righteousness they saw in the gospel of their salvation.

The ones who would admit they did not have this righteousness in themselves, but saw it freely offered to them in Jesus Christ, and so hungered for it, and thirsted to experience what the gracious gift of a righteous soul could feel like, would be fully satisfied in their souls with the righteousness they longed to know.

As an example of the way the death of Jesus Christ puts the prideful self to death in order to give us the life that grace alone provides, God’s Book tells us about a man named Saul. If ever there was someone who would have earned his way to heaven by good works (were such a thing possible), it was this man. In terms of human achievement, he had every reason to be proud of his accomplishments.[11]

However, on one particular day, Saul was met by the most gracious appearance of the Lord Jesus Christ proving once and for all that Saul was just as sinful as all the rest of us, and that the gift of salvation could cover this man’s sin as well as that of any other.[12] The transformation was so drastic, that God changed Saul’s name to Paul, the man we have come to know as a great servant of the grace of God.

Paul’s testimony about himself was, “The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost.”[13] Paul wanted it to be very clear that, while he was living the life of a very good person, he was actually “the foremost” of sinners. He did not want anyone to think he was a good man who came to prominence in the kingdom of God because of his good works. Everything was by the grace of God taking hold of the life of the most sinful of men.

This is why he would add, “But I received mercy for this reason, that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience as an example to those who were to believe in him for eternal life.”[14] Paul testified that, because the mercy of God was fully capable of saving the foremost of sinners, his testimony stands as a timeless example of the perfect patience of God towards sinners.

In other words, are you uncertain whether God can save a sinner like you? Well, Paul was the foremost of sinners, and God saved him.

What about if you think you are too good to need the death of Jesus Christ to deliver you out of your sin? Well, God took hold of Paul, a man who had a much higher pedigree than any of us, and showed that he was the foremost of sinners in need of salvation as much as the prostitutes, and drunks, who came into the kingdom of God’s beloved Son.

The death of Jesus Christ is not old news. Its only “best before” date is the return of Christ, at which time the offer of salvation will immediately expire, and the judgment of the lost and found begin.

While the commemoration of Good Friday is optional, the conviction that “there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved,”[15] is necessary to life.

The tragedy and triumph of this good news continues to show in this clarification given close to two millennia ago, 

The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.[16]

© 2016 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8 ~ in2freedom@gmail.com

Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers.)

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[1] I do not mean that I am more important than you, or that I am even as important as I imagine. I mean that, for each of us, in our immaturity, and ignorance of God, we still believe we are the center of the universe, and everything revolves around us and our happiness.

[2] Colossians 1:13-14

[3] Ephesians 4:24

[4] Matthew 5:3

[5] Matthew 5:4

[6] Matthew 5:5

[7] Ephesians 2:8-9

[8] Romans 8:15, 8:23; Galatians 4:5; Ephesians 1:5

[9] I Peter 1:4

[10] Matthew 5:6

[11] Philippians 3:4-6 is a summary of the personal attributes that put Saul above anyone else in his achievements.

[12] Acts 9:1-31 gives the account of prideful Saul encountering Jesus the Christ.

[13] I Timothy 1:15

[14] I Timothy 1:16

[15] Acts 4:12

[16] John 1:9-13

Video: The Love That Fills an Empty Tomb

This past Easter weekend I was drawn to consider how the resurrection of Jesus Christ was a wonderful expression of the love of God. Before the foundation of the world, God had already expressed love to the children he had not yet created. He had already worked out the salvation that would bring us out of our sin and into the adoption of sons of God. The empty tomb is full of that love, and that love is still working according to plan.

Pastoral Pings ~ The Good Friday Experience

          There are two parts to the commemoration of Good Friday. There is the part that happened way back in the first century, with life-giving ramifications that continue to this day. And, there is the part that happens now, on whatever particular day you are reading this, whether it be a good day, a Friday, or just any ol’ day at all.

          When Jesus brought his suffering on the cross to the grand crescendo of, “It is finished!”[1] he was groaning out his victory cry over sin, death, hell, and the grave. While it temporarily appeared that Jesus himself had been made a public spectacle through his torturous death on a cross, his resurrection a few days later announced something quite the opposite: “He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him.”[2]

          The work of God that happened then is presently working as, “the power of God for salvation.”[3] That is why people around the world use this Easter weekend to unite in commemoration of Jesus’ death, burial and resurrection. What Jesus accomplished on the cross, and now lives to apply to our lives through his resurrection, is powerful to work salvation into people’s lives today.

          This brings me to the question, “how well are you experiencing the power of God saving you?” If Jesus accomplished something through his death, burial and resurrection that is described as, “the free gift of God” that “is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord,”[4] how are we experiencing that gift?

          Jesus described eternal life as, “And this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.”[5] The free gift of God is a life in which those who were once sinners under condemnation for their sin are now the adopted children who know God.[6]

          This means that the commemoration of the Easter weekend is not merely looking back over time to remember something a good man did for us a long, long time ago. It is the reminder that Jesus came to do something specific that would affect our lives today. He came to give us life that he described as, “I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.”[7]

          Jesus came to give life that means knowing God, and this experience of knowing God was to feel like having life “abundantly,” or “to the full”. Jesus expressed it with this metaphor, “Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’”[8] So, Easter weekend is not just a time to pump ourselves up with celebrations of a gift that was given a long time ago. It is a time to examine our hearts to see if we are honoring God by living in the fullness of this gift.

          My aim in writing this is to encourage you to take a quick journey through the Beatitudinal Valley.[9] Acknowledge any poverty of spirit in your experience of the finished work of Jesus Christ. See if there is anything you ought to mourn about how little you know of the God who has made himself known through his Son. Open your heart to the meekness that acknowledges that whatever is wrong is something that you cannot fix yourself. And then, let your heart hunger and thirst to know God through Jesus Christ in that way that feels like the abundance of life that Jesus offers us. God promises to fully satisfy that hunger.

          What Jesus did on that Friday we commemorate has the power of God to affect our lives today. It just seems that the best way to celebrate this gift of life in Jesus Christ is to make every effort to experience it to the full. If Jesus said, “These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full,”[10] why not receive his words until we have that “fullness of joy”?[11]

© 2014 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8 ~ in2freedom@gmail.com

Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers.)

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[1] John 19:30

[2] Colossians 2:15

[3] Romans 1:16

[4] Romans 6:23

[5] John 17:3

[6] John 3:18, 36; Ephesians 2:1-3; Romans 8:1; Romans 8:15; Galatians 4:4-5; Ephesians 1:5

[7] John 10:10

[8] John 7:38

[9] Based on Matthew 5:1-12

[10] John 15:11

[11] Psalm 16:11