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We all have to ask ourselves the question, what do we do in the meantime, while we're waiting for glory? How do we explain our lives? How do we live the Christian life, the resurrected life, as we wait for glory with Christ?

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The resurrection is true, it's historical fact. But it's not merely a doctrine to be defended. It's a truth that changes the Christian life. Welcome to the Saturday edition of Renewing youg Mind. I'm Nathan W. Bingham. As Resurrection Sunday quickly approaches, you're hearing messages on Saturdays from Gabe Fluor's eight part series, how the Resurrection of Christ Changes Everything. He has already explored why the resurrection matters, the evidence that supports the claim of Jesus resurrection, and. And today he'll answer the so what question? How does the resurrection impact daily life for the believer? Here's the senior pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Chattanooga, Tennessee, Gabe Fluor.

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I have a good friend back at home who, in addition to his day job, might have the greatest second job in the world, and that is a caddy at Augusta National Golf Club. And so he and I are golf buddies, play a lot of golf together, but he was the guy I got to go with for one of the most memorable experiences of my life, which was going to the Masters for the first time in 2018. And we made our way down Washington Avenue there. If you know anything about the course. And you come in to the south entrance right there behind Publix, which is crazy, you turn off by the Publix there and then you park. And we walked in right there at number 16 and set our chairs down. And that's if you can see over the lake there. We were right by the lake. And it's one of those things where if you see it on tv, I mean, we all hear the voice of Jim Nance, you know, the return to glory and those kind of things. If you see it on TV and then you actually experience Augusta national in person. And it is so much better than advertised. It is the most beautiful, scenic place I've ever been. We ended up walking the course four times during that the day of the round, just walking the whole time, watching a few shots and then moving on. But as we were driving away that day, you know, full of pimento cheese, smell of pine straw in your nostrils, spending way too much at the store. There we were driving down 20 and just thinking to myself, you know, that is really a foretaste of glory, where everything seems to be okay, even for just a few minutes. Now, we know that's paper mache in one sense. Don't we? They have to spend a lot of money and time to get Augusta national to look like that for just a week or so. But it did make me think of the fact that we all have to ask ourselves the question, what do we do in the meantime, while we're waiting for glory? How do we explain our lives? How do we live the Christian life, the resurrected life, as we wait for glory with Christ? And so in this segment here, I want us to talk about something we do each week in the Sunday School class. I have the privilege of teaching. We have an acronym. Again, I don't know what it is. We mean acronyms, young kids. I'll come back to that. But we do one called WinFem, if I could put it like that. What does it mean for Monday? And so when we come to this section of what we're going to talk about, we're asking that question, what does it mean for daily life? All these things we've learned on the resurrection, how do we apply them to our daily lives? And I want to answer that by way of looking at resurrection life in the Spirit for us as believers. What does that look like? How do we tease that out? And let's start in a place that might be a little bit unexpected as we begin to answer this question. Let's start in Colossians 1:24. Now again, if you've read this book, 1521, 1520 is some of the richest teaching on the nature of who Christ is, what he came to do in all of Scripture. And then we come to this verse that's been often misunderstood and more often than not misused in church history. Colossians 1:24. This is God's word for us. Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I'm filling up what is lacking in Christ's afflictions for the sake of his body, that is the church. Now, curiously, Roman Catholics and others will take this to say that there's some sort of suffering that we need to undergo in terms of payment for sin. In some sense that there is a suffering that we must endure. However, I don't think that's what Paul is saying at all, because he's just finished explaining to us in 11520 and will continue in chapter 2 explaining to us the all sufficiency of Christ. That's the point of the book of Colossians. Christ is totally sufficient. So he's not telling us that we can add anything redemptive to his sufferings. Instead, I think what Paul is telling us here gets us to the very heart of his doctrine of the Christian life. And so let's back up just a moment. If you were to ask Paul, Paul, we know you used to be called Saul, now you're called Paul because you became a Christian. He would say, a what? You would say a Christian. And Paul would say, I'm not sure what you're talking about. I follow the Messiah. That's because that term, Christian really wasn't used many times in the New Testament. It was where, you know, when they talk about the disciples were first called Christians, they were called followers of the Way. But Paul's particular phrase to describe what it means to be a Christian is two words in Christ. He mentions it dozens of times. He says it over and over again. Paul's description of what it means to be saved is being in Christ united with him. That's a basic category in Paul's thought. Our union and communion with the resurrected Son of God by faith and by faith alone, which faith is a gift of the grace of God all for his glory, justification by faith alone, in Christ alone, by grace alone. That's central, basic, nuclear to Paul's theology. And yet the way he applies these categories to our lives is nothing short of stunning. And when he speaks of filling up what is lacking in the sufferings of Christ, what he is teaching us is so, I think, powerful and helpful for our daily lives. But before we look at what that is, let's go back to Luke's gospel and hear Jesus teach us the same thing Paul teaches us in Colossians 1:24, Luke 9:23. And he said to all, if anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. How do we connect these two and what are they teaching us? Jesus will say to us elsewhere that a servant is not above his master, nor a pupil above his teacher. And taking all of that together, here's what Paul and Jesus are telling us about life as a resurrected adopted child of God awaiting the final resurrection. And it's counterintuitive. They are telling us both that suffering always precedes glory and that every Christian has an allotted measure of suffering, of cross bearing that he or she must undergo. That's what Paul is saying when he says, I'm filling up what is lacking in Christ's afflictions. It's not a redemptive lack on the part of Christ's sufferings. No, it's he's saying to us, why is all this happening to me? Why does the catalog of trials in Second Corinthians happen to me. And Paul's answer in brief is to us to say, do you think it's just going to happen to me? Do you think this is just my story? And Paul says, no, no, no, no, no, this will be your story because it was the Savior's story. Better, it was the Savior's life pattern, as one scholar put it, that the life pattern of the Savior, which will be inescapable for the Christian and will make any kind of suffering you go explicable, is the life pattern of suffering than glory of the cross before the crown of Good Friday, before Easter Sunday. And so what Paul and Jesus tell us is that to become a Christian is to become a crossbearer, is to become a sufferer. Now, as one of my professors pointed out, the New Testament term for suffering that Paul used in Colossians 1:24 and used in other places is broader than just something like martyrdom or suffering in your body undergoing physical torture for the sake of Christ. It means that and not less than that, but it means more than that. And here's how he put it, such a great description of what this term means. He says suffering represents, quote, the mundane frustrations and unspectacular difficulties of our everyday lives. That's what the term means, our mundane frustrations and unspectacular difficulties of our daily lives. So think about it like this. Whatever you're undergoing in your daily life, that is the mundane frustrations and unspectacular difficulties. And don't we all face them? And isn't that a perfect summary description of life in a fallen world? And aren't those the things that threaten more to undo our faith than any philosopher or unbelieving scientist saying what he will about the so called evidence against God's existence? That's not normally what does us in. It is the daily drip, drip, drip of mundane frustrations and unspectacular difficulties. And when we put this all together, here's what Jesus is saying, that is cross bearing. That is anything that you are undergoing right now that is done for the sake of Christ or done in union with Him. In other words, why do we struggle with depression and anxiety? Why do we have such fracturing of our personalities, of our families? Why is there so much hostility and hatred, evil? Why do we as Christians profess one thing with our lips and our lives tell a different story? What about the hypocrisy? What about all the things that are wrong in our lives, all the psychological discomfort we experience all the discomfort from our own sin, our indwelling sin that we experience. What about all of that? And Jesus and Paul would say to us, I think to be filled with the Holy Spirit does not mean to speak in an unknown language and hoot and holler and whatever else. To be filled with the Spirit is to be one who has entered into the sufferings, the fellowship of the sufferings of Christ, not redemptive in any way, but to understand that in union with Christ, he will give us a cross, or crosses to bear, as it were. That's what he means by taking up the cross daily. He means that there's a daily death that has to happen in our lives. And the resurrected life always begins with death. And you know, when I do weddings, one of the things I'll say, and I'll have to warn the couples beforehand so I don't put them off, because it's not usually what you'd say at a wedding, is that every wedding really is also a funeral. The wedding ceremony is also a funeral ceremony because two individuals are now dying to themselves in a way they would never have died before, and coming together by God's call to be one, one flesh. And so it is in our lives, the moment that we come to our bridegroom, the Lord Jesus Christ, the death begins. Death to self. Crucifixion of self. My friend, let me ask you this. If you're struggling with sin in your life, I'm willing to bet that both you and I can trace it back to the fact that it's a death to self. And we hate that. And it is always hard for sinners to die to themselves. It's impossible apart from the Spirit. It's impossible apart from being raised to newness and life in the Lord Jesus Christ. And therefore, the first thing that we would notice about the resurrection is it's a call to die. It's a call to put away the old man, to put off the old man, as Paul says. And it's a call that, for all of the misinterpretations and misunderstandings that are painted about the Christian life today, it's a call to suffer. Whether it's the unspectacular difficulties we all face, the daily frustrations of life in a fallen world, wayward children, wayward grandchildren, spouses who don't get along, arguments with co workers, disagreements with professors, whatever it is, all of these things that combine to make life hard on top of the fact that Jesus may call us to suffer even greater things for his name all of that can be explained, and I would submit, can only be explained if we take into account the New Testament pattern of suffering, then glory that is at the heart of the resurrected life, that pattern. And so make no mistake, if you have been called to follow Christ, you have been called to follow in his footsteps of suffering. And it will be impossible apart from the grace of God and the power of the Spirit in our lives. But it is the only way to glory. And the good news is, before we think about the next thing, by grace and by grace alone, will we endure. That's what I mean by there's no redemptive lack that Paul is speaking of in Christ's sufferings. His sufferings are sufficient to atone for all of our sins and all the sins of his elect. But we're mistaken if we think that following Jesus is simply our best life now. In fact, as Paul reminds us, it may lead you to your worst life yet before it's your best life ever. That's the first thing suffering, then glory. The other thing that we could say about of the many, what the resurrection of Christ means to daily life is going back to the distinction we drew in a previous lecture of these two ages, and Paul tells us Galatians 1:4, that we live in this present evil age, an age sunk in sin, a world scarred by the transgression of our first father, Adam, and carried out countless untold trillions of times since then by his descendants. We live in a world of the reality of all kinds of awfulness, all kinds of disparities, all kinds of evil. And that's one of the grand questions of our time, isn't it? How do we make sense of suffering and evil? Let's go back to the distinction we drew in a previous lecture between naturalism and Christianity. You see, here's where it all falls apart for those who would believe that science is the only way to know truth and the natural world is all there is. If the natural world is all there is, and science alone can explain truth, then we have to ask, then why do we care about evil? Because if we are just atoms clanking into one another or separated by infinite space, then there is no such thing as evil. And any injustice that makes your blood temperature go up is simply a chemical reaction with no meaning, no purpose, and no moral value. But none of us lives like that, ever. We hate evil. If you're a normal, functioning adult, you hate it, children hate it. And the only thing that makes sense of all the suffering and evil in the world is the biblical Storyline the truth, the reality that we are all descended from Adam and we're guilty, born in him. And that's why this is the present evil age. And yet Paul tells us 2nd Corinthians 4:16 Let me turn there and read that for us. As Paul explains the Christian life to us and says this so we do not lose heart. You look at the evil around us and aren't you tempted to lose heart? Does it just overwhelm you sometimes? Why is it so bad? Paul got it. He got it, he saw it all the time. And yet he says so we do not lose heart. Though our outer man is wasting away, our inner man is being renewed day by day. He's not talking about body and soul, it's what it can be tempted to be read as. But Paul is saying the outer man is body and soul belonging to this present evil age, fallen in Adam, wasting away. Inner man is body and soul one day going to be reunited at the resurrection, in the meantime being renewed day by day so that the in breaking of the age to come by the descent of the Holy Spirit after the ascension of Christ, Christ into this present evil age means that as one author put it, there's many resurrections going on inside of us every day. So if the bad news first of all bad news is that you're a sinner and that you have no hope of salvation apart from Jesus. But what we would take in being very comfortable, well fed modern people. Bad news of suffering. Never want to talk about suffering. Love our comfort, love our ease. Guilty as charged. Bad news about that. Here's the good news and it's all good news in this sense that as we follow Jesus in the pathway of suffering he begins to raise us up. He begins that mysterious life giving way work of renewal by the power of the Spirit in each one of our lives. So that as we live in the outer man age we begin to experience true life as those who still must die unless Jesus returns, who still face the mundane frustrations and unspectacular difficulties of daily life, who still engage in cross bearing that in the midst of bearing the cross the crown is always before us. That even though we might live in a Good Friday reality, Easter Sunday is happening every day in our lives. That's what Paul is saying. That's why he didn't lose heart. Have you ever noticed that in Paul? You ever notice that he never prays for his circumstances to change? Never. I I'm in prison, he says, I don't care. The Gospel's being preached. Philippians while I'm in prison. Praise the Lord, he says. He never says, oh God, get me out of prison. He just says, no, I'll endure it all for the sake of the elect and for Christ's sake, because that's all that matters to me. And I am following him in the pathway of resurrection life, even as I experience cross bearing death. So what does the Resurrection mean for us in our daily lives? It means that in every one of our lives again, as one author put it, we will be experiencing many crucifixions and many resurrections every day. And the battle for our souls and our minds by grace and by grace alone will be won. In those many battles, it's not so much the one event that will undo us, but the culmination of daily events that can wear us down. And therefore the Gospel of Resurrection, the only true gospel, speaks to us right where we are and says all of the things that are wrong that we don't like in our lives or on a bigger scale, the global evil we see. All of that comes to an end one day. And in the meantime, in the meantime, it's all normal for us. This is what you signed up for. Jesus says, count the cost. He reminds us, because in the end, a student is never above his teacher. And as we walk with him in suffering, he says, don't lose heart, because what I'm going to give you is so much better and how I will sustain you is so much better. John 7 out of his belly will flow rivers of living water. And so he says, as you follow me in daily death, recognize that daily resurrection is coming your way too. Daily living water, daily sustenance for life in a fallen world. So that at the end of it all, when we see him in that pregnant scene of revelation and we cast the crowns before him of saying, it's all been you from start to finish. You never let us down. You never walked away from us. To Christ alone be the glory.