The Resurrected Christ

John 20:11-31

Turn in your Bibles to the twentieth chapter of John.  We come to a most beautiful and most wonderful lesson this morning.  We've been learning so many good things in the gospel of John and I know you don't remember all of them because this is our eighty-fifth or so message from John.  But that's why we meet together every week, you see, because the Bible says we should not forsake the assembling of ourselves together.  We need to be together to stimulate each other to godliness every week.  In fact, more often than that.  The early church knew how important it was so they got together every day.  But as we've gone through John, we have constantly had our focus placed upon the person of Jesus Christ passage after passage after passage dealing with His marvelous person.

And this morning we come to a thrilling passage where we see Jesus after His resurrection confronting those who love Him.  And we cannot help but feel as they feel and sense something of the thrill and something of the joy and something of the love that pervades these three scenes.

Now by way of introduction, let me just say that Jesus has, as we begin this passage, risen from the dead.  Peter and John have seen the empty tomb.  He has done what He said He would do, He has conquered death.  That is established.  Before the sun of the world ever rose on the third day, the Son of righteousness had already arisen with healing in His wings.  The bridegroom has already gone forth out of His chamber.  The one whose heal was bruised by the serpent has through death become the destroyer of death and him who had the power of death.  And the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus Christ is overwhelming.  The stone rolled away which had been sealed and guarded by the Roman soldiers.  The tomb empty.  The grave clothes lying as they had been wound about His body undisturbed and the linen cloth in the place by itself.  The testimony of angels corroborating the fact that He is risen. 

And all of this would have been enough evidence to prove that Jesus was really alive again, but he adds the coup de grace.  He adds the evidence that is beyond doubt, irrefutable and that is the evidence of a personal, bodily, literal face-to-face confrontation with human beings.  As we come to these verses we find the greatest proof of the resurrected Christ is that He appears in person to His own.  Now the only way that the critics can explain away this particular problem is, where do you get Jesus?  If He was dead, how do you get Him alive again? 

They say, "Well number one, it's possible that He only reappeared spiritually in their minds, they conjured it up.  They so desperately wanted Jesus alive from the dead that they manufactured a resurrection."  And we'll see how that theory doesn't even deserve mention as we go through this.

The other theory is that He wasn't dead.  That's called the swoon theory, that what happened was that Jesus on the cross went into a semi-coma and when they put Him in the grave, the cool air in the grave, the spices revived His senses, He woke up, stood up, pushed the stone away and walked out.  The problem with that is that there is monumental proof that Jesus was really dead.  The Roman soldiers who crucified people frequently, as many as thirty thousand around the time of Jesus had been crucified, knew when somebody was dead and when He wasn't, and they did not break the legs of Jesus because they recognized that He was already dead.  Not only that, the sphere thrust into His side manifest His death because the blood and the water that came out were the indications of a ruptured heart.  Joseph and Nicodemus who took His body off the cross and cared for it knew He was dead.  The women who anointed His body and wrapped His body knew He was dead.  There's no question about the fact that Jesus was dead.  But it's no question about the fact either that Jesus by the time we come to John chapter 20 is now alive again, that He has in fact physically and literally and bodily resurrected from the grave, just as He said He would. 

In Mark chapter 14 verse 28 we read these words, "But after I am raised up, I will go before you into Galilee," and there Jesus is predicting His resurrection.  In John chapter 2 He astounded those who were about Him by saying, "Destroy this temple and in three days I'll raise it up." And, of course, they were thinking He was talking about the temple built in Jerusalem.  "And the Jews said, 'Forty-six years was this temple in building, and you're going to raise it up in three days?"  Another classic illustration of their inability to understand spiritual truth.  Verse 21, "But He spoke of the temple of His body."  So Jesus had promised that He would rise from the dead and in fact He did it.  And now to announce and authenticate His resurrection, putting the four gospel accounts together, we find that Jesus appeared no less than eleven times to no less than 500 different people.  Now I dare say you need a lot fewer witnesses than that to corroborate any evidence in a court...500 testimonies to the risen Christ.  In a court case if you have two, you have sufficient.

Now it's interesting also that when Jesus appears in all of these eleven that we know about, He appears only to His own.  He never appears to unbelievers.  He never appears to the scribes and Pharisees and says, "Ha, I told you, here I am, you didn't believe."  He never does that.  He appears only to those who are His own.  And many critics of the Scripture have said, "If Jesus really arose, then He would definitely have appeared to the skeptics not the believers."  But let's face it, the believers were the skeptics.  And the idea that they manufactured a resurrection is ridiculous because in all of the appearances of Jesus, they never expected Him to arise.  Even Peter and John had acknowledged, as we saw last time, the fact in verse 9 that they knew not the Scripture that He must rise again from the dead.  Not knowing and not believing that He would rise, they would therefore not manufacture a resurrection.  They were shocked whenever He appeared and they doubted that it was for real.  They even thought they saw a ghost.

But you say, "Why didn't He appear to the scribes?  Why didn't He land in downtown Jerusalem and say...Here I am, everybody, now try this on for size?  This is fulfilled prophecy."  The answer may be simple.  There are several suggestions.  Number one, Jesus was through with Israel.  You know that, don't you?  By this time He had long since postponed the Kingdom for Israel.  Jesus was through in the purest sense dealing with them.   Since Matthew 12 He had turned and begun to call His church, so there would not be any national issue with Israel.  Secondly, Jesus Christ never took the route of miracles as the only way to communicate who He was.  What I mean by that is this, Jesus' plan for all of the ages of the church was that you and I and the men and women like us would be His witnesses, not that He would make personal, spectacular, supernatural appearances to every unbeliever to prove Himself.  But rather than that, He would confirm the faith of those who already believed in Him and then they in turn would go out empowered by the Spirit of God to bring men to repentance and to announce the gospel of the resurrection.  So Jesus' method was never to go personally to all the unbelievers to convince them.  And He would have had to do that, it wouldn't have done any good to appear to three or four of the Pharisees, none of the other Pharisees would have believed it.  If He had appeared to one unbeliever, He would have had to go around appearing to all of them to convince all of them.  So rather than that, He appeared to those who were His own, then energized them with the Spirit of God and sent them out to tell and proclaim the gospel of the resurrection with all of the evidence right there.  Much more strategic for Jesus to appear to His own.

Besides that, the Word of God says so carefully and so accurately in regarding the rich man who went into Hades, and you remember he was tormented in the flame and he asked if he could not go back to tell his brothers.  And the Word of God says, "If they do not believe Moses and the prophets, they would not believe though someone was raised...what?...from the dead."  If Jesus had appeared to the unbelievers, the evidence of His resurrection would have been lost for they would not have believed it.  Their minds were blinded by the god of this world.  And so Jesus stays with His own.   And He stays with them because they are the key to everything that's going to happen in the years to come.  They are the very stage on which the gospel is going to be presented throughout history, and they must be confirmed in faith and they must have confidence in a resurrected living Christ.  If they are convinced beyond doubt and if they are energized by the Spirit of God, God will send them out to do the job He wants done.  And so in all of His appearances He appears only to His own.

Let me add another thought here.  Out of all of these appearances, John only selects three.  And John is very, very careful to select what he wants to select.  And in this passage, as always with John, he wants to proclaim to us who Jesus is, that He is God.  And he also wants to tell us a little bit what God is like.  And so he really paints three scenes here, three parts of Christ's appearances to give us special insights into the person of Christ.  And they're just powerful and lovely at the same time.  John selects three appearances.  One, Mary Magdalene.  Two, ten disciples.  Three, to Thomas.  And in each case they are to verify His bodily resurrection and at the same time for a very direct purpose.  Not only just to verify resurrection, but John selects three that have very unique and direct purposes, and we're going to see them as we look at them this morning.

The first appearance then is to Mary Magdalene and the purpose of this, not only to show that He was really bodily alive, but to show His faithfulness.  Here is a woman, and she's nothing spectacular.  I mean, she had been saved out of a life of horrible sin, she was the one of whom Christ cast out seven demons.  She was a sorted woman.  And she was not an apostle, she has no prime place in the ministry of the ongoing ministry of the church or the apostolate, but He appears to her for the express purpose of showing His personal, loving faithfulness to just one disciple, no matter how insignificant that one disciple may assume he is.  And it's a powerful, powerful lesson.  And perhaps we would have thought that the first appearance of Jesus would not have been to a scarlet woman like this, but the first appearance would have been to Peter or to John or the apostles and we would have gone from there, you know.  And it was unnecessary to appear to these kind of people but not so because Jesus, first of all, is a loving God, is He not?  So He picks out the one who perhaps loved Him more dearly and more deeply than any other.  And He appears to her to show the personal character of His loving faithfulness.  This is the kind of God we have.  This is the kind of Christ we have, not one who cannot be touched with the feelings of our infirmities but who in all points tempted like as we are, who gets down and feels what we feel, who loves us on a personal and individual basis.  And that's the thrilling thing about knowing Jesus Christ.  We're not in a religious system, friends.  This is not a system, this is a living, loving relationship with a personal God.  And we see that graphically in the encounter with Jesus and Mary Magdalene.

And so he must show in this passage His faithfulness to those who love Him.  This is His character.  It must be done.  And so Mary Magdalene is the first one to see the risen Lord.  And it's so important because it shows us that the primary consideration of Jesus was the love and the faithfulness that He owed to His own.  Beyond operating the universe and upholding all things, beyond the commission to the disciples, beyond all the other things that He had to take care of before He ascended, the first thing was to show those who loved Him that He also loved them and that He was faithful and that He'd meet them in their need.  And He does, indeed He does.

Notice it as we see it in verse 11.  "But Mary stood outside of the sepulcher weeping."  Now Peter and John were long gone, verse 10 says they went home.  Mary hung around.  And the Bible says she was weeping and the Greek word is constant, unrestrained sobbing.  She was really torn up.  She gave her tears full course.  Her helpless love was sobbing and sobbing and sobbing.  Why?  Because Jesus wasn't there.  And she couldn't figure out where He was.  She wanted Him there even if He was dead, she wanted Him there, just to know He was there.  She had the most glorious kind of love and the weakest kind of faith.  And the sad part of it is, that her tears were so needless, you see.  She had nothing to be crying about.  She was like Hagar in Genesis who was standing there by a well and didn't know it.  I mean, all that she needed was right there, the risen Christ.  But rather than acknowledging that, she is lost in the sorrow of the fact that the best she can do with the whole picture is, somebody stole His body.  But don't you see?  Jesus wouldn't leave her in this sorrow.  He would not because He said He would not in John chapter 16, listen to this, verse 20, "Verily, verily I say unto you, you shall weep and lament but the world shall rejoice...they thought they had gotten rid of Him...and ye shall be sorrowful but your sorrow shall be turned into joy."  And then He says, "You'll be like the woman having a baby, it hurts while you have the baby, but oh when the baby comes, what joy."

Then in verse 22, "I will see you again and your heart shall rejoice and your joy no man taketh from you."  Jesus had said your sorrow will turn to joy and He found the most sorrowing one, used her as a living example of how His love reaches down to turn that sorrow into joy.  And so she was crying for something she didn't need to cry about.  Aren't we like that?  Bishop Ryle(?)  said, "Two thirds of the things we fear in life never happen.  Two thirds of all our tears are shed needlessly, in vain and thrown away."  He's right.  And so her tears are the tears of a frustrated heart.  She doesn't understand.  She just knows He's not there and even dead she wants Him there.

Then in verse 11 it says, "As she wept she stooped down and looked into the sepulcher and she seeth two angels in white sitting, the one at the head and the other at the feet where the body of Jesus had lain."  She looks in there and here are two angels.  Now she didn't recognize that they were angels.  In fact, in Mark 16 :5, I think it is, the indication is that they were in the form of a man, Luke 24:4 also says that there were two men.  Angels took on the form of young men.  And here were two angels in the form of young men sitting at either end of that slab in that little tomb where Jesus had lain.  And she sees these two men in there.  Now evidently she didn't assume them to be criminals, or anything like that.  And yet she had no idea who they were, as is evidenced by her response.  Her eyes were blurred with tears.  She saw them but didn't see them.  But it's kind of an interesting footnote and I want to interject in here because I think it has some important thought for us. 

It's very important, I think, that angels are here because angels are always around when God is doing His work and here at the greatest work that God ever did, you'd be sure to find angels, wouldn't you?  It would be almost something wrong if they weren't there, and there they are.  And the interesting thing about it is that there is one on one end and it makes very clear that that's exactly how they were, one at the head and the other at the feet.  And Jesus had been in the middle.  Now reading that, that suggests to me something exciting and something thrilling and I want to share it with you this morning.  In Exodus chapter 25 God was instructing the people of Israel in the building of the tabernacle to build an Ark of the Covenant.  Now the Ark of the Covenant had on top of it had a place called the Mercy Seat.  And once a year the high priest would take the blood of the sacrifice and sprinkle it on the Mercy Seat.  And that was where God met man.  In other words, by the shedding of blood, the faithful shedding of blood, the act of faith, God met man at the Mercy Seat.

Now let me show you what the Mercy Seat and the Ark were like in Exodus 25:17.  "Thou shalt make a Mercy Seat of pure gold, two cubits and a half shall be the length thereof.  And a half shall be the length there of and a cubit and a half the breadth thereof.  And thou shalt make two cherubim," that's angels, "of gold, of beaten work shalt thou make them in the two ends of the Mercy Seat.  And make one cherub on the one end, the other cherub on the other end, even of the Mercy Seat shall you make the cherubim thereof."  Then listen to verse 22, powerful statement.  "And there I will meet with thee."

Where did God meet man throughout the Old Testament?  He met man between two angels on the Mercy Seat where the blood was sprinkled.  My friends, since Jesus Christ left the tomb, where does God meet men?  He meets them between two angels but the Mercy Seat is no longer the Ark of the Covenant, it's the resurrected Christ's tomb.  God meets men on the basis of a resurrected living Christ, does He not?  There's a new Mercy Seat and nobody needs to go in there and sprinkle any blood anymore because He has once for all accomplished the sacrifice that took care of sin.  And she looked in there and she saw a new Mercy Seat.  My Jewish readers ought to read that again and see what that is.  And there they were.

Well, the angels then spoke.  In verse 13 they said unto her, "Woman, what are you crying about?"  She didn't understand, see.  What are you weeping for?  This is not the weeping time is implied.  There's nothing to cry about, woman.  "Why are you weeping?"  These were tears of unbelief.  They betrayed a lack of faith.  And then she replied to them, "She saith unto them, 'Because they have taken away my Lord.'" Now THE Lord but...what?...my Lord.  He belongs to me.  "They taken away my Lord and I know not where they've laid Him."  Her grief is due to the fact that she doesn't know where the body of Jesus is.  Even though she believes Him still to be dead, He is still her Lord and she had come in that morning hour ready to finish the task of anointing His body and she came there to be so disappointed and so frustrated and so panicked and so love lost and alone and lonely, there was no Jesus, no body.  So she feels empty and she says, "They've taken away my Lord."  And she's weeping and weeping.

I really can't say much for her faith but I can sure say a lot for her love.  I pray, God, that I might and that you might have that kind of love, that kind of total devotion to the presence of Christ, that kind of affection that when we're separated from Christ even a little bit results in tears and sobbing.  Boy, we just don't know how to love like that.  It's so easy for us to get so cold and so indifferent and to stray away from the warmth of a personal experience vital with Jesus Christ and not even care.  Some of you people haven't talked to Jesus Christ in a personal intimate way maybe in a long time.  Some of you really don't know what it is to experience the fullness of His presence and you don't even seem to mind, that's the sad part.  You're not like Mary, you're not sobbing and weeping because He's removed His presence.  When you've removed your presence from Him and it doesn't seem to bother you, tragedy.  And I'm sure that this kind of affection can set an example for us to be with Him and to desire to be with Him so that if ever we are separated by sin, our hearts are grieved to tears.

Well, no answer comes from the angels.  They don't say a thing.  And so she turns around and when she turns around, notice verse 14 , "When she had thus said, she turned herself back and saw Jesus standing and knew not that it was Jesus."  Here He is, but she doesn't know it, she looks face-to-face with Jesus and doesn't know it.

You say, "Well, if she knew Him very well, that's a little bit strange."  You're right.  You say, "How is it that if she knew Him well she didn't see Him?"  Well some commentators say, "Well she had her hair in her eyes from crying."  Other says, "Well the tears blurred her eyes and she just couldn't recognize Him."  Some say, "The lack of faith, she didn't expect Him so she didn't see Him."  And very often we can pass someone and not really see them.

I've got a better thought, at least I think it's better.  I think there was something different about Jesus.  I think there was something about Him that made it impossible for her to recognize Him apart from His disclosure of who He was.  You say, "Why do you say that ?"  I say that because of Mark 16:12 which says, "He had hetera morphe.  Hetera is the word from which we get heterogeneous which means different, homogeneous means the same.  And morphe means former body.  The reason that Jesus was so hard to recognize was that He was in a glorified body, He had another form.   He was in a body that was now supernatural.  O, a body that could eat fish and honeycomb but it could also pass through a wall.  Now I don't know what it was and I'm sure it wasn't a little thing around his head looked like a halo, but I'm sure there was something about the form of Jesus that made it impossible for someone to recognize Him immediately apart from His own disclosure of who He was.  And the evidence for that seems to be overwhelming.  For example, on the road to Emmaus He walked along with two disciples, did they know who He was?  The Bible says He opened their eyes and then they knew.  By direct revelation He disclosed Himself to them.  Even as far as Matthew 28:17 when they should have known, it says, "And when they saw Him," this is the eleven disciples clear up in Galilee, this is after this occasion we're reading about, "When they saw Him they worshiped Him but some doubted."   Another time they saw Him standing on the shore and they weren't too sure who He was.  It was only when Jesus Christ revealed Himself by divine revelation to their minds and hearts that they knew who He was.  And that's a truism if ever there is.  No one any time throughout the history of God's dealing with man can ever know God apart from divine revelation, true?

The Apostle Paul says in 1 Corinthians chapter 12 that a man only knows Christ by the Spirit of Christ.  That's all.  No man can say, "Jesus is Lord," except the Spirit of God which is in him does the testifying.  And since the Spirit had not yet come to dwell within them, that's one of the reasons I don't believe, we'll see later, that they really received the Spirit now, they could not recognize Christ apart from a revelation directly to them.  And so, she didn't know Jesus.

But then He's going to reveal Himself, and this is such a beautiful scene.  I wish I could dramatize it somehow.  "Jesus saith unto her...in verse 15... 'Woman, why weepest thou?'" That's the very same word the angels said.  Did you know that Jesus and His angels are in agreement?  Everything in heaven is harmony?  Who writes the angels dialogue?  The Lord.  So He says the same thing, "Woman, why are you crying?"  This is not the crying time.  This is time for rejoicing.  "Whom seekest thou?"  And here she is moping and she's looking for the Lord, of course, but she never names who it is, she assumes this individual knows.  So she says in verse 15, she supposing Him to be the gardener, isn't that interesting?  She thought He was the gardener.  Somebody said, I read one commentator some time ago that said, "The reason she thought that was that since Jesus had been buried naked except for a loin cloth, when He came out of the grave He went over and got the gardener's clothes, put them on and therefore she mistook Him for the gardener.  Don't you believe it.

Anyway, she thought that He was the gardener, supposing the gardener would come early to tend to the flowers and so forth and so she says unto Him, "Sir, if Thou had borne Him from here, tell me where Thou hast laid Him and I will take Him away."  Now that's a nice thought, Mary, but you couldn't handle that body, no way.  But, you see, her love is at the point now where it's not rational anyway.  I've got a place where I can bury Him.  I mean, if you had to have this tomb back so soon and we hurried to get Him in it and He had to be moved, I'll take Him and I'll bury Him.  Her zeal for her blessed Lord is beautiful and her love is deep and true and rich and death can't break it.  But she doesn't recognize Him and she thinks He's the gardener so overwhelmed with her love.

But then it comes, O marvelous truth.  "Jesus saith unto her," one word, in the Greek here's the word, "Miriam," the Aramaic form is Miriam, the Greek is Mary.  "Miriam."  He spoke to her in her name, in her own original language, the name which her family knew her by, her friends knew her by, the name which He had always used in speaking to her, Miriam.  And that's all He had to say.  That's all He had to say.  She had in the meantime turned toward the tomb and she spun around, whist...just like that.  And it says in verse 16, "She turned herself and saith unto Him, 'Rabboni,' which is to say Master."  And that's also an Aramaic word and it's used infrequently of men, most frequently to speak of God.  Mary is acknowledging must to the joy of John the Apostle that Jesus is God.

You say, "Well how did He know...how did she know Him by just that one word?"  Listen, when you love somebody and you hear that somebody speak your name, you know them, don't you?  Listen to this, John chapter 10, I love this, "To him the porter openeth," that is to the true shepherd, "and the sheep hear his voice and he calleth his own sheep by...what?...name."  Did you know that He knows your name?  Not only that, the Lord knows the number of the hairs on your head...for some of you, it's no problem.  But anyway, the Lord knows your name.  He knows everything about you and He loves you in a personal way.  Don't you see that's what John's trying to teach us here, that we have not an indifferent Christ, we have not a coldly, calculating Christ, we have a warm intimate loving Christ?  And he says in John 10:3, "His sheep hear His voice, He calleth His sheep by name and He leadeth them out." And it says, "And the sheep follow Him for they know His voice."  Verse 27, "My sheep hear My voice and I know them and they...what?...follow Me."  All He had to do was say her name and she knew it.  She knew Him.

It reminds me...and then she...of course, the other gospels tell us she falls at her feet...at His feet and she clutches His legs.  She's clutching Him, hanging on to Him.  And the tears and the thrill, He's alive.  Not only have I found Him but here He is standing here alive, is overwhelming and she's just pouring out, gushing with love and she's hanging on as if to say, "Lord, You'll never get out of this grip again, never.  I'm not letting go anymore," see.  She hangs on Him.  It reminds you of the Song of Solomon where the Shulamite woman says in Song of Solomon, "I found him whom my soul loveth, I held him and wouldn't let him go."  Well it's the same kind of a thing.  So Mary holds on to Jesus and she's hanging on.  Sweet love.

But our Lord speaks to her and He says this, and so beautiful, verse 17, "Jesus saith unto her, 'Touch Me not for I am not yet ascended to My Father, but go to My brethren and say unto them I ascend unto My Father and your Father and to My God and to your God.'"

Now this may appear to be a strange statement because a little later on He did ask Thomas to touch Him?  Why does He say "touch Me not"?  Well it's another poor translation by the King James.  The Greek means, "Don't cling to Me, stop clinging to Me, stop grasping Me tightly," in the imperative.  You see, she wants to hang on to His physical presence but it can't be because, you see, He says, "I must ascend to My Father.  In other words, He's saying, "Mary, or Miriam, it's not going to be like it was, you know, the former mode of fellowship, Me here in a physical body and us commuting, it won't be that way anymore, I'm going to go to the Father and when I go the Father I'll send the Spirit and at that point I'll not be just with you like I am physically, I'll be...where?...I'll be in you."

So He says, "Don't hang on to Me, I'm not going to stay, I'll only be here forty days and then I must ascend to My Father."  And so He says, "Don't hold on to Me," and I'm reminded of what Paul says in 2 Corinthians, isn't it 5:16?  Where he says this, "Wherefore henceforth know we no man after the flesh, yea though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we Him no more."  In other words, we don't have a fleshly relationship with Christ, we have a spiritual one, don't we?  And so He is saying, "Mary, the whole thing is going to be different, there's kind of a new fellowship, a personal communion where I'm going to be inside of you, living in you."  Now He says, "I want you to go and tell My brethren this, you tell them this that I have to go to My Father and your Father, to My God and your God, stop clinging to Me, Mary, this is only temporary till I finish what I have to do then I'm going to ascend."

And Christ all along, you know, had promised He would ascend to the Father.  In chapter 13, chapter 14 verses 2, 6, 28, chapter 17 verse 11, several places He had said, "When I'm coming back I'm going to My Father."  This is just temporary.  He merely wanted to appear, set things in order, commission His disciples, then back, send the Holy Spirit to dwell within them. 

Now I want you to notice one other thing that He says in verse 17 that I think is very important.  He says, "Go to My brethren," underline that because that's a whole new thing.  Disciples have been called servants, they have been called friends, they have never been called brothers until now.  Here's something exciting, something thrilling, something new.  A whole new relationship to Christ, not a servant, not a friend like John 15 where He said, "I used to call you servants, but now I'm calling you friends," He can say here, "I used to call you friends, and now I'm calling you...what?...brothers."  You say, "What in the world...how can we ever be brothers with Jesus Christ?"  We can be brothers with Jesus Christ because we are by virtue of His death and resurrection and our identification with it, watch this one, we are in Christ.  Now I'll explain what I mean by that.

In Hebrews chapter 2 we studied this not too long ago and it says in verse 11 that Christ tasted death for every man, verse 9.  And then verse 10, that He brought many sons to glory.  And then verse 11, "For both He that sanctifieth," that is He that made holy, that's Christ, "and they who are made holy," that's us, "are all one for which cause He is not ashamed to call them...what?...brothers."  In other words, now watch it, because of our faith in Christ we have become brothers with Christ.

You say, "Well I don't understand how that works."  I'll try to explain it simply.  Christ is the Son of God by perfect righteousness.  When you and I receive Christ, His righteousness is imputed to us, true?  Thus we become in the eyes of God perfectly righteous.  We are in Christ.  You say, "But no, we're not as good as Christ."  My friend, positionally before God you're as good as Christ.  You say, "Oh, that's a heavy thought."  You're right, it's also true.  You say, "I'm as good as Christ?"  Not practically, positionally.  Can God take anyone into His presence who isn't totally perfect and holy?  No.  Then how did you get in there if you weren't totally perfect and holy?  You got in there because you are holy.  You say, "In what way?"   By union with Jesus Christ, His righteousness becomes yours.  When you receive Jesus Christ, positionally God looks at you as holy as Jesus.  That's a fantastic thought.

You say, "Support it."  All right, I will.  Romans 8:29, and I'll show you a couple of passages that point this out and then I'm going to draw a conclusion that's exciting.  "For whom He did foreknow He did predestinate," this is God, "to be conformed to the image of His Son that His Son might be the firstborn among many brethren." Christ is the firstborn among many brethren, all who come to God through Christ are in Christ therefore Christ's righteousness is our righteousness, therefore righteousness speaking, we are equal to Christ in the eyes of God.  If we weren't, we wouldn't get in there at all, would we?  Can I get into God's presence on my own righteousness?  No.  People say, "Well, but you can get out on your own unrighteousness."  Oh, no don't you believe that.  You want to hear something shocking?  This will thrill you.  Do you know that you're as secure, you are as secure as Christ is, you have as much chance of losing your salvation as Christ does of getting expelled from the Trinity.  Did you get that?  Because to begin with you're there in Christ, the only way you could ever go is if He goes.  And Christians worry about losing their salvation.  Don't worry about losing your salvation, worry about honoring the God who gave you such a secure salvation.  Live your life out of gratitude, not fear.

Another passage in the same chapter, Romans 8:14, "For as many as are led by the Spirit of God are the sons of God.  We have received adoption and we cry Abba, Father," we speak to God like Daddy, PaPa in the Greek.  "The Spirit itself bears witness with our spirit we're the children of God, if children then heirs of God and...what?...joint heirs with Jesus Christ and we'll be glorified together with Him."  We are in a union with Christ.  Romans 6, "We have been baptized into His death and into His life."  We are one with Christ, therefore our position before Go dis in Christ, our righteousness is Christ's, our holiness is Christ's, our security is Christ's.  We are totally in Christ and thus can Jesus say, "Now because of My death and because of the fact that I have borne your sin and you have died with Me and risen with Me, I shall now call you not friends, but...what?...brothers...brothers."