Things Into Which Angels Long To Look (part2/2) 1 Peter 1:10-12 Sermon Transcript

Peter tells us that prophets spoke of the grace we have received in our salvation by and through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The first part of thisarticle considered how this story of salvation may be seen in the themes andpatterns of the stories of the exile, the liberation from Egypt, the Flood, andeven Creation. This second half will look at several prophesies of the Hebrew Scripture (what Christians call the Old Testament), and how they also point to Jesus.

1 Peter 1:10-12 (ESVUK)

Concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours searched and enquired carefully, enquiring what person or time the Spirit of Christ in them was indicating when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories. It was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves but you, in the things that have now been announced to you through those who preached the good news to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven, things into which angels long to look.

Our story is all about Jesus. Our sin separated us from God, who loved us so much that he paid the penalty himself, in Jesus. His death for our sin and his resurrection made available to us his life so that by grace, through faith, we could be restored to God.

Peter is reminding his readers that people have been waiting a very long time for this.

 The full audio of this message, parts 1 and 2.

In The Garden

In the beginning, our first story is of humanity in a garden, God’s place, ruled by God’s good word. Adam and Eve, God’s first priests to Creation, disobeyed God’s word. Though God said “let there be light” and light was, humanity dared say no to the word of God. We were cursed, made mortal, given death in our own bodies, cast from God’s presence, but given this hope:

Genesis 3:15 (ESV)

I will put enmity between you and the woman,

    and between your offspring and her offspring;

he shall bruise your head,

    and you shall bruise his heel.

The offspring of the woman would crush the head of the serpent. And from that day on, we looked.

Could it be our son, Abel? Will he be the one to defeat the deceiver, the death that now reigns in us? Is it Seth? Who will be the Chosen One to suffer, yet ultimately defeat this curse?

Hebrews 2:14-15 (ESV)

Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery.

The writer of Hebrews identified Jesus as the seed of the woman, the true human who would defeat death, the curse for the sin that followed us after our rebellion. In Romans, Paul tells us that the defeat of the accuser will be accomplished by being crushed under our feet. We share in the victory of our older brother, Jesus.

Romans 16:20 (ESV)

The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you.

In The Wilderness

Moses told the people in the wilderness even before they entered the Promised Land that they would rebel. But he also said that God would give them a redeemer that would set them free again, bring them into the new Promised Land. “The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brothers—it is to him you shall listen” Moses says in Deuteronomy 18:15. And this was fulfilled in Joshua, who shares his name with Jesus in the original language. But just as Moses said, the people rebelled, and were scattered into exile. Under the authority of Assyria, and Babylon, and Persia, and Rome, the people asked, “Where is this prophet that will come, the one like Moses, who will set us free?”

Just as in the days of Moses, Jesus was born as many children were being destroyed by the King. Like Moses, he was kept safe in Egypt. Like Moses, whose face shone for being in God’s presence, Jesus would be the very presence of god among his people. Like Moses, miracles would follow him. He is the new Moses, the new Joshua, our deliverer from slavery.

In Canaan

In Genesis, Jacob, the man named Israel by God, prophesied over his son Judah, that his descendants would have a throne and kingdom that would last forever (Genesis 49:10). The people of Israel watched the tribe of Judah. “Which one will be our king?” From Judah came David, who became Israel’s ideal king, a shepherd, a poet, a worshipper, whom God called “after my own heart”. To David God said:

1 Chronicles 17:11 (ESV)

When your days are fulfilled to walk with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring after you, one of your own sons, and I will establish his kingdom.

God said David’s son would build his temple, and that the throne would never, ever end in his family. And then his son, Solomon, built the temple. And then he rebelled, and Israel and the kings followed after him in rebellion, and in the exile, the throne of David ended.

In exile, the people asked, “Where is our new Moses, the king from the tribe of Judah, the Son of David whose throne will never end?”

Luke 1:26-33 (ESV)

In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. And the virgin's name was Mary. And he came to her and said, “Greetings, O favoured one, the Lord is with you!” But she was greatly troubled at the saying, and tried to discern what sort of greeting this might be. And the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favour with God. And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob for ever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.”

Joseph and Mary, descendants of David, in Galilee of the Gentiles, are promised a king as a son, whose reign will never end.

In The Kingdom Of David

God promised David that his body would never see corruption (Psalm 16:10). He fulfilled this again and again as he miraculously protected him from death. But then, of course, he did die eventually, as Peter pointed out in his sermon at Pentecost (Acts 2). But in Jesus’ resurrection he defeated death once for all, and reigns forever.

In Psalm 22, David prophesied the crucifixion, writing a near script for Matthew’s account of Jesus’ death, beginning the Psalm with Jesus’ words, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

In The Rebellion And Exile

Isaiah 7:14 (ESV)

Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.

Like Joshua fulfilled Moses’ prophecy, and Solomon fulfilled David’s prophecy, this prophecy of Jesus was also fulfilled in its’ day. A woman who was once a virgin, was married ceased to be one, and had a child. In that time, Isaiah’s prophecy over Israel’s present king was fulfilled. But Jesus was not only named Immanuel, God-with-us. Jesus was God, with us, born of Mary, a virgin.

Isaiah 50:6 (ESV)

I gave my back to those who strike,

    and my cheeks to those who pull out the beard;

I hid not my face

    from disgrace and spitting.

Jesus could have stopped those who were beating him. He created them, their arms with which they held the whip, the wood and leather from which the wood was made, the breath they took between each strike, he gave them. Jesus gave them his back. Jesus gave us his back.

In Matthew (26:27), Jesus held up the cup of wine at the last supper, and said, “this is my blood, poured out for you.” He broke bread, and said “this is my body, broken for you.”

Isaiah 53:4 (ESV)

Surely he has borne our griefs

    and carried our sorrows;

yet we esteemed him stricken,

    smitten by God, and afflicted.

He took our sorrows.

He gave his back.

And the prophets searched diligently. Who will it be?

Micah 5:2 (ESV)

But you, O Bethlehem Ephrathah,

    who are too little to be among the clans of Judah,

from you shall come forth for me

    one who is to be ruler in Israel,

whose coming forth is from of old,

    from ancient days.

In Matthew 5, the priests are asked where Jesus will be born. They don’t even need to look. They know it will be in Bethlehem, David’s city, from the line of David, because they were searching, looking, waiting. They knew.

Zechariah 12:10 (ESV)

And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and pleas for mercy, so that, when they look on me, on him whom they have pierced, they shall mourn for him, as one mourns for an only child, and weep bitterly over him, as one weeps over a firstborn.

Revelation 1:7(ESV)

Behold, he is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him, even those who pierced him, and all tribes of the earth will wail on account of him. Even so. Amen.

In Every Story

Every story in the Bible whispers the name of Jesus.

The serpent lifted up in the wilderness by Moses in Numbers so that people could be healed from snake venom is Jesus lifted up on a cross so that we may look to him and be healed of our sin, as jesus tells Nicodemus in John 3.

In the book of Ruth Jesus is the kinsmen redeemer.

At the end of Malachi, Jesus is the sun of righteousness who will rise with healing in his wings. The woman with issue of blood took this literally, and was healed when she touched his robe’s tassels, his “wings” (Malachi 4).

Abraham’s son, Isaac, was saved from being sacrificed on mount Moriah when God provided Abraham a ram to take his son’s place (Genesis 22). In Jesus, God would offer all of us salvation from death by providing the Son of God in our place.

On this very same mountain, King David threw himself down before God, begging for mercy on the nation that was being cursed for his sin. From the same mountain that God provided a ram in Isaac’s place, David offered himself to God to be cursed instead of his people (2 Samuel 24:17). Our High King places himself between us and the death we’ve earned by our sin, saving us by his willing death.

David’s son, Solomon, would build a temple to God on this same mountain. In that temple would the people of God make sacrifices of innocent animals before God for their sins, according to the Law of Moses as recorded in the Torah. In these laws were sacrifices, festivals, and family traditions that all reminded God’s people of redemption, of liberation, of forgiveness, and of God’s love for all the world, for whom they were chosen to bless. Jesus became the perfect expression of this law for God’s people. By his willing sacrifice, he delivered all of Creation from the curse of death because of sin. He became God’s temple, and the sacrifice, and God’s place, and God’s word, so that through him all the world could be blessed (Romans 8).

And there are many, many more stories.

Adam longed to know Jesus.

Moses longed to know Jesus.

David longed to know Jesus.

Isaiah longed to know Jesus.

1 Peter 1:10-12 (ESVUK)

Concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours searched and enquired carefully, enquiring what person or time the Spirit of Christ in them was indicating when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories. It was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves but you, in the things that have now been announced to you through those who preached the good news to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven, things into which angels long to look.

Isaiah was writing for us.

What do angels see that they have never yet seen? When angels see Peter, the early church, and us, they see grace. Angels see sinners like us that God loves. They know by experience God the Creator. But before Christ, they had never known God the Saviour. For God so loves the world that he gave in a way the angels have never experienced (John 3:16). The Son of God loves you and gave himself for you, personally.

Galatians 2:20 (ESV)

I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

Jesus was wounded for our transgressions, and bruised for our iniquities (Isaiah 53). Though your sins are like scarlet, Jesus will make them white as snow (Isaiah 1).

He gave us his back. He gave us his body. He gave us his blood. Let us always praise God together for our salvation, a privilege so great that generations wish they could join us, and angels watch amazed as we share.

☠

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Things Into Which Angels Long To Look Sermon (1 Peter 1:10-12)

1 Peter 1:10-12 (ESVUK)

Concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours searched and enquired carefully, enquiring what person or time the Spirit of Christ in them was indicating when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories. It was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves but you, in the things that have now been announced to you through those who preached the good news to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven, things into which angels long to look.

Peter tells us that there were prophets that spoke of this grace, our grace. The grace we have received is our salvation by and through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

This is the story of the grace of salvation through Jesus Christ. God created us in love for his glory and for our joy. We were made in the image of God to glorify God in all we do, especially by loving God, seen in our lives by our love for each other. However, every one of us has fallen short of this glory. By demanding our autonomy and seeking the right to judge ourselves we’ve traded the glory of God for a false glory of self and Creation rather than the Creator. The Bible calls this failure to glorify God, sin. Because of our sin, every one of us deserves to be separated eternally from the God we have willingly abandoned. Instead, God offers us a free gift of grace, by which we may be rescued from our death penalty and returned to our original purpose. He accomplished this by sending Jesus Christ, the Son of God, to the fallen, wicked world he dearly loved, not with a message of condemnation, but an open invitation to be saved from our own corruption. Jesus, both God and human, lived a perfect, God-glorifying life, as God had always intended for humanity, and then willingly went to his death so that all of us, no matter how sinful or far from God, may have our debt paid for us. Jesus, who never sinned, took the curse of our sin for us once for all, and offers us his eternal life with God in return. When we receive this gift of grace through faith in Jesus our old life, corrupted by sin, dies on the cross, and we are given Jesus’ resurrection life in return. By his grace we are then given the power to live for the glory of God from that point onward and for all eternity, in love, satisfaction, and joy.

Click here to see the above paragraph with all relevant scripture verses included (opens in a new window),or see it with references only at the end of this article.

In short, it’s all about Jesus. Our sin separated us from God, who loved us so much that he paid the penalty himself, in Jesus. His death for our sin and his resurrection made available to us his life so that by grace, through faith, we could be restored to God.

The full audio of this sermon, parts one and two.

Peter is reminding his readers that people have been waiting a very long time for this.

Jesus said to his disciples prophets and kings wanted to see the things they were seeing (Luke 10:24). Later in the same gospel, twice it says that after his resurrection, Jesus twice showed gatherings of his disciples the prophecies found in the Hebrew Scripture that were about him. Once, in Luke 14:25-27, he is walking with two people on the road who do not recognize him, and he shares from the Torah and prophets about himself. Later, he appears to his closest disciples and illuminates the passages for them.

Luke 14:44-48 (ESV)

Then he said to them, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.” 45 Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures, 46 and said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, 47 and that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. 48 You are witnesses of these things.

Kings and prophets longed to see Jesus. Prophets searched diligently to know who the Messiah would be and when he would come.

God’s grace for us is more than a theology to understand, or a sermon to preach. The gift of God’s grace is in the person, Jesus Christ. In the beginning was the Word, Jesus, and as many as received him, God gave the right to become children of God (John 1). We receive and know, and are known by, Jesus of Nazareth, the Suffering Servant, the Messiah, the King of kings, our Saviour.

It is for Jesus that people waited and yearned and looked and hoped. The last passage of their scripture gave them a hint of what they would see when the Messiah came.

Malachi 4:5-6 (ESV)

“Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes. And he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the land with a decree of utter destruction.”

For four hundred years they waited for this prophet like Elijah. Then, one day, we have the appearance of a strange man in the wilderness in the beginning of the first recorded gospel account of Jesus’ life.

Mark 1:1-4 (ESV)
The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

As it is written in Isaiah the prophet,

“Behold, I send my messenger before your face,

    who will prepare your way,

the voice of one crying in the wilderness:

    ‘Prepare the way of the Lord,

    make his paths straight,’”

John appeared, baptizing in the wilderness and proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.

The book of Isaiah is the first of the prophetic books in the Hebrew Scripture, what Christians commonly call the Old Testament. It starts a part of the Bible with which many Christians are far less familiar. I discovered myself when I recently finished the Old Testament. I’d been reading for a few months, beginning in Genesis. By the time I reached Ezekiel, the fourth prophetic book after Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Lamentations, I realized how unfamiliar I was with so much of what I was reading compared to the New Testament, Genesis, and maybe the Psalms. So, I decided to read from Ezekiel to the end in a week to try and get the big picture all at once. The big picture I saw, was Jesus.

Here’s the passage in Isaiah that Mark is quoting:

Isaiah 40:1-5 (ESV)

Comfort, comfort my people, says your God.

 Speak tenderly to Jerusalem,

    and cry to her

that her warfare is ended,

    that her iniquity is pardoned,

that she has received from the Lord's hand

    double for all her sins.

 A voice cries:

“In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord;

    make straight in the desert a highway for our God.

 Every valley shall be lifted up,

    and every mountain and hill be made low;

the uneven ground shall become level,

    and the rough places a plain.

 And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed,

    and all flesh shall see it together,

    for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”

Isaiah is an amazing book, more often quoted directly in the New Testament than any other book of the Hebrew Scripture other than the Psalms. It was written and compiled during the time of the Kings in Israel. In the books of the Kings and Chronicles, we see a story of corruption overtaking the nation of Israel, as the nation turns from God to idolatry, and from there to injustice and oppression against the poor and vulnerable, contrary to their own law that demanded justice. The kings of Israel covet the power and wealth of the empires surrounding them, and build armies and do violence and prepare for war, rather than being a blessing to the nations of the earth, for which purpose God has told them they were originally called from Egypt and made a nation. For this corruption and violence and injustice, Isaiah prophesies that the nation will suffer violence by the empires they so wished to become, and be forced into exile. But then he also prophesies of God’s salvation for them, the miraculous resurrection of a defeated nation arising from their scattering over the earth, returning to their home, and being reestablished with their temple and covenant and mandate for justice under the blessing of God.

This is the story of Jesus. God sent his son to the world he loved, so that the scattered exiles, God’s people in all the nations of the world, would be drawn together and come to him. For our sin, our corruption, our wicked coveting of the shiny distractions of the violent world instead of God, we deserved to be delivered to their violence. Instead, Jesus was the one broken by the wickedness of humankind, and buried in the earth. Jesus became God’s people for God’s people, taking the punishment of exile from God’s presence in our place. But like Israel, the broken and defeated nation, he was miraculously resurrected. Jesus became God’s place, his body God’s temple in which the fullness of God could now dwell, and from the entire world the scattered people of God now come to Jesus and dwell in him.

John 12:28-34 (ESV)

Father, glorify your name.” Then a voice came from heaven: “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.” The crowd that stood there and heard it said that it had thundered. Others said, “An angel has spoken to him.” Jesus answered, “This voice has come for your sake, not mine. Now is the judgement of this world; now will the ruler of this world be cast out. And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” He said this to show by what kind of death he was going to die. So the crowd answered him, “We have heard from the Law that the Christ remains for ever. How can you say that the Son of Man must be lifted up? Who is this Son of Man?”

The people knew that to be “lifted up” would mean he would be crucified. And they knew who they meant by the “Son of Man.”

Daniel 7:13-14 (ESV)

 “I saw in the night visions,

and behold, with the clouds of heaven

    there came one like a son of man,

and he came to the Ancient of Days

    and was presented before him.

 And to him was given dominion

    and glory and a kingdom,

that all peoples, nations, and languages

    should serve him;

his dominion is an everlasting dominion,

    which shall not pass away,

and his kingdom one

    that shall not be destroyed.

Jesus is a son of man, a human being. And this human being now sits on the throne as King of kings and Lord of lords. But he is also the Ancient of Days, whose beginning is long before the day of his birth. Jesus was present in the beginning, with God, it says in John Chapter One. And then it says that Jesus was God.

Isaiah 9:1-7 (ESV)
But there will be no gloom for her who was in anguish. In the former time he brought into contempt the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, but in the latter time he has made glorious the way of the sea, the land beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the nations.

  The people who walked in darkness

    have seen a great light;

those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness,

    on them has light shined.

 You have multiplied the nation;

    you have increased its joy;

they rejoice before you

    as with joy at the harvest,

    as they are glad when they divide the spoil.

 For the yoke of his burden,

    and the staff for his shoulder,

    the rod of his oppressor,

    you have broken as on the day of Midian.

 For every boot of the tramping warrior in battle tumult

    and every garment rolled in blood

    will be burned as fuel for the fire.

 For to us a child is born,

    to us a son is given;

and the government shall be upon his shoulder,

    and his name shall be called

Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God,

    Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

 Of the increase of his government and of peace

    there will be no end,

on the throne of David and over his kingdom,

    to establish it and to uphold it

with justice and with righteousness

    from this time forth and for evermore.

The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this.

Isaiah prophesies that the Messiah will come as a child, to the land of Galilee of the nations. It’s very significant that Jesus was called a Galilean. He didn’t identify with the centre of the nation’s culture. Galilee was right on the edge of Israel, a rural community in the North known as “Galilee of the Gentiles”, and not in a nice way. Isaiah calls it “Galilee of the nations”. Jesus grew up in a multiethnic neighbourhood, shining light among a people who didn’t know the beginning of a Torah from the end of it. Jesus became God’s people manifest in a single man, a blessing to all the nations of the earth as God originally mandated for Israel, his kingdom of priests.

Isaiah says that he will be born as a child, a human, a son of man. But then he says this man will be called Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Jesus is God. Jesus, the child, is the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace. His became the story of violent exile and death. Ours becomes his story of resurrection. He becomes our King, different than any other king on earth, one who would become a baby, a servant, falsely accused as a criminal, our Saviour.

The exile is not the only story of death and resurrection in the Hebrew Scripture. Before they were a nation, Israel was in slavery in Egypt. By God’s hand, he brought them out. When they were pursued by the Egyptian army, God told them to only be silent, and God would fight for them (Exodus 14:14). He brought them through the Red Sea, and into the Sea their former slaveowners were destroyed.

This was us. We were slaves to sin. Only by passing through death and being brought back up to life could we emerge on the shores of the Red Sea free from sin, from Satan, from death. Jesus passed through the waters of death for us. In him, we have passed through the Red Sea. Our old life, the empire of violence and slavery that ruled our spirits has been drowned in the waters of our baptism into the person of Jesus Christ. We were plucked from nothingness as orphans and slaves, and given a name, adopted into the family of God, priests of blessing to the world, just as Israel was intended to be, just as Christ is.

                                                             

Noah lived in a time of great wickedness. From the mass of humanity God put his finger on this one man and his family, who would pass through the waters of death in a floating coffin, until the entire world would be made alive again around them under the covenant of the God of the rainbow. Jesus is our ark, in whom we rest in death, and emerge from the tomb into a new world made alive by the seed of the son of God planted in our midst.

In the beginning God made the heavens and the earth. And the earth was without form and void. It was useless. It was a mass of purposeless waste. By God’s word it was made alive with God’s purpose for fruitfulness and life. Into the garden of new life God placed his priests to the world, ambassadors of his image and nature to Creation. We were that void, cast blindly in the mass of humanity, without direction, unable to see. By God’s word, the Word made flesh, we were called out from the void, called out of wicked humanity, called out from slavery in Egypt, called out from the wilderness, called out from exile, called out from death itself, and given God’s purpose, given true life, according to God’s word.

For us, Jesus entered the void. From the grave, he grabbed our wrists, and pulled us into light, and gave us authority to speak the words of God, to name Creation, to introduce the world to Jesus.

End Part 1 of 2. Click here for Part 2 of 2. (To be posted Thursday, June 19, 2014)

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Here is the text of the story of salvation from the beginning of this entry. An expanded version, including the full text of all the Bible passages is available here.

 
God created us in love for his glory (Isaiah 43:6-7) and for our joy (Psalm 16:11). We were made in the image of God (Genesis 1:26-27) to glorify God in all we do (1 Corinthians 10:31), especially by loving God (Matthew 22:37), seen in our lives by our love for each other (John 15:12). However, every one of us has fallen short of this glory (Romans 3:23). By demanding our autonomy and seeking the right to judge ourselves we’ve traded the glory of God for a false glory of self and Creation rather than the Creator (Romans 1:21-23). The Bible calls this failure to glorify God, sin. Because of our sin, every one of us deserves to be separated eternally from the God we have willingly abandoned (Romans 6:23). Instead, God offers us a free gift of grace, by which we may be rescued from our death penalty and returned to our original purpose (Ephesians 2:8-10). He accomplished this by sending Jesus Christ, the Son of God, to the fallen, wicked world he dearly loved, not with a message of condemnation, but an open invitation to be saved from our own corruption (John 3:16-17). Jesus, both God and human, lived a perfect, God-glorifying life, as God had always intended for humanity, and then willingly went to his death so that all of us, no matter how sinful or far from God, may have our debt paid for us (1 Peter 3:18). Jesus, who never sinned, took the curse of our sin for us once for all, and offers us his eternal life with God in return (Galatians 3:13). When we receive this gift of grace through faith in Jesus our old life, corrupted by sin, dies on the cross, and we are given Jesus’ resurrection life in return (Galatians 2:20). By his grace we are then given the power to live for the glory of God from that point onward and for all eternity, in love, satisfaction, and joy.