10 For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God.
but the life that He lives [keeps on living His resurrection life], He lives [keeps on living] to God.
On the contrary and by contrast, eternal life follows Jesus’ one-time death, and He keeps on living (present tense) by resurrection life in time and eternity. Death no longer has any power over the Lord Jesus. The resurrection life of Christ is eternal in quality and everlasting in length.
Re 1:18, I am He who lives, and was dead, and behold, I am alive forevermore. Amen. And I have the keys of Hades and of Death.
Jesus’ death had to do with sin, whereas His resurrection life has to do with living for God’s glory in a particular sense.
PRINCIPLE:
Our identification in living with Christ necessarily involves living “to God.”
APPLICATION:
Just as Jesus lived His life to God, so the believer must do the same. When it comes to living to God, Christians should share the same dynamics as their Lord. Death has no dominion over the daily life of the believer. Christians can appropriate that power in our daily issues. No matter how bleak our past, we can live in the resurrected life of Christ in time. The believer operates on two different kinds of positional truth:
Christ paid for our sins once and forever on the cross—we have the status of identity with Christ when He died.
Christ lives a resurrected life before God, interceding for the believer—Christ continually intercedes for us because of our status as resurrected with Him.
Christians have the ongoing power of Jesus’ resurrection to live their Christian lives in time.
Php 3:10, that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death . . .
