Devotional December 25

🌲Happy Holidays🌲

"But we look for, according to his promises, new heavens and new earth, in which righteousness dwells" (2 Peter 3:13).

 THE RESURRECTION AND THE RESTORATION OF RELATIONS

 From the earliest days of the church, the promise of Christ's return has sustained the heart of the fel people of God, perhaps more than anything else, especially during the trials.

 Beyond his frightful struggles, beyond his inconsolable grief and pain, he had the hope of the return of Christ and all the wonderful promises contained in the Second Coming.

 Read 1 Thessalonians 4:13 to 18. What promises are included in this passage? What do they tell us about the hope of re-establishing relationships?

 1 Thessalonians 4: 13-18

 13 Brothers, we do not want you to remain without knowing what happens with the dead, so that you do not grieve like the others, those who have no hope.

 14 Just as we believe that Jesus died and rose again, so we also believe that God is going to resurrect with Jesus those who died believing in him.

 15 For this reason we say to you, as the Lord's teaching, that we who are alive until the coming of the Lord will not go ahead of those who died.

 16 For a voice of command shall be heard, the voice of an archangel, and the sound of the trumpet of God, and the Lord himself shall come down from heaven. And those who died believing in Christ, will be resurrected first;

 17 later, those of us who have remained alive will be taken, together with them, in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air; and so we will be with the Lord forever.

 18 So encourage each other with these words.

 The second coming of Christ will affect all humanity in a profound way. An important aspect of the establishment of the Kingdom of God is the gathering of the elect.

"And he shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other" (Matthew 24:31). At the time of this meeting, the righteous dead will be resurrected and receive immortality (1 Cor 15:52, 53).

"The dead in Christ will rise first" (1 Thessalonians 4:16). This is the moment we have all been waiting for. The resurrected will meet those who have been longing for his presence and his love. This is how Paul rejoices in this event: "Where is your sting, O death? Where, O sepulcher, is your victory? "(1 Corinthians 15:55).

 It is not the sick, aged and disfigured bodies that descended to the grave those who are resurrected, but new, immortal and perfect bodies that are no longer marked by the sin that caused their decadence. The resurrected saints experience the fulfillment of Christ's restoration work, which re fl ects the perfect image of God designed in Creation (Gen. 1:26, 1 Cor 15: 46-49).

 At the time of Jesus' second advent, when the redeemed dead are resurrected, the righteous who are alive on Earth will be transformed, and they will also receive new and perfect bodies. "For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality" (1 Cor 15:53).

 Then, these two groups of the redeemed, the righteous resurrected and transformed, "will be caught up together [...] in the clouds to receive the Lord in the air, and thus we will always be with the Lord" (1 Thessalonians 4:17).

 In our scientific age, even some Christians try to find a natural explanation for everything, even "miracles". What does the promise of the resurrection teach us about why only the supernatural acts of God can save us?

Shared from # ES7

Helen Feliz
Redes @chili_helen
esquinadehelen.blogspot.com