Mike Parsons
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When he was resurrected, I was resurrected
When I used to think about the resurrection, my focus was very much on what Jesus did—overcoming death and defeating sin, and all of that. But as I’ve experienced more of what Jesus did, and my part in it, I’ve come to realise that I was included in it. So when Jesus died, I died. When he was buried, I was buried. When he was resurrected, I was resurrected.
I’m the same as the whole of mankind in receiving what happened at the resurrection. It wasn’t just an individual thing for people who would, in the future, accept what Jesus did on the cross and through the resurrection. It happened as Jesus was resurrected.
I am going to prepare a place for you
He promised to come back and bring people into a resurrection relationship with the Father. I think John 14 is the best illustration of that—Jesus promising that he was going to go away, go to the cross, come back and take them to be where he was. “Where I am,” he said, “you may be also.” Now, “I am” was not a physical location. It wasn’t a spiritual location either—it was a relational position.
In John 14, Jesus talks about “I am in the Father and the Father’s in me.” But people have taken John 14 to mean, “Oh, Jesus has gone into heaven, and one day he’s going to build a house there for us, so we can all go and live in that house—in our house in heaven. He’s going to come back and take us there.”
That teaching has placed what Jesus did in the resurrection solely in the future, after we die, when we get physically resurrected. So we expect death and resurrection in the future, based on what Jesus did. But actually, that’s a completely wrong understanding of that passage. The passage is really talking about the union of relationship we have within “I am.”
It was a union thing, because John 14:1–3 is a marriage statement. In the Hebrew marriage tradition, when a couple got betrothed, the bridegroom would go and build a house—usually attached to his father’s house. He would say, “I am going away to prepare a place for you,” to his future wife. And she would say, “When are you coming again to take me to yourself?”
Now, this was a well-known understanding at the time. But we often read John 14 in today’s culture and completely misunderstand it. Jesus was basically saying, “I am going to the cross, and through the cross I’m going to prepare you to be a place where I can dwell—where you will be in ‘I am’ just as I am in ‘I am’ with the Father.”
On that day
Later on in the chapter, he says, “On that day you will know that I am in you, and you are in me, and we’re in the Father.” On that day—that was the resurrection day. He literally came back, went into heaven, received the kingdom and then came to his disciples and breathed onto them, saying, “Receive the Holy Spirit.”
That was the moment where the disciples became representatives of the new man in Christ. Whereas Adam had been the representative of the old man when God breathed into him — everyone died in Adam. When Adam walked into death, everyone died in him. But everyone has been made alive in Christ.
So the whole of mankind was represented in Christ when he went into death, into the grave, and was resurrected. And when Jesus breathed onto the disciples, they experienced the Holy Spirit filling them, or coming into them. The whole of mankind had the Spirit come into them, but they didn’t know—because they didn’t have the relationship with Jesus or the Spirit that the disciples had.
The disciples already had a relational connection, which became very different, because God came to dwell in them. But God came to dwell in all mankind. Most of mankind has not come into a knowledge or experience of that, even though it’s true. But God is at work in everybody to reveal that truth.
Resurrection applies to everyone
So the power of the resurrection over physical death applies to everyone. If we embrace what Jesus did and partake of it, then we also don’t need to die. Jesus basically said, “If you eat my flesh and drink my blood”—in other words, if you partake of me—then you won’t die.
Immortality is a consequence of embracing the power of the resurrection. Jesus overcame death, and we were in him overcoming death. Now, to start with, you could say that was spiritual death, but it didn’t stay spiritual. Jesus’s death wasn’t just spiritual—his body died. That meant that when his body was resurrected, it was the firstfruits of our resurrection.
The teaching of the church over the last thousand or so years has lessened what Jesus said and made the power of the resurrection only really about salvation. It hasn’t applied it to wholeness, health or immortality. So the thinking has become: “Well, I get spiritual life. But I’m going to die again, and I’ll go to heaven, where the resurrection will take place for me.”
Whereas actually, it is designed to take place now. Jesus being transfigured before he went to the cross was an illustration of that—that we are to be transfigured and become who God intended us to be—as light, if you like, as God is light.
Mike’s latest book, Unconditional Love, is out now as an ebook on our website and will soon be available to order in paperback from your local or online bookseller.
More details at eg.freedomarc.org/books
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Sons of Issachar 