What a wonderful way to complete a gospel. The story of the God who descended from heaven to earth concludes with the assurance: “And behold, am I with thee every day until the end of the century?”(Matthew 28:20). Although Jesus was about to ascend, Matthew wants us to hear that the closeness of Christ’s incarnation continues; he, who is Emmanuel, God with us, promises to live up to his name; Jesus would soon return to heaven, while his disciples went into the world on an evangelical mission, but they would not take separate paths. Jesus and his brethren could not be separated by the distance between the kingdom of the world and the kingdom of heaven, how could that be?
Jesus’ missionary instructions can be correctly translated: “Baptize them in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit? (28. 19). It gives us a meaningful understanding of conversion and the sign and seal of baptism. Our lives are moved when we are united to Jesus by the Spirit, by faith. We are placed in Jesus. So now our life is hidden with Christ in God? (Colossians 3. 3). Is Paul writing strongly about this reality when he affirms that the Father has delivered us from the empire of darkness and has transported us to the kingdom of the Son of his love? (1. 13). It is as if God is sending a speeding truck to take us from the wicked, perverted and sin-ruined neighborhood to the spacious streets of freedom in Christ. Does Peter describe him as God calls us, from darkness to his wonderful light? (1 Peter 2. 9). Jesus himself expresses this change of direction in life in an even more mystical way: “On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you, in me, and I, in you. ” (John 14:20). These verses add some texture to the phrase Paul uses so often: We are now in Christ.
- Jesus is with us every day because it is in Jesus that I live.
- Believers are united to him once and for all.
- Jesus returned to heaven and took us spiritually with him.
- What a mystery!” And while we were dead in our crimes.
- [God] gave us life with Christ [?] And with him.
- He resurrected us and made us sit in heavenly places in Christ Jesus?(Ephesians 2.
- 5-6).
- Yes.
- It’s a spiritual reality now.
- Just as my body obviously stays here on the ground.
- One day.
- Of course.
- The union will be completed when we receive our resurrected bodies.
- So that we may be eternally in immediate communion with Jesus and among us.
Meanwhile, while we are on earth, Jesus remains with us through His Spirit, who sent us. Paul writes: “God’s love is poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, which has been given to us” (Romans 5. 5). . Is the Spirit jesus’ personal presence?Stay with us. Through the Spirit, the Father and the Son have established their residence in us (John 14:23). Christians, individually and collectively, as a church, are a home in which the eternal exchange of love between the peoples of the Trinity is revealed; the Holy Spirit in us holds us united to Jesus, who entered heaven with his resurrected body; lifts us continuously to see that our true life is there, in Christ.
The biblical understanding that Jesus is with us is very different from any idea that Jesus’ presence serves only as a fruitful stimulus for the life I am trying to build for me. “Am I with you every day? I have a miniature of Jesus stored in me to inspire me in the midst of my ambitions or to comfort myself when things do not go as I please; instead, my little life is before the greatness of Jesus. He is so deeply with us because, through the Spirit, we are in Christ. My goal in life, therefore, is motivated by your mission to your people.
So I am expelled from my comfortable home, where I would like to stay while Jesus comforts me, and sends me to my grumpy neighbor so that I can bear witness to him with the awareness that Jesus loves him as much as I do. “I’m with you as you love me. “
Jesus goes with me from my relatively safe street to this violent neighborhood full of threatening outlaws. “Make a tent here, ” he whispers, “just as I made myself a meat shop in a destroyed world. This may mean opening a school, sports center or medical clinic in your name.
Exactly where I don’t want to go, Jesus is already here, he even sends me to dedicate myself to people who mock the mere mention of his name, I would like to avoid them, get away from the controversies. The Lord who continues to sow confusion in the world he has come to claim reminds me: “You are in me and I send my gospel into the world. So can you trust me to be with you in these delicate situations?”
Jesus is with us every day, first and foremos shether His Spirit has united us in his life and, therefore, his mission.