Your Greatest Life Is Ahead

As a believer in Christ, your death is behind you. It has already happened, and your life is not what the world thinks it is. It's hidden from the world. Indeed, it's hidden from you, with Christ in God. So that's the reality. Death behind you, your life hidden from the world, from you. What you see in the mirror is not your life. It is with Christ in God. Verse three, you have died. So the worst is behind you, no matter how much you must suffer in this life. Verse one, you have been raised with Christ. The resurrection that you await is as sure as the one you have already experienced. Verse three, second half of the verse, your life is hidden with Christ in God, as secure as the union of the Father and the Son. Infinitely glorious and secure, but not yet manifest. It is hidden. Now the reason I said all of this reality is for you as a believer, not for everybody. Not everybody's life is hidden with Christ in God, is because of two words in verse 12, and I invite you to look at it. Chapter 2, verse 12. This verse, by way of parenthesis, is one of the main reasons I'm still a Baptist, having gone to three schools in which I wasn't necessarily encouraged to be one, especially the last one in Munich. I was the only Baptist, and it was a sect. Baptists are sects. This verse they could not answer, not to my satisfaction anyway. You were buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith. It's not your parents' faith. In the powerful working of God, who raised him from the dead. So baptism signifies, by immersion in water and the coming up out of the water, I'm standing on that pool right here, it signifies that we died, we were buried, we rose, and Paul makes explicit that the internal instrument of the Holy Spirit that unites us to Christ so that that reality of death and rising is our reality, is through faith. It isn't the water that did that. It isn't the priest who did that, and it isn't your parents who did that. By faith we are united to Christ so that we died and we rose when he died and he rose. One of the greatest realities in the universe is that you and every believer, you have passed from death to life. 1st John 3:14. The most terrible experience of death is behind you. Your most glorious experience of life awaits you. No matter how horrible the suffering and death that awaits you, it is nothing compared to what lies behind you. No matter how ecstatic this life may prove to be for you, it is nothing compared to the life that is hidden with God in Christ, ready to be revealed when he comes. Getting a hold of this reality, being held by this reality is utterly crucial for your survival as a Christian. You won't be a Christian without this reality. You'll become a legalist without this reality, or an unbeliever. It's essential to thriving in the ministry to others. Two great glories bracket your life. They hold up the pain, the frustration, the ambiguities, the uncertainties. Say that again. Your life is bracketed by two great realities, and in the middle here, pain, frustration, ambiguity, uncertainty. Behind you is the glory that your death is over. It's over. You've died. It's over. And in front of you, above you, is the glory that your life is absolutely secure in God with Christ, will be revealed in glory when he comes. Those are the brackets that hold the hiddenness. That's such an important word.