12.3 Made from Victory

To God be thanks, however, the One giving us the victory through our Lord, Jesus Christ (1 Corinthians 15:57). – That death might be eaten up by life (2 Corinthians 5:4). (That Life might have death for lunch.) – Good grace and thanks be to God, who always leads us in the triumphal procession inside of Christ, with the aroma of His knowledge being made visible through us in every place (2 Corinthians 2:14).

God would not give us Victory, nor would He lead us in the celebration of Victory, unless we were designed specifically for Victory and Victory for us. Victory is a culmination and a completion; Victory makes us complete.

Great Conflict. Yet there is no real victory without great conflict and the very real possibility of losing. Let’s position two of our victories.

And it was given to [the beast] to make war against the holy ones and to overcome them. And authority was given to it over every tribe and people and tongue and nation. – And I saw… those who have the victory over the beast and over its image, and over the number of its name (Revelation 13:7 & 15:2). – Death has been swallowed up into and eliminated by victory. Where of you, O death, is the victory? Where of you, O death, is the sting?” …To God be thanks, however, the One giving us the victory through our Lord, Jesus Christ (1 Corinthians 15:54-57).

Most people I have known would put their money on death and the beast as the winners in this grossly lop-sided contest.

Designed to Live. Death, of course, is the real killer, and if you kill death before it kills you, then all the stratagems of the evil one and all the supply and whips of the world fall as nothing.

But look again at 1 Corinthians 15. – Victory kills death and eliminates it. The clear teaching of the gospel is that the goal of the believer is the defeat of death. Look down at your body of flesh right now. Think of that flesh altering from a dying body to a living body, a body that is incapable of dying. You see, this is the crux of the matter. God did NOT design you to die. God designed you to live.

Out From Victory. It is human nature and design to live and not die; death is an aberration. Death is our enemy. But God did not just design us in our nature to live, that is, “just staying alive.” God carefully fabricated us in intricate detail to live forever OUT FROM Victory over death. To live out from Resurrection is to live out from Victory over death.

But Victory has three parts. Victory is the moment before, the moment of, and the moment after. The next chapter, “Weakness and Faith,” includes the critical understanding of the moment before Victory, for faith inside of weakness is our human design forever. The revelation of God comes no other way.

Victory over Death. It is my human nature and design to defeat death. More than that, it is my human nature and design to live forever out from Victory over death, that is, resurrection. This is clearly the simple truth of the gospel.

This brings us three questions, then. First, what is victory over death? Second, why did God design us to live forever out from victory over death? And third, how are we designed to live forever out from victory over death?

Now, 2 Corinthians 2:14, part of the ruling verses of the Bible, teaches us about the moment before victory over death. Then, our first question, the what of victory over death, pertains to the moment of, but the why and the how pertain to the moment after.

Resurrection Life. Victory over death is another way to say resurrection. And thus we are asserting, and must assert, that resurrection is NOT a reaction to something contrary.

Jesus was not “raised from the dead” because He died, but because He lives forevermore. But that “living forevermore” is a different kind of living, a kind of living that is known no other way. – I am the first and the last; and the living One, and I was dead, behold I am living into the ages belonging to the ages, and I possess the keys of death and of hades (Revelation 1:17-18 – rough JSV). Jesus’ resurrection is the starting point of all that is new.

The Greatest Privilege. I just changed the title of this lesson from “Made for Victory” to “Made from Victory.” Here is why. The gospel presents the greatest privilege ever known by any created being given to some who do not die.

Here are three of the primary verses that demonstrate such an incredible actuality. Everyone living and believing into Me, never shall die into the age (John 11:26). – We will not all die; we all, however, will be changed… (1 Corinthians 15:51). – We do not desire to be unclothed [lose the physical part of our bodies] but to be clothed, that what is dying may be swallowed up, drunk down and consumed by LIFE (2 Corinthians 5:4).

Resurrection without Death. Then, continuing in 2 Corinthians 5, Paul says this, “The One having now prepared us, that is, having achieved and worked out already for this same thing, is God, having given to us the earnest payment of the Spirit, the security of the whole.”

God prepared you and me, that is, designed us, that is, it is our human nature to know a life of Victory over death forever, not by being raised from the dead, but by never dying. The Resurrection Life of Jesus is so great and so all-consuming, and so ALL that we are, that it simply sucks death out of our “dying” bodies and spits it out into the empty grave. How can I express this meaning. – This Resurrection Life, Life out from the dead, demonstrates its original all-ness by becoming the LIFE of those who do not die.

The Proving of Christ. Our physic being swallowed up by life without ever dying, then, is the primary and the most essential event in history that is the PROVING of Christ Jesus faithful and true. Paul said that God has prepared us for this very thing. That is, it is our human design and nature to be the proof of Christ inside of creation, and that proof is the moment we put on incorruptible life.

Then, the apocalypse of Jesus, His revelation, is best translated as the unveiling, that is, the cover being removed so that what has been true all along is made visible to all. This is the same thing, and it’s about LIFE triumphing over death inside our personal experience.

Not a Reversal. Not yet having experienced this most critical outward event, I can say little more about what victory over death, that is, resurrection, might be. And so we turn to the why and the how. The why goes back to the garden and the first entrance of death. Except we do not look at a reversal of Adam’s folly, but rather the Life for which Adam was made but rejected.

So He drove out the man; and He placed cherubim at the east of the garden of Eden, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to guard the way to the tree of life (Genesis 3:24). Then, as Jesus said, “Narrow is the gate and pressed in is the way by which one is led into life…” And then He said, “I am the Way.” – And “I am the Life.”

From God to Us. Jesus also said, “I am the resurrection and the life” (John 11).

Yet that is the background for the how. Except, we have rejected the idea that the serpent’s challenge is the real why. Yes, the serpent’s challenge as it has continued is, “Not here, not now, and not me.” – “Not on this earth; not in human flesh.” And against such a challenge, God is determined to prove Jesus faithful and true – indeed the Word He sends cannot do anything other than return to Him fulfilled.

But as we have asserted, Resurrection Life does not come as a reaction to death; neither does the proving of Christ in us come as a reaction to the serpent’s challenge. All of it comes out of God as He is to become us as we are.

The Depths of Self-Respect. God neither intended nor needed Adam’s death to demonstrate that the Life He places inside of us is Life that defeats death. But we needed to know that God designed us to contain and to reveal this very Life, Life that defeats and eliminates death.

From the last lesson, we could say, “I fight; therefore I am.” But, we do not mean a free-for-all fight as is known in hades. But consider the solidity and depths of the self-respect of the individual that knows all through his or her being, “I have defeated death, and I am alive forevermore. Now, I fight for others to be free.” This is the self-respect of the One who is Life inside of us and who places His same self-respect upon us for REAL.

Self-Respect. What is God-filled self-respect? And what does it mean to be made from, not just for, Victory? These are two questions that have never entered my knowing prior to writing this chapter. We wait upon God for the answers.

Self-respect and God-respect are two sides of the same thing operating inside the person we are in the center of our hearts. A lack of respect towards self is called dishonesty, and a lack of respect towards God is called unbelief. John saw that lying and unbelief are the two things that will never know the City of Life. Then – These follow the Lamb wherever He may go [faith]. …In their mouth was not found any lie or falseness or pretending; blameless they are [without guile] in the presence of the throne of God (Revelation 14:4-5).

Worth and Dignity. Here is another way to say “Follow the Lamb wherever He may go.” – And we also are committed. And again – Made from Victory.

I respect God by my confidence that every Word He speaks is fulfilled in me in all completion as the Lord Jesus Christ, now the only life I am. This confidence is specific towards every word. I respect myself in my knowing that I am made out of the costliest quality in all reality – Life having been raised out from the dead. My worth and my dignity are beyond all measure. I am not just made for the Lamb Slain; I am made from the Lamb Slain, alive forevermore. I am made inside of Him, and I am made of and out from Him.

I Am Worthy. It is my human nature to eliminate death, for I am of the Life that does nothing else. How am I made out from Victory over death, that is, out from Resurrection? I could say, “Let me count the ways,” but that is a question I’ve never known before. It is the Lamb Slain whom I receive into myself, but He does not enter as ‘slain,’ but as Resurrection – to become me.

“Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, because You were slain and you bought [us] to God inside Your blood” (Revelation 5:9). The scroll is Christ written upon my heart, but the WORTH and VALUE of this Jesus is given to me, the personal me inside, before He ever begins to open what is written.

The Pinch-Point. It is evident that I have opened a vast topic in this lesson, and that I am leaving it completely unfinished and unexplained. That is as it must be. Nonetheless, I expect to find thoughts of how we are made from Victory over death underlying much of the remainder of this text.

The next chapter, “Weakness and Faith,” will include the ‘moment before’ part of resurrection as the primary example of how God reveals Himself through faith inside of weakness. Indeed, the Word written upon our hearts has taken on a much more focused meaning. Every Word God speaks targets down to one specific point and then explodes forever out from that one point. And that pinch-point is our physical resurrection.