Rev. 1:18 - I am he that liveth, and was dead; and behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death.
	Rom. 8:1 - There is therefore no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus.
	As we are gathered together this Easter morning, in celebration of the resurrection of Our Lord Jesus Christ from the grave, it would seem appropriate to look into the effectiveness of that expression of the Love of God given to us and into us in such tremendous omnipotence through Christ. We should take our hearts before the Lord to seek after Him to deal with us in terms of whether or not we have come to such a position in Christ as to know, with a certainty, without doubt, without any wavering, that the work that He has accomplished has been fully instituted in our beings unto His glory.
	This begins, initially, as we are brought under the ministry of the Holy Spirit in order to open, in our hearts, the reality that there is something very wrong, a great vacuum in our lives. We find that we are searching and searching and never able to find satisfaction, or joy, or completeness in our lives. We may be a very good person by this world’s standards, but something is amiss, and the Holy Spirit faithfully works to bring forth the sense that we need Someone far beyond ourselves to bring a completeness of being. At the same time, the Holy Spirit works to show us that we are not the good person that we thought we were. There develops the reality that we are in need of someone to save us from whom we really are, and the wretched condition of which we consist.
	Having accomplished that, the Holy Spirit then faithfully leads us to the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. The reality of what took place, when God so loved us that He sent His only begotten Son to die for us, in our stead, and to redeem us unto God, unto Himself, opens into our hearts and beings. As we accept Christ, our void is filled, as God always intended, with Himself. The situations, the circumstances, the problems of this life that the Holy Spirit used to create our hunger after Christ have not changed, but our attitude and our striving after them have completely been transformed. We are no longer a part of this realm, in slavery to its every fickle whim and fancy.
	Rather, by the great love of Christ, evidenced in the omnipotence of His resurrection, we have been translated from this realm into the spiritual realm, seated in the heavenlies with Christ. Eph. 2:6 And hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus. While we still live in this earthly realm, we are no longer part of it. We are sojourners, travelers in it and certainly no longer subject to its slavery.
	That is the key of this morning’s consideration. The great power of Christ that broke asunder, into pieces, through His resurrection from the grave, all the power of this realm that was exerted to keep Him in death. Because nothing was able to deter the Love of God to raise Christ from the dead, and to place Him above all things, in both this realm and in the spiritual realm, therefore there exists no power or principality that could ever again subject Him in any manner to death nor condemnation. This is a fact. The scripture is filled with the truth of the power of God in Christ, in such abundance that no longer is there any avenue for doubt or intimidation to those who have accepted Him as our Lord and Savior. 
	You see, the truth is as simple as this, we are in Jesus Christ by virtue, not of our power, not of our good works, not of our worthiness, but only because He so loved us and chose to die for us and was raised from the dead for us and then accepted us into His Beloved when we accepted Him into our heart. There was no active power that we could ever exert to bring this reality into our lives. We simply responded as the Holy Spirit called unto us, and Christ has now become our life.
	This is the truth of Rom. 8:1. Its basis is not found in us  in any manner, but solely, and effectively in Christ. It is because we are in Him, that there is no longer any condemnation for us. This world can accuse, and slander, and defile our names and our conscience of our former acts as much as it will. But, because we are in Christ, because of His resurrection power at work in us, there is no longer a basis of any of that old garbage that we once carried around on our shirt sleeves for the world to see. Try as it might, and it will at every opportunity. The fact is that we are impregnable because we are in Christ. There is no vulnerability in Him. There is no weakness in Him. There is no character flaw in Him. In Him rests our hope. In Him rests our life. In Him rests our conscience. In Him rests our being. In Him rests our everything! 
	Too often, we view this scripture, and many other scriptures from the vantage point of this earthly realm. We are limited in our scope of sight, because we equate everything to this earth sphere of which we are traveling through. We place those limitations on God, with phrases like “Oh, this will never change,” or “That’s just the way I am, I can’t help it.” So many times, we fail to see that God is not limited in any manner by anything of this natural realm. 
	Human nature, what is that to God? He has given us a new nature, a perfect nature, the very nature of Christ to now indwell us. How can that be assailed by doubts and fears and terror? Only if we fail to apprehend the reality of Who is now living His life in us, will that thought even have access into our minds. We are not perfect and never will be perfect. That is another doubt that springs into our thoughts as we face the task of obedience to God, or obedience to our desires. The writer to the Hebrews addresses this issue in Chapter 13, verses 20+21:
Now the God of peace, that brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant, make you perfect in every good work to do his will, working in you that which is well pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ; to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.
	To often we use the excuse that we are only human beings with human desires and human attributes. The fact is that Christ, the only begotten of the Father, took upon Himself a body of human flesh. He faces every temptation that we face on a daily basis, and even much more severe ones because the enemy was not slack in every effort to find some avenue of a foothold in Christ, and yet Christ overcame all of the imperious attacks because of the great Love of the Father in Him. He is the One by Whom we now are to live our life on this earth.
	In no wise am I stating that we are transformed into gods of ourselves. Rather, we are to get ourselves fully unto Christ for Him to live His life out from us. There is to be evidenced a working of His perfection in us. No avenue for the excuse of humanity and human nature, because we are dead to that, and all the enslaving power that the old nature held over us. Now, in Christ, we are freed to live the life that God always intended for us in Jesus Christ. It is a live of perfection, not of ourselves, but of Christ living His life in us. It is a life of resistance to temptations, by the power of the Holy Spirit operating effectively in us. It is a life of obedience, not because of consequences or because of expectations, but rather because we love to obey the Father because we so love Him, as He so fully loved us in Christ. It is a life of righteousness, peace, and joy in every circumstance, instance and situation because we now live by the power of the Holy Spirit and have been translated from this realm into the heavenly realm in Jesus Christ.
	These are elements that are not just to dream about, neither are they simply wonderful goals upon which to set our minds. These are the truth, the effective reality of the resurrected life of Christ. As He was raised from the dead, after suffering so cruelly on the Cross, in order to redeem us unto God, so are we to have Him manifest His victory today, now, this very moment in our lives. His victory over death was but the evidence of the power of His life. As the sepulcher could not keep Him in its grasp, so our hearts can not keep Him locked in. Rather, we are to be the living witnesses of the King of kings and Lord of lords Who now has His abode in our beings. We are to set aside all those elements of fear, uncertainty, doubt and accusations that are part of the old humanity, and now live in the resurrection power of Christ who also raised us from our spiritual death by His awesome power and placed us at His own right Hand in the heavenlies.
	We need to celebrate the great power of God in Christ over death, not in word and song alone, but in our life as we live by His power in all the newness of His life today. The world can cast aspirations and accusations upon us, just as it heaped them upon Christ those centuries ago, but it can never find a shred of reality in those lies, because we are now as fully victorious in Him now, as He was then in being raised from the dead to reign for eternity over all powers on earth and in heaven. His victory is complete and it is final and it is as effective today as on that glorious day of His resurrection. We are called to live in Him and to allow no avenue to doubt or accusation to overwhelm us because we are to recognize only the fact that Christ now lives His life in us. 
	
	Rev. 1:18 - I am he that liveth, and was dead; and behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death.
	Rom. 8:1 - There is therefore no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus.