Romans 8:11, “But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you.”

I looked at the various terms in this verse:

Mortal bodies

The nature of our mortality was caused at the fall of man. When mankind chose sin instead of obedience to God, all creation came under a curse, we became slaves to sin and were separated from God, and also became subject to decay and death.
I am acutely aware of my own failings before God, known as sin, and I am painfully aware of being subject to bodily decay, and eventually to physical death.

The Spirit dwells in you

My response to this is amazement, to think that I, with all my limitations and severe failings, can have living in me the same almighty powerful spirit who raised Jesus from the dead, by simply trusting in Jesus. Some people might think it is boasting to claim that. But I don’t need to claim it, I simply accept it as a factual statement from the word of God.

Gives life to my mortal body

When I think of what has gone amiss in life, of poor decisions, opportunities missed, and hopes dashed, it would be easy to become despondent and bitter. And to make me more comfortable with that, it would be easy to try to justify all I had done, and thereby lock myself into continuing on that path, otherwise known as being a slave to sin.

But things have turned out very differently. When I stop looking at life in terms of selfish desires, I am amazed at how well things have turned out, I see I am very fortunate, and blessed in ways I do not deserve. There are so many opportunities and challenges that have made life fully alive and stimulating, and sometimes overwhelming. This has not come from selfish desire, but only as I seek to allow God to direct me.

Timing

So, giving life to my mortal body has already occurred in the present time. This accords with John 6:47, where Jesus says, “he who believes in Me has everlasting life.”

Eternal life is defined in John 17:3 as, “this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent”, so it is an intimate relationship with God through Jesus, that never ends, not even in bodily death. In John 11:26, Jesus says, “whoever lives and believes in Me shall never die.”

But the verses also point to a bodily resurrection from the grave, as John 6:40 says, “I will raise him up at the last day.”
The nature of that resurrection is given in 1 Corinthians 15:49: “we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven” and Philippians 3:21, “Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body that it may be conformed to His glorious body.”

The nature of God is timeless, or beyond time, and we are promised a life of that same nature. This explains why Jesus said to the thief on the cross in Luke 23:43, “today you will be with Me in Paradise.”

Impact

Paul is brutally realistic in his assessment of the impact of the resurrection. In 1 Corinthians 15:16-17, “If the dead do not rise, then Christ is not risen, and if Christ is not risen, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins!”, and 32, “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die!”

But he is equally realistic in the wonderful impact of its reality for believers, to be raised in glory and power.

And that changes our response from a downcast and hollow life of serving a body doomed to die, to a richly blessed and uplifting life of serving God whose Spirit lives in us, of doing His will in the time He gives us.

Praise God!
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