Each one of God's saints must come to know the power of Christ's resurrection. Also, each one must come to experience the fellowship of His sufferings. The resurrection Life of Christ flows from our crucifixion with Him.

It is the resurrection life that proves Jesus to be the Son of God. It is the power of an indestructible life that makes both Melchizedek and Jesus the priests of God. It is the power of eternal life that proves the saints are chosen of God. All who envy the spiritual authority and power of the members of the Wife of the Lamb will be brought to nothing. It is life—God's Life—that proves who has been chosen of God.

Who is made, not after the law of a fleshly commandment, but after the power of an endless life. (Hebrews 7:16)

There is no other way. God's power works through our confusion, our weakness, our helplessness. Every day we are brought in some manner to the dying of the Lord Jesus so that His living power may have opportunity to come forth according to the needs of the moment.

Resurrection life cannot be gained merely by an assent to correct doctrine, although there is a place for correctness of doctrine. The resurrection force of God works in the spirit, soul, and body of people because it is in the deepest parts of the personality that God creates eternal truth. God perseveres with us until the instincts of our nature are righteous rather than rebellious and self-centered.

Death, and life! Death, and life! Death, and life! The process goes on day by day. We have been crucified with Christ, and our new life is His resurrection life. That much we understand mentally from studying the sixth chapter of Romans.

God presses us on the hot mold of circumstances until the crucifixion with Christ and the resulting resurrection with Christ are of substance in us. Death with Christ and resurrection with Christ are fashioned in us while we are subject to the problems of the material world. Our "wilderness wanderings" produce eternal virtue in us.

Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body. For we which live are alway delivered to death for Jesus' sake, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal flesh. (II Corinthians 4:10,11)

God is bringing us into the death of Christ so that His resurrection life may be revealed in us. The eternal life being created in us is communicated to other people.

The resurrection life of Jesus that flowed from Paul's many afflictions, trials, imprisonments, sufferings, found expression in Paul's epistles—a source of Divine Life for multiplied millions of people. Paul's willingness to follow Christ into the fullness of death has resulted in the fullness of the Life of Jesus being brought to the nations of the earth for two thousand years.

In the Day of the Lord, resurrection life will clothe our mortal body. We then shall be redeemed completely. In view of our coming total redemption, which will include the redemption of our mortal body that gives us so much trouble at the present time, we need to be sowing to the Spirit of God and not to the lusts of our flesh.

To be continued.