But we must attain the resurrection to life and glory. We must experience the power of Christ's resurrection now. As we are being changed into His death, a house from Heaven, an eternal weight of glory, is being created for us at the right hand of God. It is being created as a direct result of our sufferings and death in Christ.

If the resurrection of glory is being created in our inner man now, then when the Lord comes we will receive the fullness of life. Our house from Heaven will clothe our present body. Our house from Heaven will contain in itself the spiritual consequences and counterparts of presenting our body each day a living sacrifice to God. Our body from Heaven will reveal in itself the new man that has been formed directly from our faithful, patient continuance in service to Christ amid numerous tribulations and perplexities.

It is not that we merely stand at the Judgment Seat of Christ; it is, rather, that we are made manifest—revealed—at the Judgment Seat of Christ.

Those who continue to walk in the flesh after receiving Christ, will reap corruption. When they are raised from the dead they will receive in their bodies the consequences of their neglect of cross-carrying obedience to the Lord Jesus. They will be found naked in the Day of Christ. They had been taught it was sufficient to accept and state the facts of the Christian redemption without entering the actual redemptive life in Jesus. Now they, along with their teachers who misled them, will discover they are reaping precisely what they have sown before the Lord.

We do not "get what we say," as the current slogan has it. Rather, we get what we sow. This is what the Scriptures teach.

Here is the perfect righteousness of the Lord God of Heaven. Those who lay aside the world, losing their lives for the Gospel's sake, will receive back a hundredfold in glorious rewards. But those who choose to save their lives in the world will be ashamed in the Day of the Lord.

Let us look again at Paul's teaching, as found in the fifteenth chapter of the Book of First Corinthians.

"For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ will all be made alive."

But when are we "made alive" in Christ?

When we accept Jesus Christ as our Savior?

This is correct as far as our inner spiritual life is concerned, but it is not what the Scripture teaches here.

Look at the next verse:

But every man in his own order: Christ the firstfruits; afterward they that are Christ's at his coming. (I Corinthians 15:23)

When was Christ "made alive"? Christ always has been alive spiritually, so the expression must be referring to the point at which He walked out from the cave of Joseph of Arimathea.

When will the Christian be "made alive"? When his body arises and stands beside its grave. This will take place at the coming of the Lord from Heaven. We shall be made alive when the Lord comes. This is the teaching of I Corinthians 15:23. It is not true that the New Testament teaches only the entrance of Divine Life into our inner spiritual nature. Rather, the New Testament emphasizes also the coming of the Kingdom of God, that is, the entrance of the Life of Christ into our mortal body.

To be continued.