Last night, I had the opportunity to answer a question from a friend who is a new believer that had come out of Islam and his own type of atheism to eventually place his faith in Christ. He had a question about the work of the Holy Spirit as he was trying to understand the difference between the three persons of the Trinity, the three ways in which God shows himself to us.

My friend had asked what the Spirit does within us and I explained that, first and foremost, it is the Spirit of God that makes us alive before God. In our sins, we are dead and in Christ we are made alive, placing our faith and trust in his death and resurrection. As we do that, the Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit is given to us and we are marked as God’s people with a seal, a seal that represents the promise before God that we are his.

Of course, this comes straight from Ephesians 1 and 2 where we see that Paul says that we were dead in our transgressions and sins and yet, despite being dead, God makes us alive – spiritually alive – in Christ. As we stand before God, he sees us in Christ. He sees us alive.

But if we are in our sins, we are dead. There is nothing more that we can do. There is nothing that can be further done on our own to make ourselves come alive. We are dead.

But Christ makes us alive. He acts upon us as the one who can make the dead come alive, giving us the Holy Spirit as the seal, the confirmation, the actual life that is within us. It is the life that only God can give and it is the life by which we live as those who follow Jesus.

Of course, in this Easter season, it is an appropriate time to remember what Christ has done. Last Sunday marked “Palm Sunday”, remembering when Jesus entered into Jerusalem seated on a donkey as the people triumphantly waved palm branches in a demonstration of the coming king. This Friday will mark “Good Friday”, remembering Jesus’s death on the cross. And this coming Sunday will mark Christ’s resurrection, when Jesus was raised from the dead.

And so it is appropriate to remember that Jesus was the first amongst us who are raised from the dead. As we say that we are following Christ, we do, of course, mean that we desire to do what he says to do. In this way, we follow him, obeying him, demonstrating our love for him, just as he says that we must by doing what he commands us to do.

But there is another very important sense also in which we follow him, at least one other sense in which I want to note as I read from the story of Christ’s resurrection this morning. We follow Jesus in his death and resurrection.

“Don’t be alarmed,” he said. “You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified. He has risen! He is not here. See the place where they laid him.

Mark 16:6

If we remember that we were dead in our sins, and yet we were made alive in Christ, we can understand that we are actually spiritually following a similar path, similar steps that Jesus followed. Without deserving punishment, Jesus died as a perfect sacrifice. He did not sin, but yet he was killed on the cross, shedding his blood for our sins.

We, on the other hand, did deserve punishment. We deserved the death that we received because of the sins that we have committed. Thanks to God that he made a plan that would allow our sins to be paid for by Christ himself!

So we give thanks all the more because Jesus not only paid for our sins, he was raised from the dead. He was resurrected. He came back to life, and so in this same way, we follow Jesus. Because he paid for our sins, he allows us to come back to life as well. He allows us to live, and live forever. Like him, we no longer experience spiritual death. We will go on to live forever, eternally with him.

This is the amazing gift that he gives us. He gives us life. Life that continues on forever. Life that rips us away from the kingdom of darkness to come into the kingdom of God. Life that allows us live for him forever, glorifying him, living for him instead of living for myself. Once I was dead, but now, like Jesus, I have been risen to life to live in this way and for this purpose forever.