The Lord Jesus is the First and the Last, and He became dead and behold, He is living forever and ever; death could not hold Him, He is resurrection life itself, and He is the living One, for He is living forever and is living in us, making us the testimony of the living Jesus!
Lord Jesus, thank You for being the living One! Hallelujah, Christ went through death, but death could not hold Him, for He is resurrection and life! Amen, Lord, we praise You for not only dying for us but also entering into resurrection! Praise the Lord, now Christ is the living One! Hallelujah, Christ as the living One lives in us, making us living! Amen, Lord, make us the testimony of the living Jesus on the earth today! Amen!
It is so encouraging and edifying for us to know that Christ is the First and the Last and the living One. This is not just something that the Bible says concerning Christ; this is our daily experience.
In our daily living as believers in Christ, we give Christ the first place. We make Him first. In big and small decisions, we open to Him and we give Christ the preeminence, for He is the First. And we let Him have the last word in everything.
We bring all things to Him, we open to Him, we listen to His voice, we follow His leading, and we let Him have the last word. He is the First, the Last, and everything in between.
He is the Beginning and He is the End. He originated our human life and also our spiritual life. We take Him as the Source and originator in all things. And we believe that, what He has begun in us, He will also do!
Praise the Lord, He who has begun this good work in us, will also bring it to consummation!
We may look at our situation or condition, we may see how much we fail, and it may seem that we may not be improving in our Christian life. But we trust in the Lord, not in what we see.
We live not by sight but by faith. We exercise our spirit of faith to believe into the Lord, take Him as our life and our everything, and allow Him to do all things in us.
He is the Beginning, and He is also the end. He began our Christian life, He originated our Christian faith, and He will also bring it to consummation.
We trust in Him, we belong to Him, we look away unto Him, and we let Him do everything in us. Praise the Lord!
Today we want to see what does it mean that Christ became dead and now He is living forever and ever, and how we can be the testimony of the living Jesus.
Christ became Dead and now He is Living Forever and Ever: Death cannot Hold Him, for He is the Resurrection!
In Revelation 1:18 we see that Christ became dead and, behold, He is living forever and ever. Praise the Lord, He died, but He also resurrected, and now He is living forever and ever!
The Christ who walks in the midst of churches, who is the Head of the churches and to whom the churches belong, is the living One. The Lord Jesus suffered death and lived again (Rev. 1:18).
He delivered Himself to be put to death, He entered into death, but death could not hold Him (Acts 2:24). He entered into death, but God raised Him up, having loosed the pangs of death, since it was not possible for Him to be held by it. Praise the Lord!
Why could death not hold Him? It is because Christ is the resurrection and the life (John 11:25). Resurrection is the lengthening of His days.
Just as He existed from eternity, so He will exist forever and ever in His resurrection.
God wanted to dispense His life into man, but He could not do it as God; He had to become a man, go through human living, death, and resurrection, and be the living One.
As the living One, He can dispense life to others, and His life is a death-overcoming life! Praise the Lord!
Christ paid a tremendous price for each one of us. He died for our redemption. He became dead and behold, He is now living and ever forever.
The Christ who lives in us, the Christ who is living and active in our being, is the Christ who became dead and then was resurrected. He suffered death and lived again (Rev. 2:8).
The One who came into us as the life-giving Spirit is not a dead person but a living person. Jesus Christ today is the living One, the One who is in resurrection.
If we realise that He is the living One who is in resurrection, we will open to Him to make us living as He is living! Praise the Lord! Jesus Christ today is the living One, the One who is in resurrection.
For Christ to dispense life into us and make us His living Body, He must be the living One. We can experience His dispensing today, and this dispensing is full of life to make us living.
If we just open to Him, He will impart His life into our spirit to make our spirit life (Rom. 8:10). If we set our mind on our spirit, even our mind becomes life (v. 6). And He will impart life even to our mortal body to make our body life (v. 11).
Every day we have a day of living under the divine dispensing to be living as He is living. As we open to His dispensing, He is reaching the depths of our being.
On His side, the Lord Jesus went through death and entered into resurrection (Acts 2:24-32). God raised up Jesus. Also, He rose from the dead (vv. 40-41).
As a man, Christ was raised up by God from the dead (Rom. 8:11). As God, Christ Himself rose from the dead (1 Thes. 4:14). He is both human and divine. He just could not be held by death.
Death tried to hold Him back, but He is both God and resurrection, possessing the indestructible life (Heb. 7:16). He is the ever-living One, and death is not able to hold Him.
He delivered Himself to death, but death could not detain Him; rather, He rose up from the dead. Praise the Lord!
Such a One is now in us. He wants to dispense His death-overcoming life into us to make us living as He is living.
We are mingled with Him as one spirit. The indwelling Christ as the life-giving Spirit wants to saturate our spirit more and more; at the same time, He is removing any death from our spirit and soul and body.
This is why we need to open to Him and just give Him our consent. We just need to praise Him for what He is and open to Him to dispense His life into us!
Lord Jesus, we open to You. We open to Your divine dispensing. We praise You for being the living One! Hallelujah, Christ went through death and became dead, but then He became living and now He lives forever and ever! We open to You. We open to Your life-imparting. Impart more of Your life into our mind, emotion, and will. Remove any death from our being. Oh Lord, we praise You for overcoming death and entering into resurrection! Praise the Lord, death had no way in Christ, and now death has no way in us, for Christ lives in us! Amen, Lord, may we live one spirit with You today! Keep us in our spirit, joined to You as one spirit. Have access to the depths of our being. Reach the deepest parts, Lord, and dispense Yourself as death-overcoming life into us. Amen, Lord Jesus, we open to You as the indwelling life-giving Spirit. Give life to every part of our being. May Your life from our spirit spread into our thinking, our feelings, and our decisions to saturate every part!
Live by Christ by Living in Spirit to be the Testimony of the Living Jesus Today
How wonderful and how glorious it is that Christ could not be held by death but rose from it in resurrection! He became dead, but now He lives forever and ever, for death could not hold Him – He’s the resurrection and the life! Amen!
We need to realise that the Christ we believe into and to whom we are joined as one spirit is the living One, the One who lives forever and ever!
On the one hand, Christ is living in the heavens at the right hand of the throne of God; on the other hand, He is the living One in our spirit. He is living forever and ever, and He is living in us!
He’s not only the One enthroned in the heavens, far above all; He is also the One living in us and making us living.
He did not only overcome death when He was on earth and went through Hades; He wants to overcome any kind of death in us.
He is resurrection life to us and in us for us to come out of any death victoriously and be living even as He is living.
Because the living Christ is in us, the church, we are the testimony of the living Jesus. The importance of Christ’s being the living One is that He is living forever and is living in us! Amen!
Christ lives in us; what a salvation is this, that Christ lives in us (Gal. 2:20)! He is not only in us, but He lives in us. He is making His home in us (Eph. 3:14-17), and He wants to live in us to be expressed through us.
We all need to realise that Christ is living in us. He is in our spirit, and He wants to spread into our mind, emotion, and will, so that we think the same way He does, we feel the same way He feels, and we decide things one with Him.
Sadly to say, many times He is imprisoned in our spirit, for we do not allow Him to spread into our mind with its thinking, our emotion with its feelings, and our will with all its decisions.
He wants not only to visit us and remain in our spirit; He wants to reconstitute, redecorate, and redo our entire inner being by spreading from our spirit into every inward part of our being.
May we allow the Lord to function, work, and operate in us in this way. May we open our inward parts to Him so that He may live in us. May we focus our whole being on Him.
May we live one spirit with Him in all things so that the One who lives forever and ever would also live in us, making us the testimony of the living Jesus.
In a practical way, this involves our exercising our spirit to contact the Lord and also pray-read the Word, so that the word would divide our soul from our spirit.
We want the word to expose what the soul is and what is of the spirit, and we want to live in our mingled spirit.
As we exercise our spirit, He spreads into our mind to all our memories and thoughts, into our will with our decisions and stubbornness, and into our emotions with our feelings and dislikes.
May we turn our heart to the Lord so that the veil may be taken away and we would behold the Lord face to face (2 Cor. 3:16-18).
As we behold Him in our spirit, we are transformed into His image from glory to glory, and He spreads into every part of our being.
He exposes darkness and death, and he removes anything that is not of Him. Christ as the ever-living One wants us to leave every kind of death and rise up to be the living church.
The living Jesus is producing and building up a living church! Amen! The more living we are, the more we are the testimony of the living Jesus (Rev. 12:11).
The way for us to be living, even to be the testimony of the living Jesus, is for us to live by Christ, that is, to let Christ live in us. First, we need to realise that we don’t only have the human life but even more, the divine life in our spirit.
It is no longer we who live by ourselves; Christ lives in us. The living Jesus is living within us.
We are a dual person: outwardly it is us, and inwardly it is the Lord Jesus. We have two lives within us. When we see this, we realise that God doesn’t want us to live by our own original life, the natural life.
He wants us to live by His divine life, which is Christ Himself. This life is in our spirit.
When we see that Christ lives in us to be our life, when we realise that He is the divine life in our spirit and we can live Him, we will exercise our spirit to live one spirit with the Lord.
When we live one spirit with the Lord, we will express Christ, and we will be the testimony of the living Jesus.
May we come to the Lord by exercising our spirit to live one with Him, and may we live by the divine life in our spirit today. May we be the living testimony of Christ, the testimony of the living Jesus!
Lord Jesus, thank You for living in us as the One who is ever-living! Hallelujah, Christ is our life! We open to You. We want to know and enjoy Your indwelling today. Amen, Lord, You are the living One in us. Live in us today. Spread from our spirit into every part of our mind, emotion, and will. Make Your mind become our mind. Make Your emotions become our emotions. Attune our will to be the same as Yours. Amen, Lord, we want to live by Christ today. We want to leave any death behind and simply focus on Christ and live Christ! Amen, Lord, may it be no longer we who live but Christ who lives in us! May we live by the divine life in our spirit, not by our original life in our soul or in our flesh. Hallelujah, Christ lives in us! Amen, Lord, live in us today to make us the living testimony of Christ! Be expressed through us so that we may be the testimony of the living Jesus! Oh Lord, keep us in our spirit. Keep us living by the life in our spirit today so that You may gain the living testimony of Jesus today!
References and Hymns on this Topic
- Inspiration for this article/sharing comes from the Word of God, the enjoyment in the ministry, a sharing by brother Ron Kangas on this topic, and portions from, The Conclusion of the New Testament, pp. 4153-4154, by Witness Lee, as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, Experiencing, Enjoying, and Expressing Christ (4) (2025 December Training), week 38 (msg. 2), Christ Having the Keys of Death and Hades – day 2.
- Hymns on this topic:
– Death cannot hold the resurrection life, / The life of God eternal manifest; / ’Tis uncreated, indestructible, / ’Tis Christ Himself, unconqu’rable, expressed. / Death cannot hold the resurrection life, / Though all its force against it may combine; / Death only gives it opportunity / To show the boundless pow’r of life divine. (Hymns #639 stanzas 1-2)
– Life out of death—oh, wondrous resurrection! / Seed sown in conscious weakness, raised in power; / Thy life lived out in days of toil and friction, / “Not I, but Christ” in me from hour to hour. (Hymns #640 stanza 1)
– Our plans, our aims, our energy / We must abandon wholly, / That He may work His plan thru us, / His aim and object solely. / Ourselves, with all we are and have, / To death we must surrender, / That Christ may live Himself thru us / With riches and with splendor. (Hymns #910 stanza 4)
