There are many passages in the New Testament writings emphasizing to us that if we would attain life, if we would arrive at the resurrection from the dead, we must walk continually in the Spirit of God and not in the appetites of the flesh. Resurrection life, while it will be brought into worldwide view at the coming of our Lord from Heaven, is a state at which we must be arriving now (Philippians 3:11).

This is not to imply we are being resurrected in our body in bits and pieces for that is contrary to Scripture (I Corinthians 15:52). But it is to say that we must be attaining the spiritual aspects of the resurrection on which our physical resurrection is based. If we do not take the necessary preliminary steps there is no possible chance that we will participate in the first resurrection.

It is not that God will show His disapproval of us by not permitting us to rise to meet the Lord in the air. Rather, without the preparatory processes we will be unable to experience the change from mortality into immortality. Such physical transformation is impossible until the supporting spiritual transformation has taken place in us.

One of these all-important preliminary steps is that of learning to walk in heavenly places in Christ now.

If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth. (Colossians 3:1,2)

How are we living now? If we are seeking the things that are above, if our attention, our love, our interests, our hopes, continually are focused on the Throne of God, on Christ who is at the right hand of God, then we are attaining the spiritual dimension of the first resurrection from the dead.

But if our attention, our love, our interests, our hopes continually are focused on eating, working, playing, reproducing, buying, selling, scheming how to get rich and find pleasure in the things of the world, then we are not attaining the first resurrection from the dead.

We may refer to the name of Christ from now until He comes. But if we do not do what He has commanded, the first resurrection, the resurrection unto life and glory, will not be a part of our future. All the theological discussions in the world cannot change the smallest aspect of the spiritual realities of the Kingdom of God.

A second step to the resurrection from the dead has to do with our suffering and our willingness to await with patience the rest and joy that will come to us at the appearing of Christ in the power of His Kingdom.

We must be made worthy of the first resurrection and of the Kingdom of God, and suffering persecution and tribulation is a necessary part of the program.

Which is [the persecutions and tribulations that the saints in Thessalonica were enduring patiently] a manifest token of the righteous judgment of God, that ye may be counted worthy of the kingdom of God, for which ye also suffer: (II Thessalonians 1:5)

To be continued.