I've Just Seen Jesus

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Goosebumps.

That’s what John 20:18 and the story around it gives me. Combined with the song you can access through the following link, the message rings loud and clear:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yLgtd_kkxw

Mary Magdalene saw all that Peter and John saw when she arrived at the tomb. But she saw something they didn’t: two angels (John 20:12) sitting where the body of Jesus had once lain.

Then she saw Jesus (20:14). Through her tears, overwhelmed with grief, she didn’t recognize Him, until something in His voice stirred her soul and she saw, really saw, HIM.

“Mary,” He said (20:16). And she knew.

When she returned to the room where the disciples were meeting and told them that she had seen the Lord, alive and glorified, the impact must have been incredible. It would still take time to really understand the reality of the resurrection for some of His followers, but for Mary, nothing would ever be the same again.

How could anything be the same once a person has truly “seen” Jesus?

That question haunts me. For many of those who profess to know Christ, nothing changes. Is that possible? I don’t think so, and the Scriptures don’t allow for that kind of passivity after an encounter with the Lord.

2 Corinthians 5:17 tells us: “...if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come.”

The argument will always be how much leeway to grant those who struggle with the habits of a lifetime once a person meets the Lord. And every one of us struggles. Whatever the answer is to that question, where there is no struggle at all it is safe to say that nothing changed, ergo, there was no encounter with Jesus.

We can’t meet Jesus, really “see” Him, without dramatic and drastic changes happening in our lives. Every new encounter, as we struggle to become more like what He declared us to be when we came to faith—“the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21)—confirms and strengths the truth that we can never go back, nor want to go back, to what we were before we met Him.

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