Death has lost its dominion!

From Discipleship on the Edge: An Expository Journey through the Book of Revelation (p. 47-8):

"He laid his right hand on me, saying 'Do not be afraid; I am the first and the last, and the Living One; and I was dead, and look! I am alive forever and ever, and I have the keys to death and Hades'"(Rev. 1:17-18). Literally Jesus says, "Stop being afraid." Why? Because Jesus Christ has walked into the gaping jaws of the greatest enemy there is. On the cross he let all the powers that threaten to undo us have their unrestrained way with him. He let death take him captive. And then he burst out of the prison and carried away the prison keys!

... Jesus Christ has stolen the weapon of fear. Fear is a powerful force. Fear can keep us from doing what is right; and it can make us do what we know is wrong. All fear is firmly rooted in the fear of death. The fear of criticism, the fear of rejection, the fear of financial loss, the fear of pain--they are all, at rock bottom, the fear of death.

Let the imagery grab you! "I have the keys of death!" No one else has them. "I am alive . . . and I have the keys!"

If you have ears, hear.

In his fine little book, Following Jesus, N. T. Wright makes the point that God's command, "Do not fear," is one of the hardest of all to follow. He is very strong on this point, and I think it's one that we would be wise to hear, because so often we make this sort of thing sound all too easy. I'm going to share and extended quote from the book with you, in the hopes that these words will bless you as much as they did me.

I mean, can you imagine living a normal, wise, responsible life without the nagging sense that everything is about to go horribly wrong, that you may have made it through the last day, or week, but that this was simply a happy accident, since the universe is basically unfriendly and Murphy's Law will take revenge later or, more likely, sooner? That is how most people live.

To that condition the gospel of Jesus comes with bad news and good news. The good news: there is just one command this time, not even ten. The bad news: this one command tells us not to be afraid, and we haven't a clue how to obey it. We don't like fear, but it's the air we breath. We don't know any other way to live. This, actually, is why people imagine God as a God who is always giving orders and getting cross with people. We project our fears, yes, and our hatred, up on the creator of the universe; we call this object, this idol, 'God'; and we are afriad of, and resent, the God we have thus made in our own mirror image,

And the resurrection of Jesus issues the surprising command: don't be afraid; because the God who made the world is the God who raised Jesus from the dead, and calls you now to follow him. Believing in the resurrection of Jesus isn't just a matter of believing that certain things are true about the physical body of Jesus that had been crucified. These truths are vital and nonnegotiable, but they point beyond themselves, to the God who is responsible for them. Believing in the god means believing that it is going to be all right; and this belief, ultimately, is incompatible with fear. As John says in his letter, perfect love casts out fear (1 John 4.18). And the resurrection is a revelation of perfect love, God's perfect love for us, his human creatures. That's why, though we may at any stage in our lives grasp the truth that God raised Jesus from the dead, it takes all our life long to let that belief soak through and permeate the rest of our thinking, feeling, and worrying lives.