352. Revive and Raise
Hosea 6:2 After two days will he revive us: in the third day he will raise us up, and we shall live in his sight.
God promises that we will be revived, that He will raise us up, and that we will live in His sight. After two days = after a relatively short time.
We shall be revived. One is revived after passing out, fainting, or just becoming unconscious. He is given life once again and restored like before. In Adam we were breathed into and we became a living soul. In Adam we sinned and immediately died. We lost the Life. The spirit died and was disconnected from the Lord. We are born spiritually dead. Dead people can do nothing; much less can they do anything good. Without a connection and union with the Life of God the human is left with a selfish soul that seeks only his or her own good in order to survive and try to make a life. But without God life fails. We are born dead with only an animal survival soul. We remain dead until we are revived, that is, baptized, born from above, or born of water and the spirit, God’s life enters our spirit and we have new life. Jesus says we enter the kingdom of God. Whichever metaphor we use, the promise is: He will revive us. Believing is living: “By believing you may have life in his name.”
In the third day the Lord will raise us up. This is the raising up back to life again of a dead body. After death is resurrection, and the body lives again without end. This raising takes place “in the third day.” This phrase is a veiled allusion to the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ on Easter Sunday. “On the third day he rose again according to the Scripture.” Hosea 6:2 is the Scripture. We who believe in Jesus are united with Him in His resurrection, and because of Jesus’ resurrection God the Father will raise us up. Body unites with soul and we are whole again. We must wait for such health and life to be enjoyed until we are changed, 1 Corinthians 15:31, 32: “We shall all be changed. In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet; for the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed.”
And we shall live in his sight. God promises life: we will live. This can be taken two ways, physically and spiritually: 1) Physically, we will live in the actual sight of God and we shall see Him in our own resurrected body. “Yet my flesh I shall see God.” Once we behold the beatific vision of the Glorious Lord God with our physical eyes we will never be the same again. We will indeed be “changed.” This is truly “living in his sight.” 2) Spiritually, we live presently in His sight. God sees into our invisible spirit and He sees a reflection of Himself, and He is well pleased. We always live in His sight. He sees what we don’t, and that’s a good thing. He sees, us, knows us, cares for us, and takes care of us. We truly live.