We Shall Be Like Him

by Max Lucado

Jesus’ plan is to “gather together in one all things in Christ” (Eph. 1:10 NKJV). “All things” includes your body. Your eyes that read this book. Your hands that hold it. Your blood-pumping heart, arm-hinging elbow, weight-supporting torso. God will reunite your body with your soul and create something unlike anything you have seen: an eternal body.

You will finally be healthy. You never have been. Even on the days you felt fine, you weren’t. You were a sitting duck for disease, infections, airborne bacteria, and microbes. And what about you on your worst days?

I hate disease. I’m sick of it.

So is Christ. Consider his response to the suffering of a deaf mute. “He took him aside from the multitude, and put His fingers in his ears, and He spat and touched his tongue. Then, looking up to heaven, He sighed, and said to him, ‘Ephphatha,’ that is, ‘Be opened’ ” (Mark 7:33–34 NKJV).

Everything about this healing stands out. The way Jesus separates the man from the crowd. The tongue and ear touching. The presence of Aramaic in the Greek account. But it’s the sigh that we notice. Jesus looked up to heaven and sighed. This is a sigh of sadness, a deep breath, and a heavenly glance that resolves, “It won’t be this way for long.”

Jesus will heal all who seek healing in him. There are no exceptions to this promise—no nuances, fine-print conditions, or caveats. To say some will be healed beyond the grave by no means diminishes the promise. The truth is this: “When he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2, emphasis mine).

“We shall be like him.” Let every parent of a Down syndrome or wheelchair-bound child write these words on the bedroom wall. Let the disabled, infected, bedridden, and anemic put themselves to sleep with the promise “We shall be like him.” Let amputees and the atrophied take this promise to heart: “We shall be like him.”

From: God’s Story, Your Story Copyright (Zondervan, 2011) Max Lucado