Christ’s resurrection changes things for us right now in the life we live as believers. But God, being rich in mercy, because of his great love with which he loved us, even though we were dead in transgressions, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you are saved! and he raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus.. (Ephesians 2:4-6 NET)
The resurrected life that comes into completeness at our glorification when we receive our resurrected bodies is already within us. We have been made alive together with Christ and a new sort of life has begun—a recreated life:
Therefore we have been buried with him through baptism into death, in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too may live a new life. For if we have become united with him in the likeness of his death, we will certainly also be united in the likeness of his resurrection. (Romans 6:4,5 NET)
Our new life is grounded in our association with Christ’s resurrection. Because we are
in Christ, we are new creation. We have begun our lives in the realm of the resurrection and sin no longer has dominion over us: the old things have passed away and the new things have come. The changed life we have—the life in the Spirit—comes to us through our inclusion with the risen Christ; and based on this new reality, we are called to live a new kind of life.
Therefore, if you have been raised with Christ, keep seeking the things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Keep thinking about things above, not things on the earth, for you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ (who is your life) appears, then you too will be revealed in glory with him. So put to death whatever in your nature belongs to the earth…. (Colossians 3:1-5a NET)
We are urged to put aside the things we once loved and the passions we once followed as the old sort of person we once were. Now we have been clothed with the new person, one “that is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of the one who created it (Colossians 3:10)”; and we are called to have new loves and new passions, seeking heavenly things. We must clothe ourselves in the power of the resurrection and live according to the fruit the Spirit produces within us.
As men and women of the new life, we need to “present [ourselves] to God as those who are alive from the dead and [our] members to God as instruments to be used for righteousness (Romans 6:13 NET).” We can do this knowing that there is no reason for sin to defeat us as we work out the victory over sin that has already become reality in Christ’s resurrection, a victory that will come to its consummation when we are raised with Him when He comes again.