This morning I was going down Garfield Road to a meeting in Saginaw.  Just beyond the airport some construction guys were working on a foundation at the southwest corner of Garfield and Freeland Roads in an open field.

Later I came home the same way.  I could have come up Center or followed M-47 around, but just north of Tittabawassee is that little jog at Garfield which angles north to the airport.  As I crossed the tracks at Pierce Road I was surprised to see a fully completed structure sitting on that foundation I passed just three hours earlier.

How could a building go up that fast, I thought.  But then I realized it was actually the huge new hanger at the airport that just looked like it was sitting on the other foundation in my direct line of sight. 

For a moment there I had the illusion of a complete building having been instantly raised up.  

Because I had been thinking about the first epistle of John here, it led me to think how real life in Christ is no illusion, optical or otherwise.

The physical resurrection of Jesus was no mere false impression.  St. John opened his epistle with that very point, "That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched -- this we proclaim concerning the Word of life." (1 Jn. 1:1)

John then goes on to say clearly that Jesus, the Christ ... the same Jesus who is the Son of God ... is, in us Christians, the foundation of life, faith, obedience, victory over the world, and the love we have for God and one another. 

On the foundation of Christ, many great and wonderful blessings really spring up.  And these blessings become ours in no time, like a whole building rising up from a solid foundation without further ado. 

Being born of God, for example, is not labor intensive or a manually painstaking process.  Through the good news of Jesus, a Christian is born anew in an instant.  A guy doesn't have to "work through his issues" or a girl "iron out her problems" before each can become a Christian. 

Rather, all sins are forgiven for Christ's sake, and voilà, all the blessings of God's kingdom and eternal life burst out at once.

Everyone who believes Jesus is the Christ is born of God on the spot.  Equally so, whoever believes Jesus is the Son of God overcomes the world-- stat !

Prevailing over the world doesn't come by clawing one's way along or striving to be better.  It is the finished victory of Christ.  Overcoming the world isn't a campaign.  It's the end of campaigning!  It is the resurrection. 

Christ's cross and resurrection have conquered the world, the entire benefits of which are laid in our lap.

You and I don't overcome the world by pounding away through the years just hoping to win more than we lose.

No, our triumph is already concluded in Christ who gave Satan a lethal dose of His heel and a shellacking to the fears and threats of the world.  Sin and death have been trounced and crushed.

Victory doesn't come by inches.  It comes en masse and in a rush.  Victory is ours by faith instantaneously and permanently because it rests on Christ.

Without struggle or effort, without hoops through which to jump or all sorts of codes to satisfy, the edifice of a Christian life celebrates its grand opening the moment it rests on Christ.  And that's no optical illusion.