Living in Light of the Risen Christ: Holy Longing and the Christian Life

By Chris Poblete

What does it look like to live in light of the risen Christ?

For many believers, the Christian life is often misunderstood as either striving for spiritual success or settling into complacency. Yet Scripture presents something far deeper: a life marked by holy longing, a growing desire for God that is never fully satisfied in this life.

Few men have captured this tension more vividly than David Brainerd.

David Brainerd (1718–1747), the early American missionary to American Indians, recorded the following in his journal:

Thursday, Nov. 4. (At Lebanon) Saw much of my nothingness most of this day: but felt concerned that I had no more sense of my insufficiency and unworthiness. O it is sweet lying in the dust! But it is distressing to feel in my soul that hell of corruption, which still remains in me. In the afternoon, had a sense of the sweetness of a strict, close, and constant devotedness to God, and my soul was comforted with his consolations. My soul felt a pleasing, yet painful concern, lest I should spend some moments without God. O may I always live to God! In the evening, I was visited by some friends, and spent the time in prayer and such conversation as tended to our edification. It was a comfortable season to my soul: I felt an intense desire to spend every moment for God. God is unspeakably gracious to me continually. In times past, he has given me inexpressible sweetness in the performance of duty. Frequently my soul has enjoyed much of God; but has been ready to say, “Lord, it is good to be here;” and so to indulge sloth, while I have lived on the sweetness of my feelings.

But of late, God has been pleased to keep my soul hungry, almost continually; so that I have been filled with a kind of pleasing pain. When I really enjoy God, I feel my desires of him the more insatiable, and my thirstings after holiness the more unquenchable; and the Lord will not allow me to feel as though I were fully supplied and satisfied, but keeps me still reaching forward. I feel barren and empty, as though I could not live without more of God; I feel ashamed and guilty before him. Oh! I see that “the law is spiritual, but I am carnal.” I do not, I cannot live to God.

Oh for holiness! Oh for more of God in my soul! Oh this pleasing pain! It makes my soul press after God; the language of it is, “Then shall I be satisfied, when I awake in God’s likeness,” (Ps. 17:15) but never, never before: and consequently I am engaged to “press towards the mark” day by day. O that I may feel this continual hunger, and not be retarded, but rather animated by every cluster from Canaan, to reach forward in the narrow way, for the full enjoyment and possession of the heavenly inheritance! O that I may never loiter in my heavenly journey!

David Brainerd, The Life and Diary of David Brainerd, ed. Jonathan Edwards (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1989), 103–104.

Brainerd displays a profound awareness of his own unworthiness, the emptiness of this world, and the all-sufficiency of Christ. Yet what stands out most is his description of what he calls a “pleasing pain.”

The Resurrection and Holy Longing

This “pleasing pain” is not a contradiction. It is the normal experience of the Christian life lived in light of the risen Christ.

Because Jesus Christ is risen from the dead, the believer is no longer spiritually dead but alive to God. Yet this new life is not the end of the story. We are not yet fully conformed to Christ. We still battle sin. We still feel the tension between what we are and what we are called to be.

This is why Brainerd could speak of a holy dissatisfaction. The resurrection guarantees our future glorification, but until that day, it produces within us a deep hunger for God and a growing hatred of sin.

The Christian who is united to the risen Christ will not be content with spiritual complacency. He presses on. He longs for holiness. He desires more of God, not because Christ is insufficient, but because Christ has awakened his soul to what true satisfaction actually is.

As Brainerd writes, “Then shall I be satisfied, when I awake in God’s likeness” (Psalm 17:15). That satisfaction is resurrection satisfaction, the day when faith becomes sight and longing gives way to fullness.

Until then, the believer lives in this tension: satisfied in Christ, yet still longing for more of Him.

Pressing On Toward Fullness

Scripture speaks clearly to this reality.

Philippians 3:12–14 reminds us that we have not yet arrived, but we press on to make Christ our own.

Romans 8:23 teaches that we groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.

Colossians 3:1–4 calls us to seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.

This is the normal Christian life. It is not marked by complacency, but by pursuit. It is not marked by satisfaction in this world, but by longing for the one to come.

Conclusion

Brainerd’s example confronts us with a searching question: do we truly desire God, or have we settled for comfort, routine, and fleeting spiritual feelings?

The risen Christ does not produce complacent Christians. He produces hungry ones.

If we are alive in Christ, we will long for holiness. We will grieve our sin. We will press on toward the day when we will finally be satisfied in His presence.

So let us not resist this “pleasing pain,” but embrace it as evidence of God’s work in us, driving us forward until the day we see Christ face to face.

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