The Beliefs of John Robert Stevens

John Robert Stevens believed that Jesus Christ not only saved us from spiritual death, but physical death as well. When Adam and Eve ate of the forbidden fruit, they brought spiritual and natural death to the human race. However, Christ brings His believers back into the life of God—both spiritually and naturally. Stevens taught that mankind has not yet experienced the complete fulfillment of Christ’s resurrection.

The Spirit who raised up Jesus from the dead will bring you into an experience that may not be similar in actual physical actions, but identical in nature. Just as Jesus came alive and is alive forever more, so He will make you a partaker of that resurrection life.¹

Paul described this experience in II Corinthians 3:18, “But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit.” We are in the process of being transformed into the image of the Lord. Included in this is resurrection life. Romans 8:23 describes how the sons of God groan as they eagerly await the redemption of their physical bodies; this tells us that we should eagerly await resurrection life. In John 14:23, Christ promised that He and the Father would take up Their abode in the believer. Romans 8:11 furthers that promise of Christ, saying that the Spirit of the Father will dwell in His believers, and the result of this indwelling will be the transformation of the mortal body into resurrection life through His Spirit. There is no time restraint on the fulfillment of either of these promises; therefore, it is with great anticipation that the believer eagerly awaits for the redemption of the mortal body.

Further confirmation expressing the eminent experience of resurrection life is found in Romans 6:3-6, which promises that the believer, being baptized into Christ’s death, is raised up with Him who dwells in resurrection life.

Most Christians believe that it is necessary to die before experiencing the resurrection body made available by Jesus Christ at His resurrection. Stevens, however, believed that “the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23). If by faith then, the believer has been crucified with Christ, as Paul stated, then there is no longer a sacrifice of death necessary for the sin of the believer. Christ has already paid the price for our sin, and the Scripture declares that it is given to man only once to die (Hebrews 9:27).

If, therefore, we have died with Christ by faith, through baptism, we have died to the requirement of death; Christ’s death paid the price for all, so Christ’s resurrection opens the door for all to be resurrected with Him. The Gospels make this clear in Matthew 27:52-53 that when Christ was resurrected, the graves were opened and the saints walked the streets of Jerusalem, having also experienced resurrection life. Many would refute this teaching by saying that it hasn’t been obtained, but Stevens would respond by saying that until you believe to walk in the fulfillment of a biblical truth, you will never obtain it. As the Scriptures state, we walk by faith, not by sight (II Corinthians 5:7; Romans 4:17).

The term resurrection appears 770 times in Stevens’ written materials.
The term death appears 1,597 times in Stevens’ written materials.