This is an ongoing series of blog posts based on papers originally written for my church’s elder class. This week’s topic: the death and resurrection of Christ, and the hope that we as believers have in this truth.
The death of Jesus on the cross rightfully is the focus of so much Christian thought and worship, because in His death we have a complete atonement for our sins. But we have just as much of a hope in His resurrection, because by it we see the true defeat of the curse of death, that consequence of sin that most plagues mankind. When Adam died, all he could do was exactly what God said would happen – decay into the dust he was made from. But when Jesus died, the second Adam, He knew that it would have no hold over Him. He had told his disciples as much many times, and the Scriptures promised as much. Psalm 16:10, for example, looks ahead and says “For you will not abandon me to Sheol; you will not allow your faithful one to see decay.”
Sheol – the grave – was the place all men went at the end of life. Death was the co-curse with sin, for to sin – to live life according to the wisdom of the flesh, in opposition to the wisdom of God – has no possible end but death. God warned Adam and yet Adam sinned and so, took this evil onto himself and all his descendants. Even beyond humanity, in all the world death reigned where life once did. Decay and entropy threatened the end of creation’s blessed existence. Man’s self-deceived foolishness is so self-destructive, in fact, that God had to destroy almost all of humanity with a flood. When the descendants of the survivors began to thrive and seek again their own power, God had to confuse their languages and scatter them across the globe.
Yet Christ conquered all of it. Man embraced sinful living and yet lived in understandable fear of its consequence in death. Christ rejected sin, living without its marks all His days, and yet walked wholeheartedly into the embrace of death – and a most horrifying and humiliating death at that. And in doing so, by letting death take Him as the perfect sin offering for all God’s people, He overcame it. He became a seed that, falling into the ground and dying, grew up into a vast tree of eternal scope and life-giving fruit that will never fail.
Jesus Christ, the Lamb that was slain, was given glory in His resurrection, and we hope in His glory and life. We don’t simply look at His death as a tragic killing of a good man by an evil regime, because His story does not end there. He took His life back up and more than simply returning from the dead for a short period then dying again, as Lazarus did, He lives still. He ascended to the Father, to await the day that He will return to finally well and truly destroy sin and death in all creation, to bring His work to its full consummation in the redemption of all creation.
His disciples stood where they saw him ascend for some time, until angels told them that He would return the same way He went. They held that hope and it led them to prayer in unity, and that same hope enriched all their preaching. No longer was there simply life that ended in the grave, but the resurrection of Christ was and is the hope of all. Apart from it, as Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 15, life is foolishness and hope is in vain. But with it, we can endure everything that life brings, every dart of the enemy, every pain and loss and moment of suffering, because they all cease and are undone in the life of Christ.
So what?
While re-reading C.S. Lewis’s novel Perelandra recently, I was struck by the horrifying description of death and damnation by a character that has suffered under demonic possession for most of the novel. While much of it is rooted in Lewis’s particular views of the nature of hell and the enemy, the idea that dying in sin is to sink farther away from God and away from all His hope is one that sat in my mind for a long time.
I was also reminded that this is why the hope of Christ’s resurrection and ascension are so crucial and powerful. No longer do we who trust in Christ fear that sinking away, that loss of connection with God. Instead, we look to when that connection grows stronger, and our intimacy goes from at arm’s length to true, face to face knowledge. We know this is true, and we long for the day we finally have this most rich possession as our own.
This is bedrock Christian theology, truly the cornerstone of Christ’s work is found in His death and resurrection. Yet it can feel like a rote recitation, like something that loses its potency the more we repeat it to ourselves, if we don’t actually meditate on it. “Jesus died for our sins.” “Jesus lives.” These two sentences ought to be a soothing truth to our deepest beings, not only because of their simple truth but also because within their few words the whole of life in Christ is enfolded.
Perfect love
Jesus came as the messiah, the chosen one who would end the rule of evil and usher in God’s kingdom. When He came, so many expected him to drive out Israel’s enemies with overwhelming power – and who could doubt that He was perfectly capable of doing so? A man who was capable of feeding thousands with a handful of bread and fish could sustain endless legions. Someone who can tell a storm to cease could command the ground to open up and devour His enemies in a moment. Surely Jesus could have crushed Rome and every other human empire with a single word?
And that’s the image John gives in Revelation 19 – the victorious Christ riding to earth on a white horse, his weapon a sword that comes from His mouth. His robe is stained with blood. Yet Jesus came before His people riding on a donkey’s colt. His clothing certainly was stained with blood – His own.
And all of this, an image of a life in the kingdom. Our lives are not our own, but they are held in His hands – and so we can lay them down for the sake of others. We can love that neighbor who’s in need and know that such service is deeply loved and blessed by the Father. We can be patient in those times when life’s turmoil weighs on our hearts, because we know He has been there, and He walks with us in them.
I want to close with two hopes:
We hope in the death of Christ because in His death, we are forgiven for all sin. A picture of this was carried out over and over in the Israelite sacrificial system as sin was atoned for through the shedding of blood. Everything was made holy through the sprinkling of blood, and there could not be any entering into God’s presence without it. There was an endless reminder of humanity’s sinfulness in those sacrifices – yet Jesus has taken the place of all of it, and through His death He has made the way by which every people group may come to know the One who made them.
We hope in the resurrection of Christ because He has overcome death, and we look forward to the day that we too will be like Him. I love the way Paul talks about being “in Christ” in Ephesians 1, and what it truly means for us to receive the benefits of that – “holy and blameless,” “adopted as sons,” recipients of “an inheritance” and “sealed with the Holy Spirit.” So when suffering enters our lives, we know that the words of the author of Ecclesiastes, that our lives are but a vapor, is true – but we also know that in Christ’s resurrection, we have a greater life ahead of us that will never end.
When I think of the weight of my sin, my struggles, the things that drag me down day by day, and I compare them to this tremendous promise, I can’t help but ponder the truth of Paul’s words in 2 Corinthians 4:17 – it truly is an “incomparable weight of glory.”
How does the doctrine of the resurrection affect your thoughts and living? Do you struggle to see it as real and meaningful? Share your thoughts below or email us – prayer requests are welcome!
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