For centuries there has been endless debate about the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. By far the most sceptical of examinations seem to have emerged in the last 150 years as an increasingly cynical, scientific, and secular worldview has taken root in western cultures. In addition, latterly, the rise of the New Age movement with its plethora of alternative spiritualities and belief systems in the last 40 years, the decline of the Church’s influence, together with post-modern philosophies and identity politics, has accelerated us to where we are now. We are a nation of cynics and sceptics – by and large.
The Church’s loss of influence, in no small measure due to the child abuse scandals of the last 20 years, has caused it to retreat into its shell from where it has been almost unable to speak about much of anything for fear of ridicule. It’s all but lost its voice. Writing in last weekend’s The Australian, Christian journalist and commentator, Greg Sheridan, notes …
“You can hold your Christian beliefs, the state increasingly rules, provided you do so in private, never utter in public things official “shame” ideology disapproves of, and acknowledge the majesty and infallibility of contemporary state doctrine on gender, identity and power.”
In other words, it is increasingly difficult for Christians and the Church to participate in public discourse because of the shaming ideologies and tactics constantly directed against us. It is hard to speak up about much. The world wants us to shut up. It was the same for those early Christians following the most momentous day in history – the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The authorities of the day made all manner of threats against the apostles in those early months in attempts to discredit them. They were jailed, and flogged, as well. But they would not be quiet. By the end of the first century over half a million followers of Jesus had been won to faith and were walking Holy Spirit power – which is resurrection life.
Again, Sheridan …
“The early Christians altogether are an enthralling group of human beings, even if you have no religious belief at all. They are one of the only cases in the classical world where we hear from ordinary rank and file people rather than exclusively nobility and elites. And without any notable power, they transformed the world.”
They transformed the world. Apart from the intellectual genius of the apostle Paul, and the educated mind of Luke, the writer of the third gospel, most Christians were ordinary people with little education. Yet, they transformed the world. How can this be? The answer is the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. Resurrection life – eternal life - cannot be defeated by death, cannot be limited in any way by anything in all creation and beyond it. So, instead of the Church (and Church leaders) obsessing over the Church’s loss of voice or moral integrity (according to worldly parameters), or being pushed to the fringes of society by the shamers and crude sceptics, it would be far preferable for Christians to learn to live in the resurrection power that Christ gave us - and which was sparked in us, indeed, quickened in us, when we were born again.
This is the very core of Christianity. It is everything!
Without this (the resurrection of Christ quickened in us) we have nothing. The Church is NOTHING without the resurrection power alive in it. The apostle Paul made this exact point …
Galatians 2:20 (NIV) “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”
Notice the present tense here. What Paul describes is not some eschatological, only after death, resurrection reality. That makes no sense to me at all. If we understand the resurrection of Christ as purely eschatological, we are fools to be pitied! But if we understand the resurrection of Christ from the dead as the impartation of eternal life into the human form, when we are born again, then we see and understand very differently. Biological life is finite as Scripture confirms …
Genesis 3:19 (NIV)
[God] “By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.”
God, by His Spirit sustains that biological life. But on Easter Day it is not biological proof of life, that so stunned Christ’s followers. No, this was something else. Jesus was different. This was more than some biological life force – this was resurrection life, and it had never entered the world before Jesus. And it is not finite! That was the crucial thing. It possessed qualities and abilities absent from biological life. Jesus emphatically differentiated between biological and eternal life when He said,
John 11:25-26 (NIV)
“I am the resurrection and the life [“zoe” not “bios”]. The one who believes in Me will live [“zoe”], even though they die [“bios”]; 26 and whoever lives by believing in Me will never die. Do you believe this?"
“Will never die”, even though biologically we are limited. Those early Christians understood this. They didn’t engage in deep theological debate about it. They learned to live in this new life – eternal life in the here and now but which endures through the death barrier into heaven. When all the debating and discussion is done and dusted, this is all that matters in the end. Eternal life! Jesus said so in Mark 8:36.
What will make the greatest difference in the Church - and what it does in this fallen world - is to learn to live this resurrection life properly and in fullness. This eternal life is sparked in us when we are born again – we don’t have its fullness this side of heaven - but, as we learn to walk with Jesus, taking up our cross daily to deal with the sins and cravings of the flesh and soul with the help of Holy Spirit, we liberate more and more of our humanity to express the irrepressibility of this new life in the flesh. It was not meant that we remain merely “sparked” versions of this eternal life sandbagged by flesh-soul cravings. NO! Jesus said He had come that we may have abundance of life. Most “born agains” I meet do not understand this and so, they do not take cross-bearing seriously. It is not that important to them – but, oh, it should be! The apostle Paul states why …
Romans 6:20-23 (NIV)
“When you were slaves to sin, you were free from the control of righteousness. 21 What benefit did you reap at that time from the things you are now ashamed of? Those things result in death! 22 But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result [of holiness] is eternal life. 23 For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
There it is. We’ve been made righteous by the blood of Jesus. And now we learn to apply the work of the cross to everything in the flesh-soul life that is utterly committed to snuffing out the precious spark of eternal life we have received from Him; so that we are transformed and flourish with the radiant richness of the glory of God. The result is eternal life in us increasing itself in our [“bios”] humanity more and more …
Romans 8:11-13 (NIV)
11 “And if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give [eternal] life to your mortal bodies because of His Spirit who lives in you.
12 Therefore, brothers and sisters, we have an obligation—but it is not to the flesh, to live according to it. 13 For if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live.”
If we learned to live like that, the world would not want us to shut up.
Think on these things.
Ps Milton