Keeping the Resurrection Real

Friends,

Rodney Buchanan shares this story -- I read a recent magazine article about a pastor and his encounter with some unbelievers while having breakfast. Here is how he tells the story: “My wife and I were vacationing in Estes Park, Colorado, and had breakfast in a coffee shop. It was empty except for four men at another table. One was mocking Christianity, and in particular, the Resurrection of Christ. He went on and on about what a stupid teaching that was. I could feel the Lord asking me: ‘Are you going to let this go unchallenged?’ However I was thinking, But I don’t even know these guys. He’s bigger than me. He’s got cowboy boots on and looks tough. I was agitated and frightened about doing anything. But I knew I had to stand for Jesus. Finally, I told Susan to pray. I took my last drink of water and went over and challenged him. With probably a squeaky voice, I said, ‘I’ve been listening to you, and you don’t know what you’re talking about.’ I did my best to give him a flying rundown of the proofs for the resurrection. He was speechless, and I was half dead. I must have shaken for an hour after that. But I had to take a stand. We cannot remain anonymous in our faith forever. God has a way of flushing us out of our quiet little places, and when He does we must be ready to speak for him.” I admire this pastor’s courage and his determination to be a witness, regardless of how difficult it was. A lot of Christians would have just sat there in fear or fumed, thinking about how terrible the things were that these men were saying. I realize that I have the opportunity of looking back with hindsight on the situation, but it seems to me that he missed the most important and impressive proof of the resurrection — his own life. I wonder if it would not have been more effective to walk over to the men at the table and say something like this: “You know, I couldn’t help but overhear your conversation, and found it very interesting. If you don’t mind, I would like to pay for all of your breakfasts. The reason I want to do this is that, because of the resurrection, Jesus Christ has changed my life and lives in me, and wants to communicate his tremendous love for you.” Rational arguments do not change people…changed lives do. Changed lives change the lives of others, and thereby change the world. 

I want to take a closer look at resurrection applied, now that we are about a month removed from Easter.  Resurrection does not mean a whole lot to us unless we are living like “resurrection” people who one day will be resurrected. And this brings us to Pauls’ explanation concerning the importance of the resurrection for us. (1 Corinthians 15:1-23) Paul is addressing the Corinthian church, and there are some there who have some misunderstandings concerning Jesus’ resurrection.  Paul seeks to correct these issues.  Paul shares that one of the greatest proofs of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ were His many post-resurrection appearances.  15:6 says that Jesus appears to more than 500 people!  So, there are many people that could testify to the trustworthiness of the Resurrection of Jesus. The reality of His appearance is that a transformation in Jesus’ followers takes place. This is evidence of the reality of the resurrection.  Lee Strobel writes, “Nobody willingly dies for something that they know is false.”(Case for Easter, p.88). But they know that the Resurrection is true, so they are willing their lives because of their belief in the resurrection of Jesus.  And the reality of the resurrection’s transforming power doesn’t stop with the eyewitnesses, but ultimately affects thousands of people.

So the question is, “Why should Christ’s resurrection be important to me?”  As we have seen, the Resurrection proves that Jesus is God and not an imposter. Paul opens the letter to the Romans (1:1-4) and reveals that the Resurrection proves Jesus to be the Son of God and brings us face to face with the fact that He is who He claims to be -- God. The founder of every other religion has found a way to die and stayed dead. Jesus rose again. This is important to us because it forces us to make a decision about our lives. Since Christ is who He claimed to be, how will you respond to Him? We need to come to understand that the Resurrection makes your salvation possible. Without the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, every person is still dead in their sins. If Christ did not rise, then you are still dead in your sins and your Christian faith is worthless and anyone you’ve known who died a believer is just as lost as an unbeliever. But, faith in Christ is not in vain. “He was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification.” (Romans 4:25)  It is important to you, because Jesus’ being alive means the way to God has been “paved” by Jesus and you can be made right with Him and have relationship with Him this morning.

One final, important matter to consider is that the Resurrection makes your resurrection possible.  You and I are spirit and body -- we are spiritual and physical. Our resurrection is only made possible by the resurrection of Jesus Christ. As Stanley Horton points out, “Christ’s resurrection and ours are part of one and the same plan of God.” (Horton, Stanley. I & II Corinthians. p. 150)  Christ’s resurrection guarantees our own “spiritual,” bodily resurrection. The Bible refers to Him as being the ‘first fruits,’ which guarantees the whole harvest, of which you and I are a part if we are in Christ. In other words, since He was raised first, we know we will be raised. (vv. 20-23)  Paul says, “We ourselves, who have the first-fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved.” (Romans 8:23)  This ‘first fruits of the Spirit’ spoken of in Romans 8:23 is elsewhere referred to as a deposit or guarantee, in Ephesians 1:14, 2 Corinthians 1:22 and 2 Corinthians 5:5.  The Spirit’s indwelling is a guarantee that much more is on the way. We have the down payment of the Spirit, but are awaiting the full transaction that will come to fruition when our bodies are resurrected and we live forever with Him. When will our resurrection take place? The passage says “When he comes”…whenever that is to be. When we receive “resurrected” spiritual bodies at Jesus’ second coming, our current bodies will be transformed.  They will be bodies completely perfect and dominated by the Spirit rather than the sinful nature. We are awaiting the day our bodies are completely made new and free of the weight of sin and be entirely spiritual. “For in this hope we were saved” indeed…resurrection is our hope.  When Christ returns we will see Him and we will be transformed -- what a blessed hope indeed!

Unlike the beliefs of the Greek philosophers who thought the body was evil and something we should want to be released from, God made our bodies as part of who we are and they complete us. Right now our bodies are affected by sin and they die, but God has a plan to resurrect our bodies to perfection. So now, just look at yourself. Take a minute. Do you feel too fat? Too thin? Got hurting knees or allergies? Losing your hair? Whatever problems and imperfections you have are temporary and will one day be changed in the twinkling of an eye…if you are in Christ.  That is our hope. It is the completion for us of “the extreme body makeover”…a heavenly body for eternal living. While you may be as broken as Humpty Dumpty because of sin that is not fixable by anyone in the world, the tomb is genuinely empty and Jesus is definitely alive.  What He did on the cross paid for your sins and you’ve been given an opportunity to not only be fixed, but to become a new creation and to have fellowship with God. This is the joy of living in the Resurrection. God can fix you spiritually and you can have the hope that He will one day complete your redemption by redeeming your body to be something like Jesus’ body!  

Blessings, Don

A Home with the Lord

Friends,

In his first letter to the Corinthian church, Paul emphasizes to them (3:9-15) that they need to take care to use good materials for building of their (spiritual) house…and that the foundation for the house must be Jesus Christ.  Some of the Corinthian believers are going back to following the mindset of their culture, and are engaging in worldly, selfish attitudes and behaviors.  They need to return to their “first love”...an important message that Paul encourages the Corinthians to consider.  He wants them to build on the foundation a spiritual house, or as Jesus tells it in the Sermon on the Mount, to build upon the Rock.  If we allow Jesus to be in control of our lives, one day we will have a spiritual home with Him in heaven …and a spiritual body in order to take up residence there. 

Jesus shares with his disciples in John 14:1ff that He is going to make things better.  He is going away to prepare a place for them.  He is going to a heavenly place to prepare to welcome them to a better home.  Paul, in this passage, sees the body that we all have simply as a temporary shelter…a tent.  The body is only a temporary house for the soul.  And Paul is a tentmaker, so this is an easy analogy for him to make.  In fact, I saw a saying recently that made this point succinctly.  It said, “You do not have a soul…you are a soul and your soul has a body.”  This is so true.  Paul longs to be free from his present imperfect body.  He truly anticipates his spiritual body that he will receive one day when Jesus Christ comes again.  This should be the same experience and yearning for everyone who is in Christ. 

Paul teaches the Corinthians that when a believer dies, the body goes to the grave, and the soul goes on to be with Christ.  Some false teachers at that time denied that there would be any future bodily resurrection (1 Corinthians 15:12ff), but envisioned some sort of disembodied immortality.  Even though it is hard to understand exactly what will take place in the end times, Paul says that believers will not be bodiless for eternity, but at the 2nd Coming of Christ, they will “be clothed again.”  At the Second Coming, Christ (His Spirit) will reunite soul and body in miraculous manner to make a spiritual, eternal body that lives on with God forever (1 Thessalonians 4:13ff, 1 Corinthians 15:43ff).  Paul describes this glorified body as “beautiful.”  It will never decay as do our earthly bodies, for the spiritual body is suited for heaven.  Paul longs for this!  We must not be frustrated or fear as it relates to the trials and sufferings of this life, but we must be patient and long for eternity with the Lord.  Paul’s ambition is to please Christ…to live for Him.  This is due to the fact that he understood that death would be the beginning of his actually being in the presence of the Lord (Philippians 1:20-25).  To have the hope of communion with Christ face to face following death should motivate all of us to live right now.  In this, we need to be faithful and trust in Him in order that one day we can be with Him.  John shares, “Be faithful, even to the point of death, and I will give you the crown of life” (Revelation 2:10, NIV).  The Father has given each person the opportunity to receive a spiritual body, and it is all possible through the blood of His Son, Jesus Christ, shed on the cross.  Jesus came and died in order to take away the sins of mankind.  His blood washes our sins away.  Jesus was the first one to be raised eternal from the dead in order that one day we might be raised with Him when He does come again.  Like Paul, we need to see heaven not simply as a destination, but as a motivation.  The tent that we live in will come down.  We must long for something better…an eternal dwelling…and receive it.

It is known from history that some of the early Spanish explorers to this (Western) part of the world were searching for “the eternal fountain of youth.”  One explorer in particular thought he had discovered it among the islands of the Bahamas.  However, his was only a dream, as he would…before too many years…grow old and perish.  Man has always had a yearning for this fountain or Holy Grail (as depicted by Indiana Jones and many other movies, etc.)  If people would only realize that they do have access to this fountain…it is found in the Living Water of Jesus Christ.  There is not much hope for this physical body…this “tent” is going to come down.  We must not fear, though, because even the body dies, there is hope.  We may be frustrated with the trials and the sufferings of this life, but we must be patient, long for an imperishable, spiritual body one day.

What is a significant concern to me, though, is that we live in a world where people live as if they are imperishable in these perishable bodies.  I have known many other young people, even those raised in Christian families, who have chosen to live a worldly existence.  I had a discussion with one such “Christian” young man one time, and I asked him why he was living the way that he was at the time.  He said that “he enjoyed the world.”  If the world system was entirely unpresentable, then it certainly would not be so easy for Satan to tempt people to give up the eternal for the sake of the temporal.  I tried to get him to understand that the way we live now has eternal ramifications.  He believed that he had plenty of time in order to straighten out his life.  Fortunately for him, he was able to truly find the Lord and put aside his worldly ways.  That is not always the case, however.  We live in a time where people, including many believers, think that they can live however they wish in relationship to the world system and that it is ok.  Many other believers have no time to be with the body of Christ, but are too busy.  I believe that these are places where there is a great false sense of security at work.  The Lord does not call us to be His spiritual people in this world that we would live in any of these ways, but that we would be productive citizens in the Kingdom of God and for the Body of Christ.  Once we realize that our present living has eternal ramifications, it should focus us and motivate us toward living a faithful life for the Lord.  Friends, we are building for eternity. Do we build with inferior materials or do we build with choice materials on the foundation of Christ? Don’t ever forget, the house we will have later on depends on the material we are using now.  And if we are genuinely faithful, committed until death or until Christ comes again, we will have a home with Him for eternity.

Blessings, Don