Luke 24:25

He said to them, “How foolish you are, and how slow to believe all that the prophets have spoken!

From Background Notes [BN] for April 7^th & 8^th written by Pastor Bob Brown:

“Are we better off because we believe in the risen Lord Jesus, than if we did not?” In phrasing the matter this way, we need to clarify that to “believe” in the sense used here means strong faith that has its basis and grounding in an honest process that asks, seeks, and knocks…

— a process that at last finds its assurance in knowing that Jesus rose from the dead and is alive forevermore. Making that move removes the charge that somehow faith, no matter its rationale, is somehow its own basis. No, we are not opting for faith in faith, but faith in the Lord Jesus for whom resurrection is the defining moment in the history of our salvation.

One of the key passages that helps us answer the question “What difference does it make?” comes from Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians (1 Corinthians 15:14-20):

14 And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. 15 More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead. But he did not raise him if in fact the dead are not raised. 16 For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either. 17 And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. 18 Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. 19 If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men. 20 But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.

The statements are largely negative, since Paul addresses the question from a “What if?” perspective: “What if Christ has not been raised? Then what?” The whole argument of this section grows out of a certain point of view, prevalent in Paul’s day and in ours, namely, “Dead people don’t rise.” N. T. Wright, in his monumental work on the resurrection, thoroughly researched ancient texts from secular and religious writers, before and after the time of Jesus. The results of that effort comprise nearly two hundred pages in Part One of his book.  Wright uncovered the widespread belief that, once dead, human beings do not come back to life in new bodies, nor would that be a desirable thing. Instead, ancient religions and philosophies, if they accepted life after death at all, viewed after death existence as largely one of shadows without substance. Efforts to describe what the “other world” looked like tended toward elaborate accounts of gods and mortals and fatalism. For example, there was a settled belief in thinkers like Socrates and Plato that the human body is a prison, and that death is the way out. But then the images become murky and paint an uncertain picture of what life is like beyond the grave. Even Socrates argued about future life in terms of possibilities rather than certainties (see Plato’s dialog, Phaedo).

Thus, when Paul writes 1 Corinthians 15, he has in the background all of this negative opinion about dead people rising. He in effect is saying that Christians cannot buy into the skepticism about resurrection if they are going to confess that Jesus has been raised from the dead. What belief in the resurrection of Jesus does for Christians is to serve as a critique of popular theories that deny resurrection on principle. By contrast, we  remain open to the possibility of resurrection when we explore the accounts in the New Testament. Why do we

allow for resurrection as a possible future for human beings? What does that allow us to say about Jesus, and about us? The answer is straightforward. Given the possibility of resurrection, the claim that Jesus rose can be studied on the merits and not rejected out of hand. Further, given the possibility of Jesus’ resurrection, Paul contends, the ground of faith and proclamation is firm, forgiveness of sins is possible, faith is not futile, and dead Christians have hope of future live with fully human bodies, albeit transformed.

Paul also pushes ahead when he looks at the negative side of “hope only in this life.” He likely means, “only in this kind of life” — life that is mortal life. Without resurrection, reality becomes flattened out and hits a dead end. On the other hand, given the resurrection of Jesus, we can talk about his rising from the dead as a precedent-setting event with huge implications for us. That is the clear meaning of the phrase “first-fruits of those who have fallen asleep.” First-fruits to a farmer are the early indications of how the rest of the harvest will turn out. If Jesus rose from the dead, the fabric of the future life is decidedly richer and fuller for us. We may speak accurately about our death as only “sleep” if our bodies one day rise. The Gospels quote Jesus as referring to death as sleep, precisely because he is able to wake people up from it (see John 11:11-13). Paul can speak about those who “sleep in Jesus” for the same reason (1 Thessalonians 4:13-14). Sleep used in these settings is another way of looking at death — a truly hopeful way that doesn’t see death as the end or merely the ticket into a soul-without-body afterlife. Bodies sleep and can be awakened in the resurrection, thanks to the resurrection of Jesus, our first fruits!

The resurrection of Jesus means that God is forever committed to this good world that He has made. God values the physical, spatial, temporal universe with its breath-taking immensity, beauty, and mystery. After all, He made it. Christianity does not view matter as evil and spirit as good. If they were, then the creation of the world described in Genesis 1-2, would be the work of another God. Indeed, some people actually advanced that theory during the early days of the church, based on Plato’s work, Timaeus. This belief shaped the movement later known as Gnosticism which found its way into sectarian Christianity by way of Marcion, a bishop from

the 2nd century whose views were rejected by the church. Resurrection guards the church against this kind of dualism that opposes the creator God of the Old Testament to the covenant God of Jesus Christ. God made the world, and though the world fell into sin and death, God determined to redeem the world through Jesus Christ. God did this by sending Jesus in a real human body, connected to the material world, dying on a tangible cross, and rising in real transformed human body. Ascending to heaven, Jesus brought with him his glorified body and, at God’s right hand, forever remains with that body, joined to the human race. We can say with confidence that we have a man in heaven — a fully human, embodied, resurrected man. In Luther’s famous words, we have “the right man on our side, the man of God’s own choosing.”  [BN, 10-12]

Join us this week in Study, Worship, Praise and Celebration at ChicagoFirstChurch of the Nazarene –

* Saturday 6:00pm
* Sunday 8:30am & 11:00am, 5:30pm