Life is such a paradox. One minute we are rejoicing the birth of a new born; the next we are grieving the death of a friend. Some say death is just part of the natural process of living, but everything in us screams that death is not natural. Death is a train wreck of everything we hold dear, “the expression of a catastrophe which runs on a collision course with [our] original destination.”[1] Death is counterintuitive to all that’s right, true, and beautiful about living. Sociologist Peter Berger wrote that we humans have an intuition that there must be life beyond death, intuitions that he called “signals of transcendence.” Such signals include humor, the joy of play, and most importantly love.[2] That’s what seems most meaningless about death–the separation between us and those we love. As Jurgen Moltmann put it, “Our question about life is not whether our existence might possibly be immortal; the question is: will love endure.”[3]
I think one signal of transcendence is the strange and wonderful news that has endured for the last 2,000 years, that a Jew from a small, backwater town was raised from the dead. Strange as it may be, the hope provided by the resurrection of Jesus actually laid the foundation upon which Western civilization is based. As philosopher Luc Ferry writes, the Christian belief in the resurrection provided a completely new understanding of life and suffering and “was a major reason that Christianity so thoroughly defeated Greek philosophy and became the dominant worldview of the Roman Empire.”[4] The resurrection of Jesus vindicates “the belief in the preciousness of each person to God,”[5] and thus provides the basis for the dignity of human beings. But the resurrection of Jesus isn’t just some odd, isolated event that appeared suddenly out of nowhere. The resurrection of Jesus makes perfect sense against the backdrop of the God who had revealed himself for two millennia before Jesus appeared in the flesh.
THE BACK STORY TO JESUS
As anyone who spends 5 minutes reading the Gospels can see, Jesus made incredible claims to actually being God himself. But not just any God; rather, the God who had a long history with the Jewish nation. And it wasn’t just any “god” at work in the cross and resurrection of Jesus; it was this God, the God Whom the Old Testament constantly describes as the One whose steadfast love never ends.
The most repeated phrase in the Old Testament is “Yahweh is good; his steadfast love endures forever.” Yahweh, the God of the Hebrews, was a promise keeper. Jesus himself pointed to this faithful love of God as the basis for hope in the resurrection. In debating the Sadducees (who didn’t believe in the resurrection), Jesus went straight to the heart of the Old Testament for proof, the scene where God appeared to Moses at the burning bush. God had told Moses that he was the “God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” So why should the Sadducees believe in a life after death? Because, as Jesus said, “God is not the God of the dead, but the God of the living, for to him all are alive” (Mark 12:27). In other words, “if the patriarchs mattered to God once–and they certainly did–they must matter to the faithful God for ever. They will not simply be discarded at their deaths.”[6] As James Polkinghorne comments, Jesus pointed to the “everlasting faithfulness of God–the divine steadfast love–as the only, and the totally sufficient, ground for the hope that our lives will not end at death.”[7]
The primary meaning of Jesus’ resurrection is not just that there is life after death, or that there is a “God.” The primary meaning of Jesus’ resurrection is that God is this God, the God whose character would do exactly what he did in the incarnation, death, and resurrection of Jesus. This God not only has the power to give life in the first place, but his love is so strong and faithful that he will not let our death, or our evil and failures, or anything else, separate us from him. Jesus was exactly what we would expect from this God, as one bright Jewish contemporary of Jesus came to realize.
THE JEW WHO DIDN’T BELIEVE
There was one contemporary of Jesus who couldn’t stand what the early Christians were saying about Jesus. His name was Saul, and he was a rising star among the Pharisees, having studied under the famous Jewish rabbi, Gamaliel. Saul possibly was in the crowd that called for Jesus’ crucifixion. After Jesus’ death, Saul was adamant about stomping out the talk of Jesus being resurrected. For crying out loud, Jesus was publicly humiliated and crucified! The Law itself said “Anyone who hangs on a tree is cursed by God” (Deut. 21:23; Gal. 3:13). While a Pharisee like Saul would believe that there would be a general resurrection at the “Last Day,” it was ridiculous to think of someone rising from the dead right in the middle of history. So Saul “breathed murderous threats” and set off from Jerusalem to Damascus to put an end to it there.
What occurred on that Damascus road is one of the greatest “evidences” for the veracity of the resurrection of Jesus. While nearing Damascus, a bright light enveloped Saul, and a voice spoke to him: “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?” “Who are you Lord?” “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. Now get up and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do” (Acts 9:4-6). Immediately, Saul began going into the Jewish synagogues, telling people that Jesus was the manifestation of God himself, and that what happened in the coming, death, and resurrection of Jesus was God keeping his promises! As Saul (who changed his name to Paul) would later describe, he had seen the risen Jesus with his own eyes, and Jesus personally revealed to him the good news of Who He really was.
YES!
Having encountered the risen Jesus himself, all the pieces came together for Paul. Jesus’ death and resurrection weren’t odd, isolated events. These were the very acts of the very same God that had shown Himself faithful to the Jews for over 2,000 years. Jesus was in fact the culmination of the plan God had prepared even before He created the world (Eph. 1:4). As Paul told the church in Corinth, all the promises of God find their “Yes!” in Jesus (2 Cor. 1:20). Jesus proves that God is faithful and full of love, and that love is not in vain!
Yes! Death is not the end for you or your loved ones, but death is and will be swallowed up forever (Isa. 25:8).
Yes! Your life is precious and has eternal meaning; you are engraved on the palms of God’s hands (Isa. 49:16).
Yes! God himself has released you from your failures; he has himself become the curse on your behalf, so no one can accuse you any longer! Your failures and sins? He has hurled them into the sea (Isa. 53:10; Micah 7:19).
Yes! God has poured out his Spirit on all nations (Joel 2:29), and he has put his Spirit into our hearts to move us to be the people we most want to be (Ezek. 36:27). God has poured his love into our hearts by his Spirit he has given us, filling us with the assurance of life beyond the grave (Rom. 5:5).
Yes! God has proven faithful to every generation since the coming of Jesus, not only changing civilization but giving all humans time and space to open up to his love until the “Last Day.” The cross, resurrection, and return of Jesus are really “one divine Act, held apart only by the mercy of God who desires to give everyone the opportunity for faith and repentance.”[8]
Yes! The resurrection of Jesus is the prototype, the first fruit of what is sure to come: “it is not an absurd event within the old world but the symbol and starting point for the new world.”[9]
Yes! This God, the God of Jesus Christ, is faithful and His Word is good–you can count your life (and your death) on it. The LORD is good; his steadfast love endures forever.
As Paul put it in Romans 8, “If God is for us (and He is!), then what can separate us from his love? For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
[1] Helmut Thielicke, Death and Life (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1970), 105.
[2] Peter Berger, A Rumour of Angels, Penguin 1970.
[3] Jurgen Moltmann, The Coming of God (SCM Press, 1996), 53.
[4] Luc Ferry, A Brief History of Thought: A Philosophical Guide to Living (Harper, 2010), quoted in Timothy Keller, Walking with God through Pain and Suffering (New York: Dutton, 2013), 42.
[5] Anthony C. Thiselton, Life After Death: A New Approach to Last Things (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2012), 112.
[6] James Polkinghorne, The God of Hope and the End of the World (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002), 83.
[7] Id.
[8] Thiselton, 102.
[9] N. T. Wright, Surprised by Hope (New York: Harper, 2008), 67.