Resurrection only has one possible meaning.
It means that someone was physically dead but is now physically alive. It cannot mean that their soul or their spirit lives on, but only that they are, in every way, alive again.
The Jews expected the messiah to come and conquer the baddies (in this case the Romans) and the new age would begin and the righteous (Jewish) dead would be resurrected and they would all live happily ever after, like the good old days with Solomon.*
Jesus kept insisting that he was that messiah, but never showed any inclination or interest in conquering the Romans. He had something far bigger in mind. The enemy was not the Romans, or the Greeks, or the Assyrians, or the Babylonians or even the Egyptians. The real enemy was sin and the death that it brought into the world. Paul says that “the wages of sin is death” (6:23) which means that the consequence of sin is that it kills us. The church fathers understood that sin was a sickness that had infected the entire human race and that death was the result – spiritual death in life – and, ultimately the grave at the end.
Death was the ultimate power. Oppressors could only oppress because of death and the threat of death. Death held power over humanity. Without death, no other enemy had any power at all.
Jesus kept insisting that he was the messiah and, seeing us infected and in bondage to death, he offers us rescue – eternal life (in Greek aoinios life), which means “life of the Age to come.” He offers us the life that we are promised in the future age – the age without pain, without sickness and without fear – and he offers it to start right now, and all we need to do is to trust him. (John 3:16)
The thing is that this offer is meaningless. If we are just going die anyway, what is the point? For that matter, anyone can make any promise about the future if they are not around to be held to account. It is all meaningless. Especially if you make those promises and then get nailed to a cross and die…
But…
…when Jesus was raised from the dead, that changed everything.
That meant that his disciples were looking right into the face of the promised life in the Age to come.
They were looking at the reality that makes everything that Jesus said credible.
They were looking at the proof that death was finally defeated. And if death was defeated then no other enemy could ever hold power over us again.
It means freedom.
Easter Sunday means that our lives can be built around the hope that we too will be raised when he returns and we can live our lives in the light of that. We do not need to fear poverty. We do not need to fear ridicule. We do not need to fear failure. We do not need to fear weakness. We do not need to fear any other person or institution or system. The worst that anyone can ever do to us is to kill us but now we know that this life is not all that there is.
Easter Sunday means that death is no longer a destination but merely a doorway.
O Death. where is your sting?
O Hell, where is your victory?
Christ is risen, the angels rejoice!
Christ is risen, and life reigns!
Christ is risen, and no one dead remains in the grave!
That is the hope of those who follow Christ.
*It should be noted that they were not really good at all. Solomon taxed and oppressed the people, built everything with slave labour, made his money as an arms dealer and pretty much did everything that kings were forbidden from doing.
0 Comments