FOR THE LOVE OF GOD

Scripture Reference: Luke 24

“Risen” Means We Will All Be Changed

When the body of Jesus was raised, it was also changed. Christ’s flesh was raised, but it was also adapted to be appropriate for everlasting life. This was something that had never happened before.

There had been other examples of life returning to a dead person. Jairus’s daughter, the son of the widow at Nain, and Lazarus had all been brought back to life by the power of Jesus.

These were wonderful miracles. But Lazarus came out of the tomb exactly as he had gone into it. I guess he might have been a few pounds lighter, but he was essentially the same! He carried on the process of aging at the point where he had left off, and then at some point, the poor fellow had to go through the whole miserable business of dying all over again. Jairus’s daughter and the widow’s son also would age and eventually die. Death was delayed but not defeated.

But when Christ was raised, His body was no longer subject to aging, sickness, or death. The resurrection body is not subject to pain or disability. It was His flesh, but it was transformed and adapted for eternity.

This is the glorious future that awaits every Christian believer. God has not prepared some kind of compensation package like a reduced pension plan for those who are unable to continue life on earth. He has sent Jesus Christ to redeem the whole of you, body and soul, and in the resurrection He will adapt your body even as He is preparing your soul for eternal life in His presence.

Wait Until Everybody’s Ready

The gift of the resurrection body is so wonderful that God holds it in reserve until the day when He will gather all His children together.

That’s what it was like on Christmas morning when I was a child. We always had presents when we woke up early on Christmas morning. Stockings were hung beside the fire, and in the morning we were all eager to go into the living room and open the gifts. But we weren’t allowed to go into the room until everybody was standing together at the door. Then, when everybody was ready, we all went in.

I think of Christian loved ones who have died. They are in the presence of Jesus, consciously enjoying the glory of His presence. That is far better than anything they could know here. But God has another gift for them and for us that He is keeping for the day when Jesus Christ returns to gather His whole family together.

When Christ comes, our Christian loved ones who are already in His presence will come with Him (see 1 Thessalonians 4:14). Then “the dead in Christ will rise” (1 Thessalonians 4:16). In other words, the souls of those who are with Jesus will be reunited with risen bodies adapted for everlasting life.

At the same time, believers who are still alive will be “caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus we shall always be with the Lord” (1 Thessalonians 4:17). We will experience the same transformation in which our bodies are adapted for everlasting life. The gift will be given to the whole family together. Then all the faces of God’s children will light up as together we enter all that He has prepared for us.

The resurrection of Jesus changes the face of death for all His people. Death is no longer a prison, but a passage into the immediate presence of God. Jesus said . . . , “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live” (John 11:25). The life that Jesus was talking about is more than a spiritual experience. God will redeem every part of you, including your body.

When Christ returns, all of His people will have new bodies, like the resurrection body of Jesus.

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture taken from the New King James Version®, NKJV © 1982 by Thomas Nelson.
Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture Reference: Luke 24

“Risen” Means the Whole Person Will Be Redeemed – Continued

The message of the resurrection is not just that Jesus is alive in the presence of the Father. It is that Christ in whole is risen! Do you see the difference? God has determined to redeem every part of you. Not just your soul, but your soul and body together.

God has made human beings in a wonderful way. He created angels as souls without bodies. He created animals as bodies without souls. But He created men and women as a unique integration of body and soul together.

That is why death is such a terrible enemy to us; it is the separating of the soul and the body that God has joined together. It is the undoing of our very nature.

The survival of the soul without the body would mean only part of us being saved, and that would not be a victory over death. Since death is the separating of soul and body, the only way in which death can be defeated would be for body and soul to be reunited in the power of a new life.

Now as they said these things, Jesus Himself stood in the midst of them, and said to them, “Peace to you.” But they were terrified and frightened, and supposed they had seen a spirit. And He said to them, “Why are you troubled? And why do doubts arise in your hearts? Behold My hands and My feet, that it is I Myself. Handle Me and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see I have” (Luke 24:36-39).

The Bible places great emphasis on the physical nature of the Resurrection. When Christ appeared to the disciples, they thought that they were seeing a ghost, so Jesus drew their attention to His hands and His feet and invited them to touch Him. “A spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see I have,” He said.

Jesus wanted them to know that what they were seeing was more than the spirit of Christ in a visible form. The flesh that lay in the tomb had been raised. When Jesus said, “It is I Myself,” He did not mean that a part of Him had survived death and lived on, but that the whole of Him had come through death and triumphed over it.

When Christ returns in glory and gathers all His people in His presence, every believer will be there, not only in mind but also in body. It is not just some spiritual capacity within you that will enter heaven. You will be there rejoicing in the presence of God. God has determined to redeem not just a part of you but the whole of you. And if we would believe more clearly in the resurrection of the body, we would have a much greater anticipation of the life in heaven.

The Resurrection tells us that heaven is not just some kind of spiritual experience only; it is not a mind game, like a virtual tour. It is not that some spiritual capacity within you survives death to continue in an existence that is a shadow of the life you knew before. That’s what the Old Testament believers had while they were waiting for the coming of Jesus.

It was not a part of Christ that ascended to the Father. It was the whole of Christ that ascended to the Father: mind, soul, spirit, and body. “It is I Myself,” He said to the disciples, “not a part of Me, but the whole of Me.”

He is risen! “Risen” means that death is defeated. “Risen” means the whole person will be redeemed.

To Be Continued

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture taken from the New King James Version®, NKJV © 1982 by Thomas Nelson.
Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture Reference: Luke 24

“Risen” Means that Death is Defeated

The word “risen” is full of significance, telling us first that death is defeated.

From the first sin in the Garden of Eden, death has been relentless. The apostle Paul wrote that “death reigned” (Romans 5:14, 17). It is like a tyrant exercising a reign of terror over the human race. Nobody can escape it. Everybody is subject to its awful cruelty.

In the Old Testament story, there were many great men of faith. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, and David all believed God’s promise, but death got every one of them.

What happened when they died?

We can be quite certain that they did not enter condemnation or judgment. They had trusted the Savior who was to come and looked for the sacrifice that would be made. They died before He came, and so we should think of them as waiting. They continued in a shadowy existence, separated from this life but unable to move forward into the presence of God. Death brought them to a place where there was a way in but no way out. They were stranded in a kind of “no man’s land” with nothing to do but wait.

From the time of Adam to the time of Christ, death had a way in but no way out. People went into death, but they could not emerge from it. But when Jesus died, it was as if He cut a hole in death itself. He changed its nature so that when I come to that moment of death, it will not be like entering a prison; it will be like going through a passage that leads right into the presence of God. There’s all the difference in the world.

Before Christ, people went into death. But Christ went through death. Death could not keep its hold on Him. He is risen, and in His resurrection, He has destroyed the holding power of death. “Risen” means that death is defeated.

“Risen” Means the Whole Person Will Be Redeemed

The message of the resurrection is not just that Jesus is alive. That is true, of course, but the resurrection story tells us much more. The message of the resurrection is that Jesus has risen!

It is worth thinking about the difference. The Son of God was alive in heaven before He ever took human flesh. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1). He was not only alive but actively engaged in the work of the Godhead in creating and sustaining the world. The Son of God has life in Himself, and nobody can take it from Him. All this was true of Him before He took human flesh.

So why did He not simply leave the crucified body in the tomb and return to the Father? After all, it was only flesh and bone. Why did He bother with it?

The angels could still have appeared on that first morning after the Sabbath and said, “Now look, His body is here in the tomb, but you don’t need to worry, because although you can see His body lying here, His Spirit is with the Father in heaven. He is alive, and He hears your prayers, and He is able to help you.”

After all, when a Christian person dies, is this not precisely what we say at the funeral service? We bury the body. We know exactly where it is. We visit the graveside. But then we say, “Even though we know the body is here; nevertheless, the soul of the person is with the Father in heaven.”

To Be Continued

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture taken from the New King James Version®, NKJV © 1982 by Thomas Nelson.
Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture Reference: Luke 24

Lost for an Explanation

They found the stone rolled away from the tomb. Then they went in and did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. . . . They were greatly perplexed about this (Luke 24:2-4).

When the women arrived, they found that the rock in front of the tomb had been moved. When they went into the tomb, they found that it was empty. The women had absolutely no idea what to make of this. They were confronted with evidence, but they were lost for an explanation. The empty tomb left them “perplexed.”

It is important to notice that they did not immediately jump to the conclusion that Jesus had risen from the dead. When we have discussions about “what we should make of the empty tomb,” we should remember that the first visitors had no idea how to answer that question and they had been intimately close to Jesus.

When they found the body was missing, Mary did not say, “I have this feeling that He must have risen from the dead,” and Joanna did not reply, “You know, I have that feeling too. I think you must be right.” The thought didn’t even occur to them.

So how did they know what happened?

God told them.

God Gives the Explanation

It happened, as they were greatly perplexed about this, that behold, two men stood by them in shining garments. Then, as they were afraid and bowed their faces to the earth, they said to them, “Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here, but is risen!” (Luke 24:4-6).

God called two angels and said, “Go and tell them what I have done. These women love My Son, but there is no way in the world that they are ever going to work out what happened. Go tell them.”

Suddenly the women became aware of “two men in shining garments” standing beside them. The other gospel writers identify them specifically as angels. Luke gives us a description. They looked like men and yet they were clearly not men because of the radiance of their appearance. They were given the privilege of announcing the greatest news the world has ever heard: “He has risen!”

A Christian is a person who has come to believe God’s explanation of His own action. Christian faith rests entirely on grasping and believing what God tells us He has done. We have seen this pattern throughout the Bible story.

When Adam breathed his first breath and became aware of himself as a living being, he had no means of knowing who he was until God told him. God explained what had happened. Adam was made in God’s image and for His glory.

When the young virgin Mary conceived a child, there was no way that she could have known what was happening to her. So God sent the angel to explain what was about to happen. It was the same with the shepherds and the wise men. How could they possibly have known that the child in a manger was God in human flesh? Without God’s explanation through the angels and the star, they would never have known what was happening.

It was the same with the death of Jesus. Many people saw Him die, but few understood the significance of the Cross. But God tells us that on the cross, Christ bore our sin and endured our punishment, laying His life down as a sacrifice so that justice would be satisfied and we may receive mercy.

It was the same for the women at the tomb on that first day of the week. They would never have worked out what had happened for themselves. So, God told them through His messengers. Christian faith does not rest on feelings, impulses, or personal insights. It is believing God’s explanation of events, given to us in the Scripture: “He has risen!”

To Be Continued

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture taken from the New King James Version®, NKJV © 1982 by Thomas Nelson.
Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture Reference: Luke 24

That first day of the week, the three women, Mary Magdalene, Joanna, who was the wife of Cuza, the manager of Herod’s household, Mary, the mother of James and other women with them rushed to the tomb of Jesus after spending the previous days mourning Him during the Sabbath.

Love With Fear and Doubt

It happened, as they were greatly perplexed . . ., that behold, two men stood by them in shining garments. Then, as they were afraid and bowed their faces to the earth, they said to them, “Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here, but is risen! Remember how He spoke to you when He was still in Galilee, saying, ‘The Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and the third day rise again.’ ” And they remembered His words (Luke 24:4-8).

The women had heard Christ speaking about what would happen on the third day. On at least three occasions, He had specifically told them that He would rise from the dead.

They had heard His words, but it is quite clear that on this first day of the week, they did not expect anything unusual to happen. Their journey to the tomb was motivated by love, but it was absolutely devoid of faith. Whatever faith they had in Christ before had been overwhelmed by the darkness of Calvary. Faith was extinguished, and all that was left was love. So they went to the tomb with spices to anoint His dead body.

It is possible to have great love for Christ and yet walk in doubt and fear. These women believed in Christ’s cause. They gave their money to support it. They had a deep love for Christ. But they were traumatized by the horrible reality of His excruciating death that they witnessed just two days before, and now they felt that death was stronger than His promise. Fear had replaced faith and all what was left was uncertainty; all they had left was the love they had had for Him.

Today, many people have a deep affection for Christ and what He did but find it hard to believe in His life today. Having learned about the Christian faith, they may have been drawn to Christ and began to believe in Him and His work. But then they experienced great darkness in a personal tragedy, or in some great evil that was done, and somewhere in the darkness they allowed fear and doubt to rule.

This has been a struggle for many who have served their country on the field of battle for instance. Many who are first responders in law enforcement and firefighters, experience the same thing. The trauma of seeing the unspeakable cruelty and suffering around us has led some to say with sadness that they can no longer believe in a living Christ. The pain seems to extinguish the possibility of faith.

That was the position of these women on that first morning after Jesus’ death, and it is the position of many today. Perhaps, like these women, you have seen unspeakable cruelty and suffering, and you simply cannot come to terms with it. In the darkness, faith has been replaced with doubt and fear and all that is left is love you feel for what Christ stood for. You still attend church because there is affection for Jesus in your soul. You wish that it all might have been true, but the wish is filled with sadness and doubt.

To Be Continued

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture taken from the New King James Version®, NKJV © 1982 by Thomas Nelson.
Used by permission. All rights reserved.