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Tag: resurrection of Christ

I Can Face A Monday!

Published by Jeff Kennon on April 8, 2015

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This past Sunday I had the opportunity to preach at a nearby church. One of the songs we sang was Bill Gaither’s Because He Lives. While singing it, I began to think about the first line of the chorus. Gaither writes, because He lives, I can face tomorrow. So when is tomorrow? It could be construed as some unforeseen day in the future, but for me, while sitting in church, I began to think about tomorrow being a Monday.

Monday. What is exciting about a Monday? True, Monday could be a day full of thrills but reality tells me that it will just be another day filled with routine. Staff meetings, creating “to do lists,” driving kids to school, sending emails, returning phone calls, working out, eating meals, and relaxing with family before bed. Some fairly ordinary stuff accompanies my Mondays.

So where does the resurrection fit in to all of this? Shouldn’t the resurrection push us to something bigger than watering the grass? Shouldn’t we be saving the world? Because He lives, I can face the mundane? That doesn’t sound very grandiose and yet while singing this Gaither song on Sunday morning, that’s what I was thinking about. Monday was headed my way.

The reality is that most people (actually I think all people) live ordinary lives. And for some this is a problem. There is a reason that TV shows such as American Idol are popular. We want to escape the humdrum days into a life of adventure. We are on a search for significance and think that the treasure of importance can only be found by doing something “big.” But is this true?

“What if ‘bigness,’” writes Michael Kelley in his book Boring, “is not an accurate measure of significance? What if the whole idea of ‘ordinary’ is a myth? And what if a life of great importance isn’t found by escaping the details but embracing them? What if God actually doesn’t want you to escape from the ordinary, but to find significance and meaning inside of it?”

The resurrection speaks a different word to us. The daily mundane activities are no longer just things to check off on our “to do list.” God is alive and working. He is beyond the mundane. Therefore, writes Kelley, “there really is no such thing as ordinary when you are following an extraordinary God.”

Paul, at the end of 1 Corinthians 15, which is an incredible chapter on the truth, validity, and implications of the resurrection, writes: Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in in the Lord your labor is not in vain.

Because Christ has risen, continue plodding along knowing that what you do is not in vain. Your work and life while following Christ, though it may appear ordinary, will not be without purpose. “The reality of the future,” writes David Garland, “colors the reality of the present.”

So because He lives, I can face a Monday and every day knowing that because I serve a risen Lord, life is beyond ordinary!

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Trusting In God Who Raises The Dead

Published by Jeff Kennon on March 24, 2015

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The fact that Jesus has been raised from the dead changes everything. It changes what we hope for and where we place our trust!

Paul writes:

But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive (1 Corinthians 15:20-22).

How vital it is to remember that just as Christ is made alive, so we will be made alive. And if God has the power over death, should we not trust him in all things? Since we serve a God who raises the dead, what have we to fear?

N.T. Wright writes:

If, then, we recognize the truth about the surpassing God, the God who raises the dead, we can trust him with every task that may come our way. He can be trusted with exams; he can be trusted with jobs, even when they don’t necessarily work out the way we thought they should. He can be trusted with marriage, both as we look forward to it with eagerness and trepidation and when we find ourselves within it and facing the stresses and strains that all contemporary marriages must expect. He can be trusted with money, even when it seems as though there is even less of it available than we had thought. He can be trusted with old age. He can be trusted with death itself. Of course he can; he is the God who raised the dead, who affirms the goodness of human life, who takes precisely the situation where there seems to be no hope in human terms, and brings new life exactly there. 

As we draw near to Easter, let it push us to follow Christ more fully knowing that he holds the power of life and death. Let us be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord [our] labor is not in vain (1 Corinthians 15:58).

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Jesus: Another Failed Reformer?

Published by Jeff Kennon on May 6, 2014

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Ivor J. Davidson:

The story of the Christian church has its genesis in the belief of a small group of Jews in the first-century Palestine that a man who had been crucified had been raised from the dead. Jesus of Nazareth, the charismatic prophet, teacher, and healer whose ministry had caused a storm in Galilee and Judea, appeared to have died in defeat and he had been put to death by crucifixion, sentenced by the Roman prefect of Judea, Pontius Pilate, around the year A.D. 30.

This ought to have been the end of the matter. Jesus, it seemed, was just another failed reformer–courageous, no doubt, in his protest against religious and moral systems that he felt were wrong; commendable, certainly, in his principled concern for the needs and the marginalized and his practical efforts to address social injustices; but in the end just another pious martyr to a cause.

Jesus had been an impressive teacher and miracle worker; and his brief ministry had made an impact on a wide variety of people, but he had died a common criminal’s death, crying out to God in an apparent sense of being forsaken. His death left his band of followers without a leader and without any obvious sense of direction.

Whatever Jesus had stood for; it appeared either that he had been mistaken or that his mission was a failure. 

What changed all this was the conviction that though Jesus had died a violent death and been laid in a tomb, he was dead no longer. Within a matter of days of his crucifixion, stories were circulating that his grave was empty and that he had been raised from the dead.

The belief that Jesus was raised was not some pious idea that the events of his crucifixion had been reversed or that the dreadful reality of his suffering had somehow been cancelled out. The Jesus who appeared was not a resuscitated corpse, amazingly brought to life again. Nor was he a ghost or a phantom pictured in the minds of grieving–and perhaps guilt-ridden–disciples, looking back sentimentally on the individual they had known and failed in the hour of his greatest need. 

At the heart of the first-believers’ faith was a conviction that Jesus was alive as a concrete, flesh-and-blood reality. 

His followers believed his appearances were confirmations that God had vindicated him and that his life and death, far from being in vain, were in fact the decisive means by which God was acting in history to effect not only the renewal of Israel but the redemption of the world.

-Ivor J. Davidson, The Birth of The Church: From Jesus to Constantine AD 30-312 (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2004), 11-12.

 

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Jesus Is Risen, THEREFORE…

Published by Jeff Kennon on April 21, 2014

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There is perhaps no greater chapter in the Bible that explains the doctrine of the resurrection than 1 Corinthians 15. In it, Paul helps those in Corinth with their struggle with a bodily resurrection.

Having been influenced by Greek thought, the Corinthians questioned how a physical body that is perishable could be made suitable for the spiritual realm. But Paul emphatically writes that if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised (1 Cor. 15:13).

And if Christ has not been raised from the dead, there is no gospel. Our faith is in vain and we are to be pitied above all people. But Christ has been raised. Therefore, we will be raised as well.

Because Christ has been raised, there is life after death. All who are in Christ will receive new bodies because Christ is the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep (1 Cor 15:20). In other words, Jesus is the first to be resurrected. In due time, those who are believers will experience the same.

Because Christ has been raised, we have victory through our Lord Jesus Christ (1 Cor. 15:57). The sting of death has been removed for as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive (1 Cor. 15:22).

Because Christ has been raised, our faith is not in vain. We are made alive. We have victory over death. We have the hope of a new resurrected body. So what does this mean? What does Paul encourage the Corinthians to do with this truth of the resurrection?

It’s important to note that in all of Paul’s letters, theology leads to praxis. Doctrine leads to the living of every day life. Therefore, the doctrine of the resurrection naturally leads to Paul exhorting believers in how to live.

Paul writes:

Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain (1 Cor. 15:58).

So because Christ is risen, we should now…

  • Hold strongly to the truth of the gospel. Our faith is not in vain. Christ is risen. Don’t be knocked loose from holding to that which is “of first importance” (1 Cor. 15:3-5), the message of the death, burial and resurrection of Christ.
  • Get to work building up the church. Share the gospel, teach, encourage, serve, pray, and love others. And don’t do such things half-heartedly, but “abound” or “excel” in them.
  • Realize that what we do for the kingdom is not wasted. Whatever you are contemplating on doing for the kingdom, do it! Michael Bird writes that “the resurrection moves us to take risks for God because the resurrection proves that God is behind us, before us and with us. Our labor in the Lord in this life plants seed that will sprout forth in the resurrection life; thus, what work we do in this age will flower in the coming age of new creation.”

From Paul’s understanding of the resurrection, Easter Sunday impacts Monday. It works itself out in everyday life as we seek to glorify God and make Him known.

 

 

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If Not For The Resurrection…

Published by Jeff Kennon on April 20, 2014

th-2 If Christ has not been raised from the dead, then according to Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:12-19…

All preaching is worthless

If you attended church today, then what you heard was bogus. It was nothing but empty words that had no power to change.

Your faith is worthless

If you have placed your faith in Christ, then it is worthless as you are trusting in something that is a lie. “If Christ hasn’t been raised, the Christian faith is fiction and we are stranded in the fall of humanity, trapped in our imperfections. In other words, there is no hope, no purpose, no plan for the future. This is all there is.” (see Raised? Finding Jesus by Doubting the Resurrection)

The Apostle’s testimony is false

We have been fed a lie. “Without the resurrection, Jesus’ teachings are a sham, half-baked ideas from a wandering Jew with a messiah complex” (from Raised?) And the apostles only continued the conspiracy by passing down the fable of the resurrection from generation to generation.

You are still in our sins

There is no forgiveness. Paul wrote in Romans that Jesus was raised “for our justification” (4:25); that we now “walk in newness of life (6:4-5); and that “there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (8:1). But if there is no resurrection, all of this is a lie.

Believers who have died are lost forever

If Christ has not been raised, then “the human terror of death as a gloomy portal leading to oblivion and divine condemnation would be justified” (see 1 Corinthians by David Garland). Believers remain in the clutches of death.

Believers are to be pitied.

If there is no resurrection, then “Christians become pathetic dupes, taken in by a colossal fraud,” writes Garland. “Their transformation and glorious spiritual experiences in this life are all make-believe. They are the most pitiable of all human beings because they have embraced Christ’s death and suffering for nothing.”

 But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead…

Christ is risen! And you, O death are annihilated!

Christ is risen! And the evil ones are cast down!

Christ is risen! And the angels rejoice!

Christ is risen! And life is liberated!

Christ is risen! And the tomb is emptied of its dead;

For Christ having risen from the dead,

Is become the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep.

To Him be glory and power, now and forever, and from all ages to all ages.

                  AMEN.

(cited from Evangelical Theology  by Michael F. Bird)

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The Silence About The Empty Tomb–A Few Responses

Published by Jeff Kennon on April 11, 2014

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A few days ago Philip Jenkins posed the question: “Why did the New Testament writers, outside of the four gospels, remain silent about the empty tomb of Jesus?” He asked the question seeking an honest answer because…

Suppose I face an atheist critic, who makes the following argument. Yes, he says, early Christians believed that they encountered the risen Jesus, that they had visions, but these visions had no objective reality. They just arose from the hopes and expectations of superstitious disciples. Even then, Christians saw that Resurrection in spiritual, pneumatic, terms. Only after a lengthy period, some forty years in fact, did the church invent stories to give a material, bodily basis to that phenomenon, and the empty tomb was the best known example.

As I have thought some about this question, I have come up with a few ideas as to why the silence.

  • Could it be that no mention of an empty tomb was due to the early NT writers not needing it as an apologetic defense? Paul, for example, is writing to specific churches and addressing specific needs. Is it possible that objective evidence of the resurrection via the empty tomb was not a concern?
  • Along the same thought as the above comment, could it be that the concerns of the early church were not of the miraculous resurrection but of the meaning of it? In other words, the issue was not the empty tomb. Everyone knew the tomb was empty. The issue was why? It might be that the issue was not defending the resurrection as much as defending it’s meaning along with the person and work of Christ.
  • On the other hand, is not the empty tomb implied? If Jesus is alive and the disciples saw him, does this not indicate an empty tomb? Instead of writing the tomb is empty, they wrote, That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and have touched with our hands, concerning the word of life— the life was made manifest, and we have seen it, and testify to it and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was made manifest to us—(1 John 1:1-2).
  • What would an empty tomb prove? It could prove that Jesus was alive, but it could also mean that someone stole the body or moved it. It appears that the proof of the resurrection for the disciples and others was not due to the empty tomb but due to seeing Christ alive. It was this personal testimony along with the early believers die-hard devotion to it, even unto death, that seemed to be the proof that was needed.

The question remains however, as to why after forty years did the gospel writers pick up the empty tomb story? I think this question is especially interesting due to my point above that an empty tomb does not necessarily prove Jesus is alive.

Is it possible therefore, that the mention of the empty tomb emerges not because of needing proof that Jesus is alive but because the empty tomb is part of the story of Jesus. When the women and disciples came to the tomb, it was empty so that’s what Matthew Mark, Luke, and John recorded (Matthew 28:1-6; Mark 16:1-8; Luke 24:1-12; John 20:1-10).

The gospel writers were not seeking to invent stories to give “a material, bodily basis” for the resurrection. They were recording the life of Jesus of which the empty tomb is a vital part. They weren’t trying to prove the resurrection, but just writing that it did, in fact, occur.

So what are your thoughts? How would you answer Jenkins question?

 

 

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