He Is Risen, Indeed!

He is risen! He is risen, indeed! 

This greeting of the ancient church sets the foundation for everything else a Christian confesses. As the apostle Paul acknowledges, “If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied.” (1 Corinthians 15:19) Still in our sins, unable to stand before God on the final day, following an impotent and ultimately unimportant messiah — if Christ did not rise we have no reason to hope. But as Paul declares, “. . . in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.” (1 Corinthians 15:20) 

The firstfruits are the leading edge of the harvest. They send a signal as to the quality of what follows. Jesus being described in this manner is meant to assure us that as he rose from the dead so shall we. And as he possessed a resurrected body no longer subject to mortality or decay, those who are his at his coming will likewise possess bodies like unto his. We will walk in the freedom and liberty destined for those whom Christ makes alive by his death and resurrection. 

You may have read the recently published interview with the current president of Union Theological Seminary, Serene Jones. She was interviewed by Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times. If you haven’t read it, you should look it up. It’s pretty appalling. The whole tenor of her remarks are surprisingly juvenile. Among other pithy statements she made the following about the resurrection, “Those who claim to know whether or not it happened are kidding themselves.” Given everything she has to say, she would get along well with Bart Ehrman, the famous fallen evangelical. One difference, however, is that Bart had the decency to leave the church when he no longer believed what it taught. Serene is still with us, purporting to be a “Christian minister.” If the matter wasn’t so serious, we could dismiss her remarks as predictably puerile. As it is, Paul’s warning comes to mind, “the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth” (Romans 1:18)

What the early Christians understood (and Serene does not) is that everything hangs on the resurrection. This is because our brothers and sisters took sin seriously, treated God’s holiness with due respect, and knew that unless God acted to change their circumstances they were without hope in the world. But their confidence in the resurrection, expressed in the ancient greeting offered above, was not established out of some psychological need, as if they were persuading themselves of something even though they had no reason to believe it. They knew that Jesus had risen, and subsequent generations who have been “born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,” (1 Peter 1:3) have also believed even though they have not seen. (John 20:29).

Pray for Serene, Nicholas, and Bart.

Behold, Your King

One thing is evident in the accounts of Jesus ‘Triumphal Entry’ into Jerusalem: no one knows what is actually happening except Jesus. Some cheered as though the deliverer had finally come, others jeered insinuating he was a fraud. By the end of the week, all will join in demanding his crucifixion. This melding of disparate voices reveals that neither grasped the truth of who Jesus was and what he had come to do. But that he knew is clear from how Matthew recounts and interprets the scene for us.

Jesus gives direction to two disciples to collect an animal that he had arranged for his use. It was a very deliberate choice and one designed to declare precisely who he was. The prophet Zechariah had foreseen the coming of the Righteous One and pictured the manner and demeanor of his arrival: “Behold, your king is coming to you; righteous and having salvation is he, humble and mounted on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.” (9:9) Jesus’ choice of a colt was no coincidence. He was making a statement and everyone got it, those who cheered and those who jeered.

What they didn’t grasp was the nature of his messiahship. Both parties thought he was claiming to be the one who would ride ahead of a victorious army, but such was not the case. That Jesus understood this is evident in the interpretation Matthew offers of the events. In quoting the framing passage from Zechariah he makes two changes to the text. The first is a substitution of language from Isaiah that turns the opening line into an evangelistic call. While the original called for rejoicing in a completed work, the substitution called people to pay attention to what was about to happen. The second is the elimination of a line from Zechariah: “righteous and having salvation is he.” Many translations offer an alternative translation for “having salvation” -- “victorious.” Both intend to communicate that the arriving king is to be celebrated for a finished work, his having been victorious, his having saved. Matthew’s deletion is a subtle redirecting of the offered praise. It is not for what Jesus as messiah has done, but what he will do. By the end of the week, the humble and lowly demeanor will find full expression as he yields himself to the conniving and cries of the crowd. It’s his death that will establish the prophesied peace, a peace that cannot be undone.

What is remarkable, and reveals the grace and mercy of God, is that in a few short weeks many of those who cried for Jesus’ crucifixion will be brought to faith and repentance. With the outpouring of the Holy Spirit the Good News is preached with power and conviction soon follows. The same thing can happen now. I think it safe to say that few know what actually happened on Palm Sunday, and many are they who deny the messiahship of Jesus. But through the power of the Holy Spirit and the preaching of the Good News others can be “cut to the heart,” and say, “Brothers, what shall we do?” (Acts 2:37)

Justification & Reconciliation

As Christians, we often speak of being justified by faith. And that is as it should be for that is what is meant by the gospel. As Paul writes in Romans 3, “For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith.” (see Romans 3:22-26) The work of justifying sinners, accomplished out of God’s mercy and love through the obedience of his only Son, was decreed in eternity when, as believers, “he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him.” (Ephesians 1:4) The benefit of this merciful transaction is that our reconciliation with God is accomplished. Hear again the apostle, “Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” (Romans 5:1)

What is to be appreciated, indeed, celebrated, is that just as our justification was something accomplished by God when we had no interest in it or part to play, so too was our reconciliation, “Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life.” (Romans 5:9-10) God has acted on his side of the relationship to take away all that caused us to be estranged from him. The enmity that existed because of our debt of sin, he has expunged through the blood of the cross. This is something accomplished, done, finished. This is why Paul can define his work as a “ministry of reconciliation” because “in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to [him and the others called to spread the good news] the message of reconciliation.” (2 Corinthians 5:18-19) 

This reconciliation signals that those who are in Christ are not to be evaluated by other Christians by worldy standards for “if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.” (v. 17) Such fleshly distinctions were a particular problem in the Corinthian church. We can discern from Paul’s letters that boundaries, harmful boundaries, persisted between the various groups that made up the church. This was shameful and not in accordance with the gospel. Christ died for all kinds of people and in Christ such distinctions fall away (v. 14-15).

With this in mind, the situation pictured for us in Paul’s letter to Philemon is striking. Is the truth of the gospel sufficient to cause there to be reconciliation rather than retribution when Onesimus presents himself at the door of Philemon’s house? I believe Paul thought it was. And though we do not have the explicit language of reconciliation in his appeal, that Onesimus returns no longer just a slave but a beloved brother in Christ gives us reason to believe that Pauls’ confidence that Philemon would be obedient to his request (Philemon14) was not misplaced. Onesimus and Philemon were new creations in Christ, as such they were those who “live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised.” (2 Corinthians 5:15).