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.

Pentecostal Preaching, Part 2

Peter stepped into the God-given moment. Through faith in Christ, he and John had healed a lame man who came daily to the temple to beg for alms. The incident caused a great stir and Peter preached to the gathered crowd. While the circumstance of the sermon was different than the first he had preached, the content reflected the same commitments: it was biblically driven, had Christ as its subject, was courageous in its pronouncements, and called for the people listening to be intellectually honest (see previous post). It was solid pentecostal preaching. There is an additional component to pentecostal preaching, however, that shows up in these seminal sermons: the call for repentance.

What is repentance? In the words of one commentator, it’s a “spiritual about face.” This definition is helpful. Peter is bold to point out to his listeners that they had conspired and “denied the Holy and Righteous One . . . and killed the Author of life.” The first thing, therefore, that the crowd needed to repent of was their antipathy toward Jesus. No longer could they regard him as they had. The categories they had placed Jesus in that allowed them to dismiss him as a charlatan had to be renounced. His divine messiahship had been vindicated in the phenomena that were taking place and a “spiritual about face” was called for.

So, added to the characteristics of what constitutes pentecostal preaching is the call for repentance. But it’s important to note the order of repentance that Peter summons. The first thing that anyone needs to do is abandon their condemning conceptions of Christ. This is primary, for it’s only when a person in is union with the “Author of life” that calls for moral reformation make any sense. To repent of moral failures but not be brought into fellowship with Christ accomplishes no eternal good. A cleaned up pagan is in no better position before God than a thoroughly debauched one. What unbelievers need to do is “repent and be baptized . . . in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of [their] sins.” 

Though it might seem self-evident, Christ needs to be kept front and center as we bear witness to him. It’s Jesus that people need to know. Once that is settled, calls to live in a manner that is pleasing to God can follow.

Rational Miracles

Miracles, by definition, are phenomena, welcome phenomena, which stand outside the bounds of what is expected, normal, or natural. They don’t have a scientific explanation and so are attributed to divine intervention. For the materialist, therefore, a miracle is an impossibility, and to believe that they occur is irrational. No matter how extraordinary a phenomenon, it must have a rational, scientific explanation.

Given their presuppositions, I don’t know how materialists would have explained the healing of the man who sat day by day at the Beautiful Gate (Acts 3). Everyone familiar with the Beautiful Gate knew him to be one who had been lame from birth, who was brought to the location so that he could beg for alms. When it came to pass, therefore, that he was suddenly able to stand and leap about they couldn’t deny that it was he or that he was now completely healed. But what brought this about? Why was he suddenly able to walk? The explanation given by Peter wouldn’t have satisfied the materialist. It wasn’t scientific. It wasn’t rational.

Well, actually, that’s not completely true. The healing might not have been scientific, but it was totally rational, for it was done in the name of Jesus.

Prompted by the healing, Peter offers the incredulous onlookers a string of titles and adjectives for Jesus, when put together, provide a perfectly rational explanation as to why the man was healed “by faith in his name.” Jesus, the one those listening had “delivered over and denied in the presence of Pilate,” was the “Holy and Righteous One” who had been glorified (ascended and now seated at the right hand of God, as attested to by the outpouring of he Holy Spirit) by the “God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, the God of our fathers,” who was raised from the dead and shown to be the “Author of life.” He was the “servant” of God, the “Christ” who “suffered” as “foretold by the mouth of all the prophets,” who himself was the one of whom “Moses said, ‘The Lord God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your brothers.’” He was the object of “all the prophets [had] spoken” about the age to come in which the covenant that God made with Abraham that “’in your offspring shall all the families of the earth be blessed,’” would be realized. Given the reality of who Jesus is, it makes perfect sense that Peter and John, ministering in the power of Jesus could heal the man in the name of Jesus.

The hope is that the materialist (or anyone else for that matter) would reason backwards from the miracle and come to the conclusion that “there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). For some who listened to Peter that was the case. And for those in any age who hear the testimony for themselves, and are willing to weigh the evidence, a perfectly rational response will be to repent and believe.

The Big Issue

When the followers of Jesus began to speak “as the Spirit gave them utterance” in languages not their own, those who heard them were perplexed. Jesus' disciples were mostly made up of Galileans, a people not known for their erudition. Yet, here they were telling “the mighty works of God” in the tongues of others. A strange occurrence.

The New Testament is full of strange occurrences. People are raised from the dead. Incurable diseases suddenly vanish. Demons manifest. Angels appear. Voices come out from clouds. Who is at the center of all these strange goings on? Jesus, who himself walks on water, causes violent storms to obey his voice, and feeds multitudes with the first century equivalent of a “happy meal.”

All of these phenomena attest to the reality of who Jesus was – God in the flesh. And what was taking place on Pentecost only confirmed this truth. Jesus had promised that he would send the Holy Spirit when he returned to the right hand of his Father. With the Spirit’s arrival, the logical conclusion was that he was where he said he would be. This has ultimate significance.

The founding pastor of Neighborhood Church, Roger Fulton, was fond of saying, “Jesus is the big issue.” What was he implying? Jesus cannot be ignored. The record of his existence is present in the Bible and it calls for a decision. Is he a charlatan, a failed revolutionary, a mystic, or perhaps just an ordinary man upon whom people have projected their own longings? Roger’s assertion is reflected in the response of some of those who witnessed the fruit of the Spirit’s blessing. They wondered, “What does this mean?” The right question! And one that reveals people with humble and teachable hearts. Peter’s answer cut such to the quick: “Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified.”

As Roger intimates, this same question needs to be asked by all. Brushing away the biblical testimony with a dismissive equivalent to “they are filled with new wine” is inexcusable – and spiritually fatal. The teachable ones on Pentecost had their eyes opened to the truth of Jesus and their own folly. They pleaded, “Brothers, what shall we do?” Peter’s answer sufficed for them and will suffice for contemporary penitents: “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.”

He is the big issue. What's your decision?