At the entrance to Jerusalem’s Church of All Nations, next to the Garden of Gethsemane, there is a sign warning every visitor: NO EXPLANATIONS INSIDE THE CHURCH. It’s a warning intended to discourage talkative tour guides from disturbing prayerful ambience with shouted lectures. Maybe it’s good advice for the people of God fresh off an Easter Sunday celebration of the resurrection of Christ from the grave.
Do we at times need to mount an apologetic Scriptural defense of the resurrection to doubters? Sure. In an unbelieving world the dead stay dead, the eyewitness evidence to the resurrection is overwhelming, and the Christian faith is intensely rational. Oh, it is much more than that for “…, faith comes from hearing the message and the message is heard through the word about Christ” (Romans 10:17), but still the Christian faith is a rational faith. So when necessary let’s defend the evidence for Christ’s defeat of death and do so vigorously.
However, the resurrection of Christ is more than an event we talk about or defend or just believe propositionally. It’s the greatest transformative victory ever. Christ’s resurrection has real life consequences, yes, for you and me. In the words of a sainted Prof. John Jeske, “Boys, the resurrection matters for me! Now! Today! Be sure and tell me about it.” So here’s a Pastor simply trying to tell you about the relevance of the resurrection for your daily life with two blessings beyond the grave precisely because Christ got out of the grave. After all, that stupendous victory really does matter for you. Now! Today!
BLESSING BEYOND THE GRAVE #1: My sins are forgiven and gone – now.
Recently, I told my wife Gretchen, in a deeply personal conversation that she needs to embrace her mistakes in life. So this is what she did. She paused. She then slowly hugged me and started crying! Just kidding – it’s a stolen line from a comedian who never got any respect. This, however, is one of the more prevalent modern philosophies on how we are to deal with our past failures, betrayals, and or corrosive guilt. “Embrace your evil and move on.”
Anyone who has any real sin to confess, however, understands how self-defeating and, quite frankly, how idiotic that advice is, right? David knew. “When I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long” (Psalm 32:3). What you and I need is someone outside ourselves to take our sin away and cleanse us, make us whole and new. The gospel proclaims clearly that Jesus died for our sins, took them away, and gave us his own perfection. “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21).
Christ then gets out of the grave on that first Easter Sunday and vindicates our righteousness while at the same time validating our forgiveness with his resurrection from the dead. Paul states it negatively like this in the great resurrection chapter. “And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins” (1 Corinthians 15:10). Paul also states this truth positively in Romans 4:25: “Jesus was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification.”
This means that by his death Christ paid the penalty for our sins and purchased our exoneration, our being declared not guilty, and our forgiveness. And since the achievement of the cross was so complete and the work of our justification (declared not guilty) so decisive, God raised Jesus from the dead to indeed validate our forgiveness and to vindicate his Son’s righteousness (perfection) and to celebrate the work of justification. How about that for consequences of Christ’s resurrection for your daily life?!
A very poor orphan in the Bronx wanted nothing more in the world than to belong to a family. Finally, his opportunity came. He was eight years old and a family wanted to adopt him! Introductions were made, papers signed, and 6 days after his eighth birthday he left for his new home. He took with him his hope and his possessions – the old worn and torn clothes he was wearing and a single soft toy.
His new parents were excited to have him, and wanted him to feel like one of the family. A special celebration dinner was held. He was given his own room and he was introduced to the other kids in the street. His new parents took those old clothes, threw them away, and bought him beautiful new clothes. They bought him a bike and more toys, and pretty soon he began to feel just like all the other kids in the neighborhood, loved and part of a family.
One thing however was curious. The young boy’s old shoes, the ones with the big holes in them, weren’t tossed out with the rest of his clothes. His new father placed them on the mantelpiece. It wasn’t long before the newly adopted son found out why. Every time that boy did something wrong his father would go and get those shoes and say “Look at all we’ve done for you. We took you in when you had nothing, but look at how you’ve behaved.”
Honestly, there isn’t a single person who reads these words who hasn’t had a pair of shoes like that on a mantelpiece in their life. “Guilt You Into the Past Shoes” get put there in life by others and yes, even ourselves. The GREAT news of the resurrection of Christ is that those “Guilt You Into the Past Shoes” got tossed out and for good. The mantelpiece is clean because the tomb is empty. Because Christ rose from the dead we are no longer in our sins. The past is past.
We began with this blessing from beyond the grave that is ours because of Christ’s resurrection because if God holds our sins against us – and we all have sinned – then there is no hope of anything else from God. The source for every other blessing from God is that God won’t hold our sins against us. Everything hangs on forgiveness. And God has indeed forgiven us in the Risen Christ.
BLESSING BEYOND THE GRAVE #1: We are citizens of the kingdom of heaven – now.
A little boy is waiting on a bench for his mother to come out of the grocery store. As he waited, he was approached by a Pastor wearing a clerical collar who asked, “Son, can you tell me where the post office is?” The little boy suddenly felt like a little man. He stood up soldier straight with his lower lip out and said, “Sure, just go straight down this street a couple of blocks. You turn right. Go a little ways and turn left in front of a big green house – the Wilson’s house – and the post office will be on your left. Got it mister?”
“Oh, thank you young man. I am very grateful. Thank you!” Then the minister added, “I am the new Pastor in town and I’d like for you to come to church on Sunday. I’ll show you how to get to heaven.” At this the boy chuckled a bit and replied, “Awww – come on mister, yah don’t even know how to get to the post office!”
Something is missing in our witness of the Risen Christ when we don’t talk and live as though we know where we are headed. Do you know where you are going after you die? Do you know how to get there? Are you living confidently as though you do now? Are others honestly able to see this confidence in how you live before them? Again, Paul puts this truth that eternal life is ours in the Risen Christ negatively in 1 Corinthians 15 by playing the fool with the Corinthians. “Okay, let’s say Jesus did not rise from the dead, then what?” So he states in 1 Corinthians 15:18: “Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost.”
But put it positively and allow it to supercharge you to start living as though it is true. Christ has been raised from the dead and so those who died in the Lord are fully alive. My dad, my Uncle Pat, your loved ones, Moses, Mary, Ruth, all the saints who fell asleep in the Lord are fully alive in heaven. What a great gettin’ up day reunion we are headed for, no?!
And remember the kingdom of heaven begins now for the kingdom of heaven is within you. “Once, on being asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, Jesus replied, “The coming of the kingdom of God is not something that can be observed, 21 – nor will people say, ‘Here it is,’ or ‘There it is,’ because the kingdom of God is in your midst” (Luke 17:20, 21). Eternity is now in session and this is your season, my season for sharing and living the Risen Christ for others. Living as though we know where we are going is another amazing consequence of Christ’s victory over the grave.
An Orthodox theologian, Patriarch Athenagoras, once said: “The Resurrection is not the resuscitation of a body; it is the beginning of the transfiguration of the world.” Of course he didn’t mean that Jesus didn’t physically rise from the dead but he did mean his physical rising from the dead is also so much more. This Easter I have a new prayer. It is that many people who know not the Risen Christ will give the Scriptural evidence of the resurrection a chance by seeing and hearing the relevance of the resurrection lived before them by our Salem family. Jesus see to this in your life and mine.
