On the best authority

It’s funny how we can sometimes believe things that don’t make sense or that have no supporting evidence whatever. Conspiracy theories abound today, and the tabloids do a multi-million dollar business tantalizing believing readers with a steady diet of the sensational, if not the ridiculous. You’ve seen the headlines: Elvis is still alive. JFK was abducted by aliens. Hitler is still alive. Miners discover an opening to hell. Half alligator, half human baby. World to end in 1999.

And then there are the facts that we simply take for granted in our modern scientific world: The world is a sphere, not flat like a pancake. The earth revolves around the sun, not vice versa. A virus causes measles. Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone. Abraham Lincoln wrote the Gettysburg Address on the back of an envelope.

Most of us believe these things, not because we have personally proven them, but because we trust the authorities who tell us they are true. We use the phone; who invented it doesn’t really matter to us. We go to the doctor when we get sick; it doesn’t matter to us who discovered a given vaccine. And we can enjoy a beautiful sunset without giving much thought to planetary dynamics.

A fact that matters

We live in a world of facts, but most of the facts we know have little, if anything, to do with who we are and how we choose to live.

The resurrection of Jesus is different. It may be easy to "believe" Jesus was raised as though it were just another fact for a history exam. But this fact is not like other facts. It changes everything. If Jesus Christ really was raised from the dead, then he is far more than just another great figure in history. He is who he claimed to be—the Son of God. And if that’s so, then he, and everything he said, has to be taken seriously.

The resurrection of Jesus stands at the heart of Christian faith. We believe in Jesus because Jesus did not stay dead. He told his disciples he would be raised on the third day after his crucifixion—and he was! The fact of his resurrection verified his claims: He was indeed the Son of God. And it verified that God had acted decisively to deal with human sin.

Celebrate!

If there is any one characteristic that is universal among Christians of all denominational stripes, it is celebration of the death and resurrection of Jesus. The celebration may occur in a variety of ways, but ever since that first Sunday morning when the tomb was found empty, Christians have remembered. And it is much more than memory. It is participation.

On the night before he was betrayed and arrested for trial and crucifixion, Jesus ate his final Passover meal with the disciples. As he blessed and broke the ritual bread, he told his disciples, "This is my body, given for you; do this in remembrance of me" (Luke 22:19). As he lifted and blessed the cup of ritual wine, he told them: "Drink from it, all of you. This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins" (Matthew 26:27-28).

There is rich meaning in this simple ceremony we call the Lord’s Supper (Jesus’ final meal), communion (communion through Christ with God and fellow believers), or Eucharist (thanksgiving). Paul wrote: "Is not the cup of thanksgiving for which we give thanks a participation in the blood of Christ? And is not the bread that we break a participation in the body of Christ?" (1 Corinthians 10:16).

When we eat and drink the bread and wine (or grape juice) of the Lord’s Supper, something wonderful, yet incomprehensible, is going on—communion with God. Through Jesus Christ, we are united with God and with all believers. Participating in Jesus’ command to "eat his flesh" and "drink his blood" not only keeps us in memory of what God has done for us, it also brings us, together with all believers, into intimate fellowship with God.

In Christ, we have been made "one" with God and "one" with one another. In the communion, we participate in that graciously created unity in an unseen, indescribable way.

Baptism too

The Christian practice of baptism is also rooted firmly in the prime facts of the faith—Jesus, the Son of God, died for us and was raised again to life. Paul wrote: "We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life" (Romans 6:4).

Coming under the waters of baptism symbolizes a death and burial—our participation in the crucifixion and death of Jesus. But this entering into death with Jesus is merely preparation for entering into new life with him. It is the old self that is put to death in the watery grave of baptism. "For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin—because anyone who has died has been freed from sin (verses 6-7).

We humans know about slavery to sin. We know the invisible, yet humanly invincible chains that bind us in self-destructive habits and cravings. We know about the pride, the personal walls, the ego-defenses, the crippling envy, the resentment, the greed, the burning lust. We know the powerlessness, the failure, the frustration, the depression. We know the loneliness, the isolation, the fear. And we know about the end of it all—the final darkness and separation we call death.

God, who loves us, knows it too. That’s why he sent his one and only Son, who, without sin, subjected himself to the cruel and unrelenting environment of our sin-darkened world. God’s love is why Jesus took our broken condition on himself, yet without sin, and walked in our shoes and suffered, even to death, at the ignorant and violent hands of us sinners. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it (John 1:5).

But for Jesus, death was not the end of the story. And because of Jesus, it is not the end of the story for you and me either. Jesus was raised to life, and through him, we too are raised to a bold and fresh and glorious new life—eternal life.

Life of the age to come

We often think of "eternal life" as something God will give us in the future. But the fact is, Jesus said that those who believe in him, those who "eat his flesh" and "drink his blood," have already entered into eternal life. "Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day" (John 6:54). Being raised up at the last day is something promised to those who already possess eternal life!

Maybe we tend to limit our concept of eternal life to the future because the words eternal life sound like something we don’t yet have. After all, we are still mortal, and we know we are going to die before we receive immortality. But "eternal life" and "immortality" are not the same thing.

Immortality refers to our physical bodies. At the resurrection, our mortal bodies will be changed to immortal. But eternal life—or the life of the age to come—is something we entered the moment we became believers.

Eternal life might be easier to understand when we realize that the Greek words John used in quoting Jesus, aionios zoe, are more literally translated, "the life of the age to come." When we became believers, we passed from death to life. We entered into the new life, the life of the age to come.

That life, which is a life of joy and self-sacrificial love in the power of God, will fill all the universe after Jesus returns. And it has already begun in his believers. "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me" (Luke 9:23).

Because he lives

Jesus said, "I tell you the truth, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned; he has crossed over from death to life" (John 5:24).

Greater words of comfort have never been spoken! It doesn’t matter how far from God we have been. It doesn’t matter how dark and vile our sins have been.

When we believe the word of God, the good news that God has redeemed sinners through his Son, we can rest in God’s forgiveness and acceptance and receive the fresh, new life he has for us in his eternal kingdom.

We have it on the highest authority, the very highest, that on the day of judgment we will not be condemned. Jesus says believers have already crossed the great divide separating death from life, and because he lives we are now on the side of life!

The kingdom of heaven has already begun to show itself in the world in the lives of those who have entered it. Not perfectly. In fact, sometimes we make a rather rotten show of it. Sometimes we drop our cross, or maybe even throw it down, but the Spirit of Christ in us always moves us to pick it up again and follow on. The fact is, now we are his, and he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus (Philippians 1:6).

Alive with Christ

Our citizenship is already in heaven, Paul tells us (Philippians 3:20). And even as we await the glorified body we will receive at Jesus’ return (verse 21), we have already entered and begun to experience, in a limited way, the life of the age to come—life in the presence of God. That’s what Scripture calls "the kingdom of God," "the kingdom of heaven" and "eternal life."

In his letter to the church at Ephesus, Paul explained it this way: "But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus" (Ephesians 2:4-7).

Through Jesus’ death and resurrection, we have been forgiven of sin, reconciled with God and made spiritually alive in him. We have been brought into the presence of God and embarked on the grand, never-ending adventure of coming to know and experience the infinite joy of his grace and love even as we share in his sufferings.

Right now, as Paul said, we can see only a "poor reflection" (1 Corinthians 13:12). But at the second coming we will be given new, gloried bodies, and we will see him as he is (1 John 3:2).

The crux of our faith

Our Christian faith and hope are based squarely and entirely on the fact of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. On that central truth hangs everything we believe and for which we stand in earnest hope. Because he lives, we live too!

That is why the Easter season is so important to us. It is a time of reflection. It is a time of self-evaluation. It is a time of rehearsing the essentials of our faith and of recommitment and rededication. And above all, it is a time of thanksgiving and joy in the unsearchable riches of the grace of God!

He died for you and me. And on the third day, he destroyed forever the power of sin and death over us. In him we, together with all the saints, even as we tread the path of the cross, possess the greatest hope imaginable.