CRUCIFIXION_RESURRECTION
The Nature of Resurrection
The resurrection is the central, indispensable truth of the Christian faith, known not through external description but through direct, inner experience and…
Related Bible passages
- 1 Corinthians 15:17
- 1 Corinthians 15:19
- Luke 20:27
- Luke 20:36
- Philippians 2:6
Related ideas
He Wakes In Me
The resurrection, although not described in any portion of scripture, is really the high watermark, the very center of the Christian faith. As Paul said: “If Christ is not raised then our faith is in vain and we are as men the most to be pitied.” The experience of the resurrection in the lives of the apostles is the indispensable inner testimony without which Jesus Christ might have been raised, but could not have been preached as risen.
The resurrection is the central, indispensable truth of the Christian faith, known not through external description but through direct, inner experience and testimony. This personal experience is what validates and allows the preaching of Christ as risen.
Is Christ Your Imagination
The Sadducees of 2,000 years ago were the wise men. The Pharisees were the priesthood of the world. The Sadducees were the intellectual giants of that day and they – any more than today – could not even believe in survival, far less resurrection. Like the world today puts the two words together and they speak of survival as resurrection – and they are not. Survival is continuity; resurrection is discontinuity. You leave the field completely and enter the worlds of eternity. So they ask the question based upon the law of Moses, and Moses said: “If a man’s brother dies, leaving a wife but no children, the man must take the wife and raise up children for his brother. Now there were seven brothers; the first took a wife, and died without children; the second and the third took her, and likewise all seven left no children and died. Afterward the woman also died. In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be?” (Luke 20:27-33). It is a fable, because they did not believe in the resurrection. “And Jesus said to them, “The sons of this age marry and are given in marriage; but those who are accounted worthy to attain to that age and to the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage, for they cannot die any more, because they are equal to angels and are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection.” (Luke 34-36) They are completely above the organization of sex. What we call sex here, this garment of flesh, are shadows thrown by this fabulous being above. And the body you really have, you are told (as I quoted earlier, Philippians 2:6): “Being in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in the likeness of men, didn’t think it strange. And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross.” And then to find himself with all the limitations of man, all the weaknesses of man, everything that is man? Then God exalted him at the end when he resurrected him and gives him the name. That name is conferred only at resurrection.
Resurrection is a radical discontinuity from the physical world, transcending earthly concepts like marriage and sex. It is an entry into an eternal state where one is immortal, equal to angels, and a son of God, receiving the divine name 'Jesus.' This transformation is the exaltation that follows God's self-emptying into human form.