And if Christ has not been raised our preaching is useless and so is your faith . . . But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive. But each in his own turn, Christ the firstfruits; then, when he comes, those who belong to him. (I Corinthians 15: 14, 20-23)
Oh, the depths of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! . . . For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory forever! Amen. (Romas 11:33, 36)
This then is the conclusion of the matter: without the resurrection of the Christ, we are all lost and hopeless. We languish in a good created world gone horribly and permanently wrong, we kill and curse our fellow image-bearers for lack of the good and gracious King we had dared dream might return to claim his kingdom, we fight and fret in our small, racially bound families for lack of the freedom to be members of the greater kingdom family we cannot dare dream might really exist. In short, without the resurrection, we have neither a world to live in, nor a king to kneel to, nor a family to love, nor any hope for the future at all. We are hopeless.
But oh the depths and riches of God! What no eye could see nor ear could hear nor mind could perceive he has done for us through Jesus. He has given his perfect Son on the cross to be killed by our last and greatest enemy death, and he has raised that same Jesus from the dead that, through the Holy Spirit, he might be the salvation of the world, the firstfruits of the new creation, the king over all things, and the first-born son of a new and truly human family comprised of all the nations of the world. The resurrection salvation we have in Christ is not fire-insurance; it is the hope of the promise of a new life in a new creation world in a new creation kingdom with a new elder brother at the head of a new family and a glorious king to rule all of it in righteousness and joy. It is the promise that death doesn't have the last word. The Risen Christ does. He has gone before us, paving the way for us to follow him in sharing in his sufferings . . . and so somehow to attain the resurrection of the dead.
The Scriptures give us one gigantic and gloriously true fairytale that begins with a world wrecked and shattered to the very core by the rebellious sin of humanity, and ends with a Lamb returning to that wrecked order with the new heavens and the new earth coming behind to make His blessings known as far as the curse is found. And standing at the center, the axis around which this cosmic story spins, is the risen Jesus calling our name in the garden on Easter. The risen Christ calls us to look back to creation and forward to the second coming and find the downpayment for all the glorious promises paid for on Easter Sunday morning at daybreak.
We are all of us as dead as doornails from the day of our conception, and the day we're born we find ourselves born into a tomb. But praise the LORD it is the tomb of Jesus, and on the first day of a new week in April Jesus burst open that tomb and led us wretched captives out into the glorious Sunday morning Easter light of a new life in Him. If any of us are in Christ, we stand blinking in the sunlight of the second garden, the Easter garden, the beginning of a new beginning in which "every morning is Easter, every day." And like Thomas we fall at the feet of the risen Jesus and say "my lord and my God." King, Creator, elder-brother . . . our first and last and only hope.
Peace,
Michael
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