Easter Is Personal

“By this gospel you are saved: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day.” (1 Corinthians 15:2–4) 

Over church history, there have been a variety of ways of explaining what happened on the Cross,[1] that combine the diverse language of biblical writers with cultural moments in which the message of the Cross was being preached. Scott McKnight compares it to a set of golf clubs: they all matter at the right time and place.

 A foundational view everyone builds on is called Christus Victor: Christ the Victor, or Christ victorious. Jesus’ death and resurrection demonstrated victory over the greatest foes: evil, sin, death, Satan, Hades. Jesus triumphed over them all, freeing humanity from bondage to them.

• Jesus drove out the “ruler of this world” (John 12:31), setting spiritual captives free (Luke 4:18; Eph. 4:8).

• He destroyed “the one who has the power of death” in order to “free those held in slavery by the fear of death” (Heb. 2:14-15). 

• He overpowered the “strong man” (Luke 11:21-22), “disarming the rulers and authorities…triumphing over them” (Col. 2:15)

Jesus, the Messiah, truly is the long awaited Liberator of our souls.[2] This is foundational to what happened on the cross.

 Add Recapitulation Theory[3] to that foundation. This simply notes that Jesus is the second Adam who is getting right what the first Adam got wrong.[4]

“For since by man came death, by Man also came the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ all shall be made alive.” (I Corinthians 15:21-22; see also Romans 5:17) [5]

Adam might have messed up the beginning of the story, but that doesn’t mean he controls the end of the story. The Second Adam is the Great Physician who has arrived “so that the world might be saved.” (John 3:17)[6]

Ransom Theory focused on the biblical teaching that Jesus died as a ransom for the debt of our sins.

“For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” (Mark 10:45)

Ransom language fit the ancient Greco-Roman world well. Conquest was familiar to those who lived in or had been conquered by Rome; a redemptor could buy the freedom of someone taken prisoner. [7] Ransom language reminds us that we are in a spiritual war. Adam and Eve sold us into slavery to sin and death, and we can’t buy our way out. If the wages of sin is death[8], then the ransom of Jesus’ life satisfied the debt, and Satan cannot claim his due. C.S. Lewis uses this approach in the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

In the 11th century, Anselm focused on Satisfaction Theory. Anselm lived during Medieval European feudalism, where honor to one’s earthly master or lord was incredibly important.[9] In the feudal hierarchy of serf/lord/king, dishonoring the one above you was a huge deal. The more noble the person you offended, the greater your reparation.[10] Anselm said that our sin has dishonored God, and honor must be restored. God’s honor is satisfied when reparations are paid – which he paid Himself in Jesus through the cross.[11]

God made him who had no sin to be a sin offering for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. (2 Corinthians 5:21) 

This approach is still a primary approach used by missionaries introducing the Gospel in honor/shame cultures around the world.

 A contemporary of Anselm named Abelard focused on what it now called Moral Influence Theory. To Anselm, the most important thing was that Jesus is our example, our moral leader. We see this focus in WWJD or the classic Charles Sheldon book In His Steps.

“He demonstrated the act of the greatest love by laying down his life for his friends. Follow God’s example, therefore, as dearly loved children and walk in the way of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.” (Ephesians 5:1-2)

Abelard focused on a God who demonstrated his love for humanity through the death of Jesus to show us a righteous way of living.[12]

The Reformers (1500s) reframed Ransom and Satisfaction theory in what we call Penal Substitutionary Atonement (PSA), the one with which we in the US are generally most familiar. They added a legal framework to Satisfaction Theory, a court-centered “balancing of the ledgers” between what is owed and what is paid.[13] 

Here, Jesus was not repaying God for lost honor; rather, he was paying the penalty of death to satisfy the demands of justice. Once again, God Himself, through Jesus, satisfies the demands of justice himself. 

"He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness."(1 Peter 2:24) 

"For Christ also died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God." (1 Peter 3:18) 

I remember being taught an analogy of a judge (God) taking off his robe and stepping down off the bench to stand in the place of the criminal (me) and take my place in jail.[14]

In all of these views, the foundational truth shines through. Jesus’ death on the cross changed everything, and His resurrection proved it.

* * * * *

Easter doesn’t just celebrate a historical event (though it does that); it doesn’t just highlight a theological atonement theory (though that’s important). Easter is not meant to be merely a corporate gathering once a year where we ponder ideas about atonement as an intellectual exercise.

Easter is personal. A person – Jesus – did something for persons: you and me. Jesus didn’t just give himself through his life, death and resurrection out of love for the world in a vague sense, he did it for me and you in an intensely personal sense.  

We live in a broken world. This is not a secret. The Bible talks about how all of creation mourns[16] in the midst of the brokenness. There are Big Picture issues like the war between Ukraine and Russia, and Israel and Hamas. There is famine, and human trafficking, and bridges collapsing. There are also family tragedies, and sickness, and despair.

Sometimes we participate in the breaking.  It’s another way of saying we step outside of God’s design and we sin. We bully, and slander, and demean. We lust, and fight, and deceive. We are the perpetrators of abuse and hatred. We have dishonored God and others. We know that we are part of the problem of the brokenness in the world.

Sometimes, we have been broken by it. This past year I have had to come to grips with the reality that some bad things were done to me when I was a kid, things that my brain put on a shelf until I was 54.  They were the kind of things that rob a kid of  innocence and trust, and that leave a mark for a long time. It's been draining, and insightful, and terrible, and healing, and it’s ongoing.

We call Crucifixion Friday “Good Friday” not only because we have a Savior who atoned for us that day, but because in his living and dying we know that God understands us because Jesus experienced the worst of what it is like to live in this broken world.

“On the cross, Jesus insists that God is in the hard things, the low things, the scandalous things. The gritty, messy, broken things.  God does not hold God’s self remote from the worst of this world.”[17]

Then, resurrection.

In the light of dawn, the Light of the World reveals himself. All was not lost; all is not lost. “Behold,” Jesus said, “I make all things new.” (Revelation 21:5)  As Tolkien described it, because of Jesus’ Resurrection, everything sad will become untrue.[18] Now it is clear that all that is evil has been conquered by the Risen Jesus. Crucifixion will not have the last word; Resurrection will.

• We may see part of our lives burn to ashes, but Jesus makes beauty from ashes.

• We may feel like death has come for our hearts and souls, but Jesus specializes in bringing dead things back to life.

• We may take our own Prodigal path, but Jesus, the Good Father, waits to embrace us with joy and feasting.

• There is night, but there will be a morning characterized by rejoicing, whether in the life or the next.

 This is the hope: the brokenness of our history is not our destiny.

His love, as displayed on the cross, covers a multitude of our sins. His power, as shown through His resurrection, shows us that when he says he can make something new, he can make something new.

There is nothing in us so broken he cannot mend it; so foul he cannot cleanse it; so evil he cannot save it; so worthless he cannot refurbish it; so useless he cannot rehabilitate it; so lost he cannot find it; so dead he cannot revive it; so parched he cannot refresh it; so bitter he cannot sweeten it; so in despair that he cannot fill it with hope.

“I’ll remind you of just one beautiful image of God, evident in the Christ of the Gospels: he’s the Restorer of lives. Jesus is the One who sat by the well and restored the Samaritan woman to her place in her community. He restored Zacchaeus’ integrity and offered him friendship. He saved and restored the woman caught in adultery to morality and life.  

He restored the paralytics, the blind and the deaf to wholeness. He restored outcasts such as lepers and the bleeding woman. He restored the sanity of the demonized. Even harshest rebukes were offers of restoration to the unrepentant. When we see Jesus in action, we are seeing the true heart of God, the Restorer of lives.” (Brad Jersak) 

I don’t know the history of your wounds, the length of your scars, the depth of your sin and failure. But I do know this: Jesus came so that we might be saved from the sinful ravages of this broken and fallen world. He offers real life in His Kingdom starting now and continuing into the ages to come. He offers a new life in exchange for your old one, over and over and over.

Christ is Risen (He is risen indeed).

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[1] https://www.sdmorrison.org/7-theories-of-the-atonement-summarized/

https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/essay/history-theories-atonement/

[2] “For the earliest Christians, the story of salvation was one of rescue all the way through: the epic of God descending into the depths of human estrangement to release his creatures from bondage to death, penetrating even into the heart of Hades to set the captives free, recall his prodigal children and restore a broken creation.” (D.B. Hart)

[3] https://faithrethink.com/7-atonement-theories-from-church-history/

[4] “God became what we are so that we might become what He is.” – Irenaeus

[5] Scott McKnight thinks Jesus is recapitulating Israel also. “Jesus quotes from Deuteronomy 8:3; when tempted to jump off of the temple, Jesus quotes Deuteronomy 6:16; and when tempted to seize the kingdoms, Jesus quotes Deuteronomy 6:13. Each of these texts is from Israel’s wilderness experience. Jesus is being depicted as a second Israel in a second wilderness. He became what Israel was to undo what Israel did.” 

[6] These two views remain the heart of the Eastern Orthodox position. https://orthodoxbridge.com/2018/07/22/orthodox-christians-on-penal-substitutionary-atonement/

[7] https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2022/april/bonnie-kristian-atonement-theories-historical-context.html

[8] There was/is disagreement about to whom that ransom is owed. Was it Satan? The grave? Meanwhile, Isaiah 43 talks about God trading nations as ransom for Israel, but that looks like picturesque language about the depth of their bondage, not an actual trade.

[9] https://faithrethink.com/7-atonement-theories-from-church-history/

[10] https://andrewspringer.medium.com/five-views-on-the-atonement-of-christ-d71dddca9b84

[11] Jesus offered an overflow of satisfaction to human beings so they can satisfy God’s honor. https://faithrethink.com/7-atonement-theories-from-church-history/

[12] “1 Peter 2:22, “For this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you should follow in his steps.” https://andrewspringer.medium.com/five-views-on-the-atonement-of-christ-d71dddca9b84  See also Mark 10:42-45, Romans 12:1-21, and 1 John 3:16.

[13] “John Calvin, who studied law before becoming a Reformer, replaced the image of a serf trying to satisfy his lord with a courtroom where God as righteous judge condemns sinners who violate his law... [it] is immediately intelligible in the world of the Reformation, Renaissance, Enlightenment, and Industrial Revolution.” https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2022/april/bonnie-kristian-atonement-theories-historical-context.html

[14] Reformers talked of “imputed righteousness” where Jesus literally took upon himself all of mankind’s sins and in exchange transferred (or imputed) his righteousness to the repentant sinner. https://faithrethink.com/7-atonement-theories-from-church-history/

[16] Romans 8:22

[17] https://www.journeywithjesus.net/essays/3362-cruciform

[18] Samwise to Gandalf

The Good News Of Easter

“The Lord Is Risen.”

“He Is Risen Indeed.”

It’s a remarkable claim. A man who died – like, really died – brought himself to life again. People were not stupid 2,000 years ago. They knew what it meant to be dead; they knew what it meant that blood and water flowed from Jesus. They knew dead people did not bring themselves back to life.

There is a reason his followers basically embalmed him as part of the ritual Jewish women performed on the dead.  For the second time, he is wrapped in swaddling clothes, though this time they were soaked with pounds of pungent perfume because it was assumed that, like his friend Lazarus, he would stink soon. If Jesus was merely a man, he would lie in state for four days before they would move what they called the now ‘corrupted’ body into a deeper tomb.

He was dead. You would think that the Gospel writers would want to cover over the fact that the followers of Jesus were so convinced he was dead they did this to him. That would have been a nice detail to leave out, that lack of faith of those closest to him. It would have left a glorious record of disciples who had no doubt, no wavering, no despair. They had understood all of Jesus’ hints. But, no. They recorded it. They thought he was dead.

When He revealed His risen self on the third day (so that he “did not see corruption” – Psalm 16 and Acts 2 – on the 4th day), people weren’t just automatically buying it.

• The disciples did not believe the report of the women, the first to see and then report the resurrected Jesus. 

• Peter left his observance of the empty tomb bewildered.

• The disciples didn’t believe the report of the two dudes on the Emmaus Road to whom Jesus revealed himself.

• They thought he was a ghost when he appeared to them in a room.

• Some of them still doubted after a later meeting .

 They were not fools. They had seen false messiahs, and they knew that crucified people did not come back to life. Yet their eventual response to this is telling. They became convinced that is indeed what happened.

• The early Christians claimed Jesus must be God in the flesh because of this resurrection at a time when no one in the Jewish community expected that kind of physical resurrection was a thing.

• They didn’t eventually appoint a successor to Jesus to carry on His messianic mission, which was a normal thing to do when a supposed messiah died.

• The early Christians said they actually had more hope than ever before, which would be an odd thing to claim if Jesus were still dead.

• They claimed that not only was Jesus alive, but the community of the church was now the temple in which a living God’s Spirit would dwell.

• This belief that Jesus was God solidified on the other side of this. They changed their view of God into a Triune one (Father, Son and Holy Spirit). They went from, “The Lord our God is one” to, “The Lord our God is Three-in-One.”

• They continued to worship Jesus at a time when worship of a human was blasphemous to the Jews and traitorous to the Romans. The death of Jesus would have been a good excuse to back out and avoid all the hardship that came with believing in His deity. This had precedence in Jewish history, as their false messiahs kept failing them and the followers denounced him. But they doubled down.

• They accepted and even embraced martyrdom when they could have remained in a tense but rarely fatal co-existence with the Romans (as long as they didn’t start a political rebellion).

• They changed their worship to the first day of the week (Sunday) instead of insisting on the last day of the week (Saturday) because Jesus rose on the first day of the week, which meant that a new day was now the holy day. They didn’t rest from their labors on the 7thday; they rested in Jesus’ completed work on the Cross before the week even got started.

 This belief that Jesus had risen from the dead upended their lives. It changed everything. But there is something else that stands out to me. John wrote an account in which he and Peter run to the empty tomb:

"Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance. So she came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved,and said, 'They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don't know where they have put him!' 

 So Peter and the other disciple started for the tomb. Both were running, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. He bent over and looked in at the strips of linen lying there but did not go in. Then Simon Peter, who was behind him, arrived and went into the tomb. He saw the strips of linen lying there, as well as the burial cloth that had been around Jesus' head. 

 The cloth was folded up by itself, separate from the linen. Finally the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first,also went inside. He saw and believed."

 John is recording the RESURRECTION OF JESUS, and he makes sure to note that a) Jesus loved him in particular, b) he won that foot race, and c) he didn’t just see (study and hypothesize) like Peter; he actually was and then believed. Props to John.

John was the last gospel written, and it seemed important to John to add some very important details that the others left out. “He’s alive! And, I’m faster than Peter” – not once, but twice.  

Maybe John and Peter had a running, good-natured argument about this; I don’t know. Maybe this is what first century humor looks like. Based on the disciples’ track record, it’s not out of the realm of possibility that John was just setting the record straight that one of them was more committed to getting to Jesus and more ready to believe.

I am amazed that Jesus died so that even the most appalling acts of evil can be forgiven, that even the criminals we think of as monsters are not beyond the reach of the love and grace of Jesus.

I also love that Jesus died for people like the disciples: the petty, the shallow, the proud. In other words, ordinary people carrying around darker hearts than they want to admit and minds more broken than they know. Look at the “ordinary” people Jesus died for as they are recorded in Scripture (and by this I mean those closest to him).

• The disciples are a mess. They are likely rejects from rabbinical schools. They are not the cream of the Jewish crop. They are petty, jealous, angry, unfocused, and cowardly.

• His cousin John the Baptist and his brother James struggled with doubt even though they saw what he did.

• Jesus called Peter “Satan” one time.

• The Jews in Jerusalem were terribly disappointed that he was not the Warrior Messiah they were looking for. #palmbranches

• The sincerely religious people were busy creating disciples of hell instead of heaven.

• Paul, whom God eventually sends with the Good news to the Gentiles, killed followers of Jesus before he became one.

• Tax collectors, prostitutes, and idol-worshipping Samaritans had a better handle on who Jesus was than the shiny religious people did.

• His best friends can’t seem to stay awake and support him on the worst night of his life in the Garden of Gethsemane.

• They all run away and hide when he gets arrested.

 I love that God’s love pours down from a Cross and seeps into that kind of soil. I love that a gloriously resurrected Jesus appears to that kind of people. Because that means I have hope. That means you have hope.

We have to get over ourselves. Jesus didn’t come to earth because we were so cool to hang out with. He didn’t come because we had finally measured up to God’s expectations and it was time to level up! He came because His good world and His image bearers are dying, “groaning” in longing for the kind of redemption and restoration from sin that only Jesus can bring.

The glory of Resurrection hope is seen in comparison to the hell that Jesus stepped into to redeem. That’s not just the hell of headline-grabbing sins; that’s the hell of our chipping away at God’s good world with our anger, bitterness, envy, greed, lust, and callous cruelty. Some people dig pits of evil with backhoes of sin; those are the ones at which we stand up and point before we bend back to our shovels and slowly dig our way down to join them.

The bad news: Our hearts are darkened; our minds poisoned; our loves and desires distracted and broken. On our own, we tend toward the rot and ruin that follows sin. It’s like a spiritual law of thermodynamics: on our own, entropy and decay increases. Things fall apart. On our own, we continually contribute to the brokenness of the world.

The good news: God has not left us on our own. Jesus can fix the brokenness of his image bearers, and turn that decay into life. In the end, Jesus will say, “Behold, I make all things new.”[1]Now, when we accept the salvation Jesus offers, “he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.”[2]

The bad news: We have spilled the ‘life’s blood” of others: physically, emotionally, relationally. We deserve to get what we give; in this case, the wages of sin is death. God, the LawSetter and Judge, demands justice.

The good news: It doesn’t have to be my life – or yours. Jesus, the Lawfulfiller and Savior, will bear the weight of His own justice by spilling His blood in our place. He took a punishment He did not deserve so that we can have the righteousness we did not earn.

The bad news: I don’t deserve this gift of grace, and neither do you.

The good news: We don’t need to deserve or earn it. It’s a gift to even the most undeserving. Jesus came to save the world and bring life, both now and in the world to come.

When the Jewish people celebrated the Passover, the one leading the meal would hold up bread and say, “This is the bread of our affliction, which our fathers ate in the wilderness” (a reference to Exodus 6). At the Last Supper, the presenter is Jesus, and here is what he does:

“Jesus took the bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to his disciples, saying, “Take it; this is my body. Do this in remembrance of me.”

Not, “this is the bread of our affliction which our fathers ate in the wilderness.” Now it’s different. “This is the bread of my affliction as I lead you on the true exodus and free you from the bondage of sin and death.”

The Passover has changed its focus. Now we remember Jesus, who became our substitutionary sacrifice so that the spiritual judgment we deserve will pass over us, and whose mercy will lead us from bondage to life.

“Then he took the cup, gave thanks and offered it to them, and they all drank from it. He said to them, “This is the blood of my covenant, which is poured out for many.”

Here is the one to whom the blood of the lamb of the Passover in Egypt had pointed. He will do more than free people from the bondage of earthly oppression; he will, as John the Baptist proclaimed, “take away the sins of the world.”

With “this is my body” and “this is my blood,” Jesus showed himself to be the fulfillment of their longings for a Messiah, a Deliverer. Passover had reminded them that God delivered them from death in Egypt through the blood of the Lamb. Now, we celebrate how God delivered the world from the power of sin and death through the blood of Jesus. His resurrection shows us that He has the power to do what He claimed He can do.

I was reading some reflections on Goodreads this past week about Jesus and Easter, and I ran across this quote by so Francis Spufford. It feels like a fitting way to end.

“The strain of his whole weight on his outstretched arms hurts too much. The pain fills him up, displaces thought, as much for him as it has for everyone else who has ever been stuck to one of these horrible contrivances, or for anyone else who dies in pain from any of the world’s grim arsenal of possibilities. 

And yet he goes on taking in… He is all open door: to sorrow, suffering, guilt, despair, horror, everything that cannot be escaped, and he does not even try to escape it, he turns to meet it, and claims it all as his own. This is mine now, he is saying; and he embraces it with all that is left in him, each dark act, each dripping memory… 

But there is so much of it. So many injured children; so many locked rooms; so much lonely anger; so many bombs in public places; so much vicious zeal; so many bored teenagers at roadblocks; so many drunk girls at parties someone thought they could have a little fun with; so many jokes that go too far; so much ruining greed; so much sick ingenuity; so much burned skin... 

It burns and stings, it splinters and gouges, it locks him round and drags him down…All day long, the next day, the city is quiet. The air above the city lacks the usual thousand little trails of smoke from cookfires. Hymns rise from the temple. 

Families are indoors. The soldiers are back in barracks. The Chief Priest grows hoarse with singing. The governor plays chess with his secretary and dictates letters. The free bread the temple distributed to the poor has gone stale by midday, but tastes all right dipped in water or broth. 

Death has interrupted life only as much as it ever does. We die one at a time and disappear, but the life of the living continues. The earth turns. The sun makes its way towards the western horizon no slower or faster than it usually does. 

Early Sunday morning, one of the friends comes back with rags and a jug of water and a box of the grave spices that are supposed to cut down on the smell. She’s braced for the task. But when she comes to the grave she finds that the linen’s been thrown into the corner and the body is gone. 

Evidently anonymous burial isn’t quite anonymous enough, after all. She sits outside in the sun. The insects have woken up, here at the edge of the desert, and a bee is nosing about in a lily like silk thinly tucked over itself, but much more perishable. It won’t last long. She takes no notice of the feet that appear at the edge of her vision….

“Don’t be afraid,” says Yeshua. “Far more can be mended than you know.”

Far more can be mended than you know. “See,” said Jesus in John’s vision in Revelation, “I make all things new.” This is the hope of Jesus’ Resurrection. He came to mend all things. And it is this Risen Savior who calls us to follow Him, so surrender our lives to the plan He has to make us new - heart, mind, and soul.

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[1] Revelation 21:

[2] Philippians 1:6

The Passion and Resurrection of the Christ

Listen to audio here.  

[embed]https://www.facebook.com/clgtc/videos/10155529579690829/[/embed]

[From a compilation of the Gospel narratives, all of which add insightful details to the trial, crucifixion, and resurrection of Jesus. These narrative begin in Mark 15, Matthew 27, Luke 23, and John 18.]

Early in the morning the leading priests and the elders met again to lay plans for putting Jesus to death. Then they bound him, led him away, and took him to Pilate, the Roman governor.

Now Jesus was standing before Pilate, the Roman governor. “Are you the king of the Jews?” the governor asked him.  Jesus replied, “So you say.”

But when the leading priests and the elders made their accusations against him, Jesus remained silent.  “Don’t you hear all these charges they are bringing against you?”Pilate demanded. But Jesus made no response to any of the charges.

Now it was the governor’s custom each year during the Passover celebration to release one prisoner to the crowd—anyone they wanted.  This year there was a notorious prisoner named Barabbas. As the crowds gathered before Pilate’s house that morning, he asked them, “Which one do you want me to release to you—Barabbas, or Jesus who is called the Messiah?”

The leading priests and the elders said,“By our law he ought to die because he called himself the Son of God.” They persuaded the crowd to ask for Barabbas to be released and for Jesus to be put to death.  When Pilate heard this, he was frightened.

He took Jesus back into the headquartersagain and asked him, “Where are you from?”But Jesus gave no answer. “Why don’t you talk to me? Don’t you realize that I have the power to release you or crucify you?”

Jesus said, “You would have no power over me at all unless it were given to you from above. Those who handed me over to you have the greater sin.”

Then Pilate tried to release him, but the Jewish leaders shouted, “If you release this man, you are no ‘friend of Caesar.’Anyone who declares himself a king is a rebel against Caesar.”

Pilate saw that he wasn’t getting anywhere and that a riot was developing. So he sent for a bowl of water and washed his hands before the crowd, saying, “I am innocent of this man’s blood. The responsibility is yours!”

   And all the people yelled back, “We will take responsibility for his death—his blood be on us and on our children!”

So the governor asked again, “Which of these two do you want me to release to you?”

The crowd shouted back, “Barabbas!”

Pilate responded,“Then what should I do with Jesus who is called the Messiah?”

“Crucify him!”

“Why? What crime has he committed?”

“Crucify him!” yelled the crowd.

 Pilate responded,“Take him yourselves and crucify him. I find him not guilty.”

So Pilate released Barabbas to them. He ordered Jesus flogged with a lead-tipped whip, then turned him over to the Roman soldiers to be crucified.

The soldiers stripped him and put a scarlet robe on him.  They wove thorn branches into a crown and put it on his head, and they placed a reed stick in his right hand as a scepter. Then they knelt before him in mockery and taunted,“Hail! King of the Jews!” And they spit on him and grabbed the stick and struck him on the head with it.  When they were finally tired of mocking him, they took off the robe and put his own clothes on him again. Then they led him away to be crucified.

Along the way, they came across a man named Simon, who was from Cyrene, and the soldiers forced him to carry Jesus’ cross.  They went out to a place called Golgotha (which means “Place of the Skull”).  The soldiers gave him wine mixed with vinegar, but when Jesus had tasted it, he refused to drink it.

The soldiers nailed him to the cross, then gambled for his clothes while keeping guard. A sign fastened to the cross above Jesus’ head announced the charge against him. It read: “This is Jesus, the King of the Jews.” The place where Jesus was crucified was near the city, and the sign was written in Hebrew, Latin, and Greek, so that many people could read it.

The leading priests objected and said to Pilate, “Change it from ‘The King of the Jews’ to ‘He said, I am King of the Jews.’”

Pilate replied,“No, what I have written, I have written.”

The people passing by shouted abuse, shaking their heads in mockery.  “Look at you now! You said you were going to destroy the Temple and rebuild it in three days. Well then, if you are the Son of God, save yourself and come down from the cross!”

The leading priests, the teachers of religious law, and the elders also mocked Jesus.  “He saved others but he can’t save himself! So he is the King of Israel, is he? Let him come down from the cross right now, and we will believe in him!  He trusted God, so let God rescue him now if he wants him! For he said, ‘I am the Son of God.’”  

Two criminals were crucified with him, one on his right and one on his left.

One of them scoffed and said, “So you’re the Messiah, are you? Prove it by saving yourself—and us, too, while you’re at it!”

But the other criminal protested, “Don’t you fear God even when you have been sentenced to die?  We deserve to die for our crimes, but this man hasn’t done anything wrong. Jesus, remember me when you come into your Kingdom.”

 And Jesus replied, “I assure you, today you will be with me in paradise.”

At noon, darkness fell across the whole land.  At about three o’clock, Jesus called out with a loud voice, “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?”

Some of the bystanders misunderstood and thought he was calling for the prophet Elijah.  One of them ran and filled a sponge with sour wine, holding it up to him on a reed stick so he could drink.  But the rest said, “Wait! Let’s see whether Elijah comes to save him.”

Then Jesus shouted out again, and he released his spirit.  At that moment the curtain in the sanctuary of the Temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. The earth shook, rocks split apart, and tombs opened.

The Roman officerand the other soldiers at the crucifixion were terrified by the earthquake and all that had happened. They said, “This man truly was the Son of God!”

The Jewish leaders didn’t want the bodies hanging there the next day, which was the Sabbath.  So they asked Pilate to hasten their deaths by ordering that their legs be broken. Then their bodies could be taken down.  So the soldiers came and broke the legs of the two men crucified with Jesus. But when they came to Jesus, they saw that he was already dead, so they didn’t break his legs. One of the soldiers, however, pierced his side with a spear, and immediately blood and water flowed out.

As evening approached, Joseph, a rich man from Arimathea who had become a follower of Jesus, went to Pilate and asked for Jesus’ body. Pilate issued an order to release it to him. Joseph took the body and wrapped it in a long sheet of clean linen cloth.  He placed it in his own new tomb, which had been carved out of the rock. Then he rolled a great stone across the entrance and left. 

The next day, on the Sabbath, the leading priests and Pharisees went to see Pilate.   “Sir, we remember what that deceiver once said while he was still alive: ‘After three days I will rise from the dead.’  So we request that you seal the tomb until the third day. This will prevent his disciples from coming and stealing his body and then telling everyone he was raised from the dead! If that happens, we’ll be worse off than we were at first.”

Pilate replied, “Take guards and secure it the best you can.”  So they sealed the tomb and posted guards to protect it.

Early on Sunday morning, as the new day was dawning, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went out to visit the tomb.  Suddenly there was a great earthquake! An angel of the Lord came down from heaven, rolled aside the stone, and sat on it.  His face shone like lightning, and his clothing was as white as snow. The guards shook with fear when they saw him, and they fell into a dead faint.

Then the angel spoke to the women.“Don’t be afraid! I know you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. He isn’t here! He is risen from the dead, just as he said would happen. Come, see where his body was lying.  And now, go quickly and tell his disciples that he has risen from the dead, and he is going ahead of you to Galilee. You will see him there. Remember what I have told you.”

The women ran quickly from the tomb. They were very frightened but also filled with great joy, and they rushed to give the disciples the angel’s message. And as they went, Jesus met them and greeted them. They ran to him, grasped his feet, and worshiped him. Then Jesus said to them, “Don’t be afraid! Go tell my brothers to leave for Galilee, and they will see me there.”

Then the eleven disciples left for Galilee, going to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go.  When they saw him, they worshiped him, but some doubted.

One of the twelve disciples, Thomas, was not with the others when Jesus came. They told him, “We have seen the Lord!”

But he replied, “I won’t believe it unless I see the nail wounds in his hands, put my fingers into them, and place my hand into the wound in his side.”

Eight days later the disciples were together again, and this time Thomas was with them. The doors were locked; but suddenly, as before, Jesus was standing among them. “Peace be with you. Thomas, put your finger here, and look at my hands. Put your hand into the wound in my side. Don’t be faithless any longer. Believe!”

“My Lord and my God!”Thomas exclaimed.

Then Jesus told him, “You believe because you have seen me. Blessed are those who believe without seeing me.”

The disciples saw Jesus do many other miraculous signs in addition to the ones recorded in this book.  But these are written so that you may continue to believethat Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing in him you will have life by the power of his name.

[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47OkuvT5JFo[/embed]

If there is one thing that is more clear than ever, it’s that the world is broken, and I’m not saying this just because Michigan and not Ohio State is in the Final Four.

• Shooters (who will use knives if they can’t get guns)

• Sexual harassers and abusers (#metoo movement and human sex trafficking)

• Families literally imprisoning their own children

• Love letters to mass murderers (the Parkland Shooter)

• Twitter abuse that exposes the cruelty that simmers in more people than we knew

• Racism that is a very real ongoing problem in our culture

• This Nxvim cult I have been reading about that literally brands and enslaves women

• Netflix has more and more documentaries about corruption, lies and greed in business

Last week, a friend of Sheila’s was shot by her husband and put in the trunk of his car, where she stayed until one of her six children talked their father into turning himself in.

There is evil at work in the world, and we know it. It’s not just the stories ‘out there’ that get headlines; it's the story of our own life that reveals how all of creation groans as it waits for redemption. (Romans 8:22)

Maybe we have had things done to us that have damaged us. These are the things that we see or experience and we know deep in our souls, “This is not okay. That is not the way life is supposed to be.” We know something is wrong, and we instinctively desire that justice be done, that God deal with evil in the world. The prophet Amos said, “Let justice roll down like a river,” and that resonates with us. (Amos 5:24)

But that will put us in a bind, because we have done things to othersthat deserve condemnation. Something we said or did contributed to the brokenness of this world, and to someone else’s life in particular. We did or said something that was not okay, and honestly, we are the perpetrator, not the victim. Our words or our actions or even our attitudes have hurt others. There are obvious ones where someone is physically hurt, right? But there are more less noticeable ways we go about doing this.

• Our addictions lead us to use and hurt those around us.

• Our pornography use demeans and dehumanizes others.

• Our sarcasm leaves deep scars.

• Our insecurities cause us to lash out at others who have done nothing wrong.

• Our need to be in control makes us cruel and manipulative.

• As parents, we pass on too many of our dysfunctions to our kids, and as kids, we have wounded our parents more than we know.

Let’s be honest: we have all done things that deserve condemnation. There is plenty of guilt to go around.  And this means that if God is going to judge evil, God is going to judge us.

Enter Jesus, the incarnation, God in human flesh.On our own, we are spiritually dead. Our sins have doomed us to be swept away by the justice of God. Jesus came to take that flood on himself, and in so doing bring peace between sinful, fallen humanity and a holy God. And because Jesus was fully God and fully human, as a perfect man he satisfied God’s uncompromising justice against sinful humanity; as God, he revealed God’s unfailing love in his sacrifice of himself to pay the penalty He demands.

“God did not, then, inflict pain on someone else, but rather on the Cross absorbed the pain, violence, and evil of the world into himself… this is a God who becomes human and offers his own lifeblood in order to honor moral justice and merciful love so that someday he can destroy all evil without destroying us.” (Tim Keller)

Or, as John so eloquently puts it in Scripture:

“God so loved the world that He gave his only Son, so that whoever believes on Him will not perish, but have eternal life.  For God did not send His son into the world to condemn the world, but so the world through Him could be saved.” John 3:16-17)

Jesus said his death would rescue us from the ultimate penalty that we deserve for what we have done; his resurrection shows that He has the power to do what He says he will do. He has shown us that, in the midst of this broken world, Jesus loves us enough to give his life so that we can truly live, and he is strong enough to offer the only kind of healing and hope that can save even the worst of us sinners.  And here is where the radical and perhaps even scandalous message of the gospel really kicks in.

• Jesus came to save those who have been verbally, physically, emotionally or spiritually abused – and those who did the abusing.

• Jesus came to save those who have been used – and those of us who use others for our own selfish gain.

• Jesus came to save the cheated on and the cheater, the back-stabber and the back stabbed, the liar and the lied to, the grudge-holders and the grudge creators.

• Jesus came to save those who self-destruct, and hate, and judge, and lash out, and hurt others.

And since all of us are on this list – probably in every category in some way -  that’s great news for all of us.

2,000 years ago, we were visited by a God who entered the world to seek and to save the lost (Luke 19:10). That is still what Jesus does today.

No matter what you have done, or what has been done to you, or what you think of Jesus, it is still true: “That by believing in Him you will have forgiveness of sins, the redemption of your soul, and life everlasting.”

[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_iLscNgnRSU[/embed]

The Days We Celebrate (Easter 2017)

1 Corinthians 15The Voice (VOICE)

 Let me remind you, brothers and sisters, of the good news that I preached to you when we first met. It’s the essential message that you have taken to heart, the central story you now base your life on; 2 and through this gospel, you are liberated…. 3-4 For I passed down to you the crux of it all which I had also received from others, that the Anointed One, the Liberating King, died for our sins and was buried and raised from the dead on the third day. All this happened to fulfill the Scriptures; it was the perfect climax to God’s covenant story. 

5 Afterward He appeared alive to Cephas (you may know him as Simon Peter), then to the rest of the twelve. 6 If that were not amazing enough, on one occasion, He appeared to more than 500 believers at one time. Many of those brothers and sisters are still around to tell the story, though some have fallen asleep in Jesus. 7 Soon He appeared to James, His brother and the leader of the Jerusalem church, and then to all the rest of the emissaries He Himself commissioned.  8 Last of all, He appeared to me…

13 Friends, if there is no resurrection of the dead, then even the Anointed hasn’t been raised; 14 if that is so, then all our preaching has been for nothing and your faith in the message is worthless. 15 And what’s worse, all of us who have been preaching the gospel are now guilty of misrepresenting God because we have been spreading the news that He raised the Anointed One from the dead (which must be a lie if what you are saying about the dead not being raised is the truth)…

Friends, 17 if the Anointed has not been raised from the dead, then your faith is worth less than yesterday’s garbage, you are all doomed in your sins, 18 and all the dearly departed who trusted in His liberation are left decaying in the ground. 19 If what we have hoped for in the Anointed doesn’t take us beyond this life, then we are world-class fools, deserving everyone’s pity.

20 But the Anointed One was raised from death’s slumber and is the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep in death. 21 For since death entered this world by a man, it took another man to make the resurrection of the dead our new reality. 22 Look at it this way: through Adam all of us die, but through the Anointed One all of us can live again. 

______________________________________________

We live in a world in desperate need of peace.

Terrorism, rumors of wars, persecution, genocide, human trafficking, tension between police and citizens, political fighting, social media frenzies of name-calling and insults. It hits closer to home, too: our families, our workplace, our friendships, our church. Then there is the lack of peace deep inside – the depression, anxiety, despair and shame. We live in a world in desperate need of peace.

I want to talk about how Jesus’ death and resurrection makes peace possible.

There is a Hebrew word, Shalom,that refers to peace with God, within, and with others. In many ways it takes us back to the Garden of Eden, at a place and time when everything was good. We have wandered far from that place of peace and rest, and the history of the world shows that we do a terrible job re-creating peace on our own. The prophet Jeremiah lamented the people who say, “’Peace, peace,’ when there is no peace”; Luke records that Jesus wept for Jerusalem: “If you had only known on this day what would bring you peace.”

The prophet Isaiah said that one day there would be a Prince of Peace; Paul wrote that Jesus is our peace; Jesus said he came to bring a peace that was unlike anything the world could give. When he appeared to the disciples after his resurrection, one of the first things he said was, “Be at peace.”

This promise of peace through Jesus Christ is our hope in a fallen and broken world, and that’s our focus today.

Peace With God

We were created to be at peace with God – pure, holy, unstained by sin. Genesis talks about the close communion of God and Adam; it’s that kind of peace that is the goal. Unashamed, guiltless, not covering or hiding our sins or ourselves.

But sin ruined that kind of peace. And lest we blame Adam, we all contribute. We all choose to do that which appalls a righteous and holy God. Everyone is directed by their conscience; Christians are directed by the Bible and empowered by the Holy Spirit – and yet we still at times choose to willfully choose a path of spiritual, emotional, relational and sometimes physical destruction that we know offends  the God who created and loves us and hurts those around us. We don’t just ignore God or make mistakes; we are rebels. Some of us are just more obvious about it than others.

It not that we are totally unaware. If nothing else, our stories betray us. We want a line between good and evil, a really clear demarcation: “There are evil people and things; there are good people and things.” We want Sauron vs. Gandalf; the Lion vs. the Witch; Captain America vs. the Red Skull; Ohio State vs. anyone else, really.

While those stories are instructive and good, it’s not what we experience in real life. Even the writers of Scripture knew this. Look at any primary character in the Old Testament and find one whose life was a pure as snow. They don’t exist. The line between good and evil runs right through the center of our hearts. It’s why we are awesome parents one day and horrible parents the next. It’s why one day I’m the husband my wife dreamed about when she was a kid and the next day I’m not even close. It’s why our friendships struggle, and our families fight, and even church can feel like a battleground.

The whole world is in a war between sin and holiness, and at times the epic heroes arise and defeat the classic villains, and we cheer (as we should), but more often than not we see that murky middle battleground where the Boromirs and the children who visited Narnia and the Tony Starks struggle to embrace the good and reject the evil. And even then that just reminds us that the epicenter of this battle is in our heart.

We see in the Old Testament how God instituted a plan to begin a restoration project that pointed toward Jesus. It starts with Abraham.

God made a covenant, an agreement with Abraham,  that Paul alluded to in the passage we read today (“ the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus was the climax to God’s covenant story”). God promised that he would bless the world through Abraham and his descendants, who would become the children of Israel. Abraham just needed to be obedient and follow God. To seal the covenant, it was typical at that time for the two parties to kill an animal, dismember it, and walk through the middle as a way of saying, “If I break the covenant, may this be done to me.” In a vision, God appeared to Abraham and walked through this dissected animal alone. In other words, God said, “If either one of us breaks the covenant, may this be done to me.”

Eventually, God renewed this covenant relationship through Moses (the 10 Commandments and all the extra details), and gave his people an incredible amount of instruction on the kind of life that pleases God.

So all the Israelites were now in a covenant with God – they occasionally re-read the Law publicly and reaffirmed that yes indeed, this was the plan. This covenant was a little different in that there were some conditions: if they did good, they would be blessed. If they did bad, they would not. This led to trouble, because the Jewish people were terrible at keeping the Law.  

God initiated a temporary substitute through the sacrificial system, but they had to keep repeating this (for good reason.) It didn’t matter how much or how often the rabbis added more and more laws to try to make sure they could live perfectly. They couldn’t. If anything, the more detailed they got, the more it became clear how far they were from holy.

To make it worse, the cause-and-effect penalties of their sin caught up with them. The conditions of the covenant had to be honored and they were. The wages of their sin were conquest and enslavement. One Old Testament prophet recorded that they sat by the rivers of Babylon and wept as they remembered what they have lost – and what they could have.

They longed for a Messiah, a deliverer, and bringer of hope and peace. It appeared that these people - who were supposed to be the means by which God blessed the world -  had sold their spiritual birthright in exchange for their sin. They had failed to live up to God’s standards even when God had made them clear through Moses.

Now they were scattered, dying, convinced God has abandoned them.

But God had not.

God did bless the world through Abraham’s descendants – but not in a nationalistic sense like the Israelites expected. It was through the lineage of the Jewish people  that Jesus was born. That was the plan all along.

Enter Jesus, God in the flesh, sent to earth to fulfill the demands that God made on himself in his covenant with Abraham. God did not break the covenant; Abraham did. Yet God would pay the price for that sin by taking upon himself the penalty. He would be killed. He would also offer one sacrifice once and for all to fulfill the obligation of the sacrificial system under the law of Moses. On the cross, Jesus was torn for the sins not just of the Israelites, but of the world. Jesus satisfied the requirements of both those covenants while establishing a new one, one that all of us can be a part of.

Why is this important? Because all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. Without Jesus, we are dead in our sins. Our peace with God is broken, and without Jesus there is nothing between us and His wrath. No matter how good we think we are, we have shaken our fist at the heavens and said, “Not your will, but mine be done” over and over again.

But on the cross, the justice and mercy of God meet. God initiates a covenant fulfillment with us even before we are aware of the need for it. Because of the death and resurrection of Jesus, our war with God can end, and we can be at peace with Him. Our sin does not have to condemn us or separate us from God.

We can be forgiven, loved, embraced, even adopted into God’s family so that we are called ‘children of God.’ We are offered forgiveness and hope in this life and an eternity of joy in the presence of God in a New Heaven and New Earth, a reality in which, as Tim Keller says, all that is bad will be undone.

Peace Within

I mentioned a number of things earlier that rob us of peace within: depression, anxiety, shame. We could add anger, bitterness, jealousy, hopelessness, unforgiveness…

Some of those things can be caused by medical issues that a doctor can help (our biology is fallen too). Some of those things we can bring on ourselves because of our sinful choices. Some of things can arise because of sin that has been done to us. I believe the presence of Jesus gives us hope in the midst of all of those things, but there is one primary reason Jesus died and rose again when it comes to peace within. That is to address our guilt and shame for our sin.

Here’s the reality.

On this side of heaven, I will sin because I am not perfect. With the help of the Holy Spirit, the guidance of God’s word and the community of God’s people, I will be remarkably better than I would be without those things. God miraculously frees us from the overwhelming power of sin. Because of Jesus, I am not doomed to be chained by the power of sin. However, the cross and the empty tomb don’t remove the presence of sin. Not yet. I am no longer enslaved to sin, but I can still choose it.

And I do. I’m not perfect. Ask anybody. Neither are you. If you aren’t sure if that’s the case, ask your family. They will fill you in. So what do I do with that?

I could become consumed with perfection and working on my own power – and run myself into the ground trying to achieve the impossible. Then, I will become either insufferably arrogant the more I am successful or sadly self-loathing the more I fail. That’s the kind of righteousness the Bible says is filthy rags. It’s gross. Self-righteousness is not pretty.

Or I can turn to Jesus, the “author and finisher of my faith,” who sees me in my imperfect sinfulness and loves me anyway – and that love includes not letting me stay where I am, but changing and renewing me so that I increasingly become like Jesus. 

Because I have Jesus, I will have a strength I would never have on my own. In my times of doing good, I am driven to worship God, not my own willpower and work, so I avoid arrogance. In my times of failure, I am driven to throw myself at the mercy of a God who is faithful even when I am faithless, and that reminder of the love and tenderness of Jesus moves me out of my self-loathing as I remember that that Jesus knows and loves me, gave His life for me, and is transforming me into His image.

With Others

This changes everything is our relationships. The more we understand how the love of Jesus brought about peace with God, the more determined we will be to pass on that love. And when we see how his death and resurrection show His love – truly see it – we will love Him in return, and it will change us.

What kind of love is that? A radical, self-sacrificing commitment to the good of those around me. It’s what the Bible calls agape love. Jesus died so that I could live; why would I not in some way choose to ‘die’ to myself so that those around me can live? It’s how I honor my Lord. It’s how I pass on the legacy of Jesus.

 In some ways we commemorate this during communion: “This is my body which was broken for you …do this in remembrance.” We can’t die and bring salvation for our sins or the sins of others – we must have Jesus for that. But we can honor what Jesus has done by being broken and spilled out as we show the love of Jesus.

 As followers of Jesus, we ‘die’ to jealousy, envy, anger, pettiness, meanness, pride, selfishness. The Bible insists that we present our bodies as a living sacrifice, that we climb up on the altar and sacrifice everything in us that needs to die. We could never do this on our own power, but we are not alone. We have God’s spirit inside us, his Word in front of us, and His people around us.

 We can do this, because God is with us.

 This is the peace the Resurrected Lord offers to us.

• Through Jesus, our relationship with God can been repaired so that we are no longer rebels. We are servants, friends, children, kings, priests. As a church we are the bride of Christ, and the bride will be made glorious in preparation for the glorious return of Jesus.

• Through Jesus, our peace within can be restored as we surrender and then commit our lives to the love and grace of a Risen Savior who is greater than all of our sins. We do not have to live in shame and fear; we can be transparent, bold and loved.

• Through Jesus, our peace with others flows from this reality. We will want to go into all the world and preach the gospel and make disciples. We will  want everyone so see how the love of a Risen Savior transforms our lives, not for our glory but for the glory of the One who makes this possible.

The Hope of the Resurrection

The following satirical letter to NYU has been floating around the internet for a while:

IN ORDER FOR THE ADMISSIONS STAFF OF OUR COLLEGE TO GET TO KNOW YOU BETTER, WE ASK THAT YOU ANSWER THE FOLLOWING QUESTION  ARE THERE ANY SIGNIFICANT EXPERIENCES YOU HAVE HAD, OR ACCOMPLISHMENTS YOU HAVE REALIZED, THAT HAVE HELPED TO DEFINE YOU AS A PERSON?

I am a dynamic figure, often seen scaling walls and crushing ice. I have been known to remodel train stations on my lunch breaks, making them more efficient in the areas of heat retention. I write award-winning operas, I manage time efficiently. Occasionally, I tread water for three days in a row.

I woo women with my god like trombone playing, I can pilot bicycles up severe inclines with unflagging speed, and I cook Thirty-Minute Brownies in twenty minutes. I am as expert in stucco, a veteran in love, and an outlaw in Peru.

Using only a hoe and a large glass of water, I once single-handedly defended a small village in the Amazon Basin from a horde of ferocious army ants. I play bluegrass cello, I was scouted by the Mets, I am the subject of numerous documentaries. When I’m bored, I build large suspension bridges in my yard. On Wednesdays, after school, I repair electrical appliances free of charge.

I am an abstract artist, a concrete analyst, and a ruthless bookie. Critics worldwide swoon over my original line of corduroy evening wear. I don’t perspire. I am a private citizen, yet I receive fan mail. I have been caller number nine and have won the weekend passes. I bat 400. My deft floral arrangements have earned me fame in international botany circles. Children trust me.

I can hurl tennis rackets at small moving objects with deadly accuracy.  I know the exact location of every food item in the supermarket. I have performed several covert operations with the CIA. I sleep once a week; when I do sleep, I sleep in a chair. While on vacation in Canada, I successfully negotiated with a group of terrorists who had seized a small bakery. The laws of physics do not apply to me.

I balance, I weave, I dodge, I frolic, and my bills are all paid. On weekends, to let off steam, I participate in full-contact origami. Years ago I discovered the meaning of life but forgot to write it down.  I breed prizewinning clams. I have won bullfights in San Juan, cliff-diving competitions in Sri Lanka, and spelling bees at the Kremlin. I have played Hamlet, I have performed open-heart surgery, and I have spoken with Elvis. But I have not yet gone to college.

He’s a fantastic guy, but he is not real.  He sounds good, but neither I nor anyone else I know of will be restructuring their way of life to follow him, or introducing others to him, or starting a Church of The Living NYU Student, or wearing a bracelet (WWNYUSD). It doesn’t matter how great he sounds, he is not real (and neither was the letter). 

If Jesus was not real – if he was not who he said he was – then Christianity has nothing to offer that you can’t find in another worldview, a self-help shelf or a bottle. But if Jesus was who he claimed to be, then He matters in ways that nothing else does.[i]

This is what I want to address today – the reality of Jesus Christ. If you attend here throughout the year, you are going to hear over and over again how Jesus saves and transforms even the most broken and hopeless lives. You are going to here how God is awesome, and Jesus alone is worthy of our praise. You are going to here testimonies about how Jesus enters into our reality and changes us from the inside out. But this Sunday, I just want to talk about the reality of Jesus. [ii] The APOSTLES CREED (which probably dates from the second century) begins like this:

I believe in Jesus Christ, God’s only son, our Lord, Conceived of the Holy Spirit, Born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pilate, was crucified, dead and buried, [he descended to the dead] on the third day he rose again, he ascended into heaven, he is seated at the right hand of the Father, and he will come again to judge the living and the dead..,”

 If we have grown up in church or been a Christian for a while, we can lose sight of how fantastic this claim is.  The Incarnation says that God came to earth as a human being in order to save us from the penalty of our sins and restore peace between us and God. God made a good world; we break it. Over and over, we do the kinds of things that destroy peace with God, with others, and within. In an unbelievable act of love and grace, God himself took care of the penalty we deserved so that our sins could be forgiven and peace could be restored.  [iii]

 If you think that’s a fantastic claim today, so did those who lived with Jesus.

 THE BACKGROUND

The Jews had been waiting for a Messiah (a Savior) since David. Time and again they ended up enslaved to other nations. By the first century, they had spent several hundred years convinced that the Spirit of God had been removed from them. They were waiting for a Messiah who would do two key things to fix this broken world: defeat the enemy and liberate Israel (in Jesus' day, that was Rome), and purify / rebuild the temple.  Plenty of people claimed they were this promised Messiah.

1. Judas Maccabeus 160's BC, entered Jerusalem at the head of an army,  purified the temple, destroyed altars to other gods, but was eventually killed in battle.

2. Judas (of Galilee), Zealot, led revolt against Romans AD 6 (Acts 5). It failed.

3. Theudas (mentioned in Acts 5.36) claimed to be a Messiah, and led about 400 people to the Jordan River, where he would divide it to show his power.  He was stopped and executed in AD 46.

4. The Anonymous Egyptian (Jew), with 30,000 unarmed Jews, did a reenactment of Exodus around AD 55. He led them to the Mount of Olives, where he claimed he would command the walls around Jerusalem to fall.  His group was massacred by Procurator Antonius Felix, and he was never seen again.

5. Simon bar Kokhba ca. 135), founded a short-lived Jewish state  that he ruled for 3 years before being defeated in the Second Jewish-Roman War.  580,000 Jewish people died.

No wonder John the Baptizer, while in jail awaiting his death, sent a message to Jesus: “Are you the one who is to come, or should we expect someone else?” This was John the Baptist, who once announced Jesus as, “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” He needed to know if Jesus was the real deal.

 Jesus replied, “Go back and report to John what you have seen and heard: The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is proclaimed to the poor. And blessed are those who do not take offense in me.” (Luke 7)

That last line seems odd, but remember that the Jews were expecting a Messiah with a sword, not a healing touch.  Jesus is basically saying, ‘Don’t let this trip you up. This is what a real Messiah does.”[iv]

So after doing all these things to show He was who He claimed he was, Jesus’ crucifixion suggested that he was just another failed messiah. He had not freed them from Roman rule and had not restored the Temple as they expected.  Now he was dead and his followers were hiding. Typically, another person would be tagged to continue the movement, usually a family member or relative.

And yet three days after Jesus’ death this movement begins.

• The early Christians claimed they had seen a Resurrected Messiah at a time when no one believed that individuals would be resurrected. The Greeks thought the soul would finally be rid of the body. The Jews believed in the coming Resurrection where the entire world would be renewed, but they did not believe in the personal resurrection of individuals.

• They didn’t appoint a successor (which was the normal response at the time)

• The early Christians said they had more hope than ever before, not because Roman rule was gone but because they had been offered life in a Kingdom that was not of this world.

• They claimed that Jesus had set them free from a much greater problem than Roman rule – the just and eternal consequence of their sin.

• They claimed that the community of the church was now the temple, and it was being restored as the people in it were transformed into the image of risen Christ who was at work inside them through His Spirit and His word.

• They worshipped Jesus at a time when worship of a human was blasphemous to the Jews and potentially traitorous to the Romans. 

The early followers of Christ reordered their entire worldview, changed their view of God, and radically changed their way of life to the point of being willing to die. Why? What had happened to cause them to confidently make this claim? [v]

It was the belief that Jesus had resurrected. He had shown He was the Christ, God in the flesh, by showing his mastery over death.

 “But when they looked up, they saw that the stone had been rolled away – for it was very large.  And entering the tomb, they saw a young man clothed in a long white robe sitting on the right side; and they were alarmed.  But he said to them, “Do not be alarmed.  You seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified.  He is risen. He is not here.  See the place where they laid Him.  But go, tell His disciples – and Peter- that He is going before you into Galilee, and there you will see Him, as He said to you.” (Mark: 16:4-7) 

Several years later, after a miraculous conversion that moved him from a killer of Christians to an apostle of Christ, Paul would write that the power and hope of Christ’s Resurrection is meant to bring us to life. 

“As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world… all of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts… 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 2:1-10) 

We are all in need of a Savior. We cannot save ourselves from the sin and brokenness within us and around us.  Nothing outside of us can save us either. We won’t be saved by a new tax system or a higher minimum wage or better health care or another person who will ‘complete us’.  We don’t need a better social circle or more money or amazing sex or the latest I-something. Substitute saviors will never save us.  We know this. They have failed us time and again, and then ones we think are working now will fail us too.

Christ offers to raise us out of sin, despair and death.  As Tim Keller says, because of Christ we are offered the hope that one day “everything sad will come untrue.” The very things that were once a sign of the deadness and despair of sin can be the very things that are a testimony to the life-giving power of Christ. 

That is what Easter offers to us.  The Crucifixion showed us how much God is willing to sacrifice for our good. Our salvation cost Him a crucifixion. The Resurrection of Christ shows us that Jesus has the power to do what He claimed.  We, who are sinful, broken and so often wondering if there is any hope, have an answer. 

“God so loved the world, that He gave His Son, that whoever believes in Him will not perish, but have eternal life. For God did not send His son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.”  (John 3:16-17)

This is the heart of Christianity, and it is the hope of Resurrection.

________________________________________________________________________________________________

RECOMMENDED RESOURCES

Cold Case Christianity, J. Warner Wallace

The Reason for God, Timothy Keller

Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis

The Case for Christ and The Case for the Real Jesus, Lee Strobel

The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus, by Gary Habermas and Mike Liconna

The Jesus I Never Knew, Phillip Yancey

What if Jesus Had Never Been Born? D. James Kennedy

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, C.S. Lewis (fiction)

The Sin Eater, Francine Rivers (fiction)

A.D. 30, Ted Dekker (fiction – recommended to me)

The Gospel of John (movie)

ENDNOTES

[i]  By way of contrast, the historicity of the founder of other world religious does not carry the same level of importance in other major world religions. Buddhism does not rise and fall on the historical reality of Siddartha – which is good, because the earliest records start 2 to 3 centuries after his death, and some of the trusted manuscripts appear 1,000 years later. Hinduism does not rise and fall on the reality of anyone.  It is not based on historical truth, but revealed principles. (If fact, it sees history as a weak point for other religions, because they become falsifiable.) Islam does not rise or fall on whether or not Mohammed rose from the dead, or was who he claimed he was. He was a prophet, not a Savior.

[ii] For the extra-biblical evidence about the life and person of Jesus, check out an article by J.Warner Wallace, “Is There Any Evidence for Jesus Outside the Bible?”  (http://coldcasechristianity.com/2014/is-there-any-evidence-for-jesus-outside-the-bible/)

[iii] The death of Jesus was understood by the early Christians as a fulfillment of a covenant God had made centuries earlier.When God made a covenant with Abraham in Genesis 15 (and following), he used the standard form of what was called suzerain covenant-making. In typical fashion, Abraham killed some animals, cut them in pieces, and arranged them to walk through. Typically, both parties or just the weaker party would walk through the dissected animals as a way of saying, “If I break our covenant, may this be done to me as punishment.” But then only God, the stronger party, passed through (as a fiery pillar) – but never made Abraham, the weaker party, do the same.

By passing through the slaughtered animal, God was saying that if He didn’t bless Abraham and honor the covenant, God – the stronger, initiating party - would have to pay the penalty. That alone would be unusual, but that wasn’t the most incredible point. God was saying that if Abraham doesn’t keep the covenant, God would pay the penalty for Abraham.

This was unprecedented. God was clearly not a consumer god, paying attention and blessing us because we made him happy.  God was a covenant god, but completely different from the wealthy, powerful lords of earth. He gave the rules, established the penalty of rule-breaking, then committed to paying that penalty for everybody.

What kind of God would do that? A God who arrives in the person of Jesus Christ. On the cross, Jesus fulfilled the conditions of the covenant by paying Abraham’s penalty. We commemorate this every time we partake in communion – His body broken, His blood spilled. The covenant must be honored. Someone must pay for breaking the agreement.

Read more at “The Only Thing That Counts,” http://nightfallsandautumnleaves.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-only-thing-that-counts-galatians-51.html

[iv]  There are at least two key reasons Jesus performed miracles.

Miracles confirmed Jesus’ divine mission

• He “manifested His glory” at the marriage feast in Cana, so his disciples “believed in Him.” (John 2:11)

• "Men of Israel, listen to this:  Jesus of Nazareth was a man accredited by God to you by miracles, wonders and signs, which God did among you through Him, as you yourselves know.  (Acts 2:22)

• “Even though you do not believe me, believe the miracles, that you may know and understand that the Father is in me, and I in the Father." (John 10:38)

Miracles confirmed the message of the gospel  (Hebrews 2:1-4;  John 2:18-21;   Matthew 12:38)

”Then the Jews demanded of him, ‘What miraculous sign can you show us to prove your authority to do all this?’  Jesus answered them, ‘Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days.’ The Jews replied, ‘It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and you are going to raise it in three days?’ But the temple he had spoken of was his body. After he was raised from the dead, his disciples recalled what he had said. Then they believed the Scripture and the words that Jesus had spoken.” (John 2:18-21)

“...This salvation, which was first announced by the Lord, was confirmed to us by those who heard him. God also testified to it by signs, wonders and various miracles, and gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to his will.”  ( Hebrews 2:1-4)

“Which is easier: to say to the paralytic, 'Your sins are forgiven,' or to say, 'Get up, take your mat and walk'? But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins . . . ." He said to the paralytic, "I tell you, get up, take your mat and go home." He got up, took his mat and walked out in full view of them all. This amazed everyone and they praised God, saying, "We have never seen anything like this!"”     (Mark 2:9-12)

[v] “If we are to think in first-century Jewish terms, it is impossible to conceive what sort of religious or spiritual experience someone could have that would make them say that the kingdom of God had arrived when it clearly had not, that a crucified leader was the Messiah when he obviously was not, or that the resurrection occurred last month when it obviously did not.”  - N.T. Wright