I am the least of the messengers, and indeed I do not deserve that title at all, because I persecuted the Church of God. But what I am now I am by the grace of God. The grace he gave me has not proved a barren gift. I have worked harder than any of the others - and yet it was not I but this same grace of God within me. In any event, whoever has done the work whether I or they, this has been the message and this has been the foundation of your faith.
Now if the rising of Christ from the dead is the very heart of our message, how can some of you deny that there is any resurrection? For if there is no such thing as the resurrection of the dead, then Christ was never raised. And if Christ was not raised then neither our preaching nor your faith has any meaning at all. Further it would mean that we are lying in our witness for God, for we have given our solemn testimony that he did raise up Christ - and that is utterly false if it should be true that the dead do not, in fact, rise again! For if the dead do not rise neither did Christ rise, and if Christ did not rise your faith is futile and your sins have never been forgiven. Moreover those who have died believing in Christ are utterly dead and gone. Truly, if our hope in Christ were limited to this life only we should, of all mankind be the most to be pitied! (1 Corinthians 15:2-19 Phillips translation)
Of all the truth claims of scripture perhaps the most contested over the centuries is the resurrection of Christ. After the resurrection the soldiers guarding the tomb who fled when the stone was rolled away were bribed by the chief priests to spread the story that they had fallen asleep and the disciples had stolen Jesus' body. They were given assurance that the priests would protect them from Pilate. This because, as Roman soldiers, they would have been under the penalty of death for falling asleep and then abandoning their post. But it was more important to the chief priests, and to Pilate for that matter, to keep them alive and spread the counter-resurrection lie. Why? Because all of the ruling powers instinctively understood that the resurrection was an event of such power and import that it completely divested their authority. The resurrection, morally and philosophically, rendered them impotent and irrelevant.
But for those who had witnessed Jesus' resurrection there was no turning back. James, Jesus' brother, who during Jesus' ministry had tried to convince him to stop preaching and come home, fearing he had lost his mind, after the resurrection became a leader of the early church, officiated at the council of Jerusalem, and was eventually martyred. The same happened to every apostle, except John. All went to their deaths, some in truly horrible fashion, refusing to renounce the resurrection.
The last line in the text was, if our hope in Christ were limited to this life only we should, of all mankind be the most to be pitied! Paul elaborates further in verse 32: if there is no life after this one, 'Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die!' This quotation of Isaiah 22:13 must have resonated with his Greek readers, because it seems to sum up the philosophy of the Epicureans who held that pleasure was the ultimate good and so devoted themselves to its single-minded pursuit. Paul seems to say, if there is no eternal dimension to our existence, no resurrection, no hope of eternal relationship with God, forget about Christianity, forget about moral constraints, forget about any greater meaning that your life might have because it doesn't have any; live for the moment, indulge yourself! This may describe a sad and pathetic existence, devoid of meaning, honor, justice and principle, but if true, that's all there is and all our longing for meaning and purpose is nothing but an empty delusion.
Yet isn't this what our culture now tells us? "You only go around once in this life, so grab all the gusto you can!" "He who dies with the most toys wins." These feeble aphorisms are the best it has to offer.
The Meaning
The whole meaning of the Christian faith hinges on the resurrection. As Paul told the Corinthians, if Christ did not rise from the dead, their faith was futile, their sins were not forgiven, and those who die, die in hopelessness. The resurrection is the validation of the eternal dimension of life. It gives meaning, not only to Jesus' death of redemption, but to morality itself. Only if the Big Bang had a Big Banger, only if ethical law had a Law Giver who, because of His nature of absolute goodness and absolute knowledge, can endow that law with His authority, does our existence have any purpose. Absent the Creator, what we call ethics and morality is nothing more than the pretense of personal preference and the tyranny of the majority, as changeable as clothing fashion.
But the greater question answered by the resurrection is the existence of mankind itself. As Paul told the Athenian philosophers in the Areopagus: "God who made the world and all that is in it, being Lord of both Heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by human hands, nor is he ministered to by human hands, as though he had need of anything - seeing that he is the one who gives to all men life and breath and everything else. From one forefather he has created every race of men to live over the face of the whole earth. He has determined the times of their existence and the limits of their habitation, so that they might search for God, in the hope that they might feel for him and find him - yes, even though he is not far from any one of us. Indeed, it is in him that we live and move and have our being. Some of your own poets have endorsed this in the words, 'For we are indeed his children'. If then we are the children of God, we ought not to imagine God in terms of gold or silver or stone, contrived by human art or imagination. Now while it is true that God has overlooked the days of ignorance he now commands all men everywhere to repent (because of the gift of his son Jesus). For he has fixed a day on which he will judge the whole world in justice by the standard of a man whom he has appointed. That this is so he has guaranteed to all men by raising this man from the dead." (Acts 17:24-31 Phillips translation) Jesus' resurrection serves as a supernatural guarantee, a kind of certificate of authentication, of the grand arc of creation and its overarching aim, that man should be in relationship with God. As it states in the very first question of the Westminster Catechism:
What is the chief and highest end of man?
Answer: Man's chief and highest end is to glorify God, and fully to enjoy him forever.
The Hope
The older I get and the closer to my inevitable death, the more acutely I feel that, "It's not enough!" I want more: more food, more sex, more travel, more art, more joy, more knowledge, more beauty, more creativity...more life. I can't even imagine getting tired of life. I tire of drudgery, of boredom, banality and mediocrity, and most definitely of pain; but life? Never!
All living things have an instinct for survival, but this insatiable desire for life goes far beyond that, indeed is of an entirely different character; not merely an urge to exist, but a hunger for something at the edge of our perception which all the superlatives of this life not only never satisfy, but only seem to hint at some deeper truth. C.S. Lewis put it this way:
Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for desires exists. A baby feels hunger: well, there is such a thing as food . A duckling wants to swim: well, there is such a thing as water. Men feel sexual desire: well, there is such a thing as sex. If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing. If that is so, I must take care, on the one hand, never to despise, or be unthankful for, these earthly blessings, and on the other, never to mistake them for something else of which they are only a kind of a copy, or echo, or mirage. I must keep alive in myself the desire for my true country, which I shall not find till after death; I must never let it get snowed under or turned aside; I must make it the main object of life to press on to that other country and to help others to do the same.
Even more than the purpose of our existence, the resurrection explains life itself for it points to a transcendence and fulfillment to come, a healing and completion to that which seems sick and undone, a final judgement to the horrible injustice that reigns over the world, a knowledge to answer the ignorance that vexes us, a satisfaction, finally, for our desperate hunger. Rico Tice, the pastor of evangelism at All Souls Anglican Church in London, said that we feel so dissatisfied in this life because we were created by God with hungers and desires so intense that it will take an eternity to satisfy them. This is the hope of the resurrection: that we will one day, finally, enter that true country for which we were made; that one day our hunger for bliss, which every pleasure we've so far experienced only seemed to generate more hunger, will begin its fulfillment. "I came so they can have real and eternal life, more and better life than they ever dreamed of," said Jesus. (John 10:10 The Message)
The Power
Before the meaning of the of the resurrection can influence one's actions, before the hope of the resurrection can inspire one's aspirations, the power of the resurrection must transform one's spirit. Jesus said to the Pharisee Nicodemus, "No one can see God's kingdom without being born again. ...No one can enter God's kingdom without being born through water and the Holy Spirit." (John 3:3&5 The Message) The resurrection is the authentication of Jesus' redemptive death on the cross that did what we could not do: pay the price for our sin which then reconciles us to God and gives us access to the spiritual rebirth of which Jesus spoke. As Paul said in our text, Christ died for our sins, as the scriptures said he would; he was buried and rose again on the third day, again as the scriptures foretold. And the Apostle Peter said it this way: According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead...(1 Peter 1:3 ESV).
This is the beauty of the Gospel (from the Greek word Euaggelion - yoo-ang-ghel'-ee-on, meaning, "good tidings" or "good message"), that it's not a message of how we can earn our way to God's forgiveness, but rather the good news of God's mercy and love; it's not a message of what we must do for God, but what He has done for us. Our part is simply that of acceptance, of surrendering ourselves to His design, of receiving His gift of redemption. As Paul said to his apprentice Titus: ...when the kindness of God our saviour and his love towards man appeared, he saved us - not by virtue of any moral achievements of ours, but by the cleansing power of a new birth and the moral renewal of the Holy Spirit, which he gave us so generously through Jesus Christ our Saviour. The result is that we are acquitted by his grace, and can look forward to inheriting life for evermore. (Titus 3:4-7 Phillips translation)
It's in this spirit of contemplating the meaning of the resurrection in validating moral truth and explaining our existence, the hope of the resurrection in the vision of our eternal destiny, and the power of the resurrection in conveying spiritual rebirth, redemption, and reconciliation to God, that I welcome you to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ on this Easter. Together we join hundreds of millions of believers in Christ over this world who, in rejoicing in the hope we have been given that we too will be resurrected in the last day, can say, "He is risen! He is risen indeed!"
