Do You Have Resurrection Courage?
The resurrection of Jesus began the final days. The resurrection was the central hope of the apostles’ preaching. In fact, the most quoted Old Testament verse in the New Testament is Psalm 110:1: The Lord says to my Lord: “Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool.” Why was this verse used so frequently in the preaching of the early church? It’s because the resurrection of Christ truly happened, and they believed it with their whole being. King Jesus laid down his life for the penalty of sin, and he took his life back up to defeat the power of sin and death.
This week I was talking to a dear friend who contracted COVID. In fact, he and his wife both had it. I’ve made it a purpose lately to spend time with or call any of my friends who have had this virus because their opinion of the virus matters experientially. It’s been really helpful to hear from those who have felt the symptoms, have gone through the sickness, and come out of the other side. Most of my friends have shared that their main conclusion after having COVID, which goes something along the lines of: “The virus is real, I was sick, let’s wear our masks, and let’s get back to normal life.”
Now, I realize that there is a missing group whom I can’t interview—those who have died. Tragically this virus has taken the lives of nearly two million people. I’ve wondered what those who have died, who were followers of Jesus, would tell us? I think they would say the same thing that followers of Jesus from the first century who died due to sickness would tell us: “Jesus was resurrected from the dead to defeat death. Don’t hide in fear from death. Carry the good news of eternal life to those who are afraid.”
Many believers seem to have forgotten the resurrection.
Honestly, I’ve been a little saddened by the response of many Christians during this pandemic. I know that may sound a bit arrogant, but some believers seem to have forgotten the resurrection. Perhaps it’s due to sermons on the resurrection often being limited to the Easter season. Maybe, at best, it’s due to an emphasis on the cross (1 Cor. 2:2) without its resurrection counterpart (1 Cor. 15). Whatever it is, we need to recover the resurrection and let it drive us to live and love the way our savior taught us. We can only do this when we realize that death is not the final end.[1]
If we are honest—and I think it’s good to be honest with this topic—many of us do fear death and are doing everything we can to live in the now. I don’t like the thought that death can come and take my family at any time. I want to protect them from death, but I’m not powerful enough to stop it. Enter in a global pandemic and death feels like more of a possibility than before.
Where the reality of death confronts us is also where resurrection hope is to be proclaimed.
As we contemplate these realities, how often does Christ’s resurrection comfort us? When we see our unbelieving neighbors terrified to go outside because the popular media fuels a fear-driven narrative, what else would they believe? Maybe this is where the resurrection hope is meant to be proclaimed.
When Peter is writing to a dispersed church, he starts his letter by grounding everything he is about to write in the resurrection:
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! 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, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. (1 Pet. 1:3-5)
The historical church has faced numerous struggles that tested their faith in the resurrection to come.
Jesus truly rose from the dead and is our hope, a living savior who continually gives life. Church history tells us over and over how the resurrection of Jesus began this new creation life in his people. Pastor Jason Harris describes how the early church dealt with plagues.
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Sin, Autonomy, and Biblical Critical Theory
If I alone can determine what is right and wrong, true and false, just and unjust, I will always be bumping heads with all the others who also think and act this way. With no higher objective absolutes that transcend my and your judgments and assessments, we will always clash. Real human dignity and community can only come from recognising who God is and how we share in the image of God.
There are many ways to describe and discuss sin. Perhaps one definition of major significance is to speak in terms of autonomy. In its simplest form this means self-law or self-government. However, if there is a God who created us and seeks to govern us for our own best good, then autonomy is the height of folly – as well as sin. It is idolatry on steroids.
We perhaps see this especially played out in the radical trans movement. Here we have folks who have so deified autonomy that they believe they can – at will – redefine morality, redefine biology, redefine truth, and redefine reality. Talk about playing God! Talk about kicking God off his throne and elevating mere man in his place.
Last week I penned a piece featuring the important new book by Christopher Watkin: Biblical Critical Theory: How the Bible’s Unfolding Story Makes Sense of Modern Life and Culture (Zondervan, 2022). As I said there, this is such a wide-ranging and significant volume that a short review will hardly do it justice.
So instead I will feature aspects or chapters of the book in a number of articles. The first one focused on Ch. 23 and is found here.
What I want to highlight today is found in Ch. 5: “Sin and Autonomy.” The Australian Christian philosophy professor also stresses autonomy as the heart of sin, and shows why it is so very destructive. And let me preface this by citing a paragraph from the previous chapter, “Sin and Society”:
The absence of a sustained emphasis on sin and judgment in Christian cultural engagement is, at least, a little odd and, at most, a heinous omission that leaves Christian cultural theory limping and unbalanced. After all, sin is such a crucial figure in the biblical rhythm of creation, fall, and redemption, the rhythm that taps out the distinctively Christian approach to all things from identity and ethics and the environment to culture, the economy, and politics. 108
Exactly right. So it is vital that we speak about sin and identify it properly and accurately. Autonomy is key to all this. And it is the perfect descriptor of what happened in the garden with our first parents:
Adam and Eve choose to live by their own law, their own code of what is permitted and not permitted, rather than by God’s law, and they choose to do so in a world that God has created and sustains, as the creatures God has created and sustains. In the context of Genesis 3, autonomy manifests itself as deciding for oneself what is to be counted as good and evil. It is not, of course, deciding for oneself what is good and evil, because God has already settled that question, and any new legislation that Adam and Eve pass down from their DIY parliament does not annul God’s royal decrees. 133
All this should be sensible enough to understand, but sin of course twists everything, including our understanding. So it is like a toddler telling his parents that he knows what is best, that he can fend for himself, and that he is able to determine what is right and wrong. Or as Watkin expresses it:
It is hard to underestimate the extent to which many in our society today fail to consider what the Bible has to say about God on its own terms because that would require admitting that our own autonomous reason may not be the most reliable truth-discerning tool in the universe. One of the crucial pennies to drop in the minds of those who find their way to faith in their adult years is often the realization that, if there really is a God such as the Bible reveals him to be, then he is smarter than I am and his judgement is more reliable than mine: if he and I differ on a matter, and if he is really God and I am really a creature, then it is more than reasonable to assume that he is correct and I am mistaken. To reach any other conclusion would require a bizarre routine of epistemological gymnastics. Either God is God and I am not, in which case his judgement is to be trusted over mine, or else God is not God, in which case there is no reliable way of satisfactorily arbitrating at all between what is reasonable and what is not.
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Under Pressure
Written by Nicholas T. Batzig |
Wednesday, December 1, 2021
If we are in the habit of thanking God for everything that He gives us, we will continue to thank Him! When we rest on God’s word, care about the needs of others, and continually thank God for His provisions, we can remain calm in the midst of the greatest trials.How can I remain calm under pressure? This has to be one of the most significant questions we find ourselves asking throughout our lives. What is the secret to pressing through the challenges and trials of life without fretting or being overwhelmed by constant anxiety? The answer is found—at least in part—in what Luke tells us in Acts 27 about Paul’s experience when he was shipwrecked while a prisoner of the Roman army.
Paul had warned, to no avail, that they were going to suffer a tragic loss (Acts 27:10–12). The centurion who was guarding the apostle rejected Paul’s warning about the turbulent voyage. Instead of acting in frustration, Paul rested on the word of God. An angel had revealed to him that God was going to carry him along in his ministry, so that Paul would ultimately stand before Caesar. The Lord had also promised to protect those who were with Paul (vv.21–26). Paul reminded the soldiers and the others on board the ship, “take courage, men, because I believe God that it will be just the way it was told to me” (v.25). When we rest on the word of God in Scripture, we can confidently go through every circumstance of life in which He places us with a calmness.
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What Has Been Lost – And Can Be Regained
“As we think about glorification, it must be in this way; that man is not only delivered from all the effects of the Fall, and the sin and the transgression of Adam, but granted a far superior blessing, and given something of the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ Himself.”
Most folks would have at least heard of – although perhaps not read – the English poet John Milton’s great work Paradise Lost of 1667. And there is also his Paradise Regained published in 1671. The great Puritan writer and intellectual spoke about the Fall in the former, and the work of Christ in the latter.
Two recent incidents have reminded me of this notion of what we have lost because of sin, and what we as believers are to regain as we are united with Christ in faith and repentance. The first is a film which was again aired on television recently: Lucy, a 2014 French science fiction action film starring Scarlett Johansson and Morgan Freeman.
I have seen bits and pieces of it over the years, and it has appealed to me for two reasons. One, I always like any book or film where justice finally happens: where evil is dealt with and good eventually triumphs. And two, the idea that we can become so much more than we currently are – in terms of the use of our mind and so on – has often led me to reflect on the biblical worldview.
The plot involves a gal (Johannsson) who is forced to be a drug courier, with a packet of synthetic drugs sown into her stomach. But the bag of this very volatile drug bursts and causes her to gain incredible powers. At the same time a scientist (Freeman) is lecturing on how we only use 10 per cent of our brain, and if we could use more, there would be no limit to what we can do.
Lucy goes through this transformation, defeating a bunch of really bad drug runners in the process. But the film always made me think of some biblical and theological themes: what we had lost at the Fall because of sin, and what we might regain one day when we are reunited with our Lord.
Of course the biblical view of the restoration of fallen man (those who come to Christ in faith and repentance in this life, and are glorified with Christ in the next) entails much more than a reestablished and renewed brain. Instead, every aspect of our being and all facets of who we are (our character, our desires, our emotions, our choices, our imagination, our abilities, our thoughts, etc) will be marvellously and radically transformed.
What we lost at the Fall – and much more – will be what we enjoy in the next life. As but one consideration of this, I wrote an article some years ago about my failing eyesight. I had resigned myself to the fact that I would have ever-worsening vision – perhaps leading to blindness – until the next life: billmuehlenberg.com/2012/08/10/eye-has-not-seen/
In that piece I also discussed savants, those with incredibly enhanced abilities, such as memory and artistic and musical abilities (again, the connection with Lucy). But later I found out that I had cataracts as well, and that could be fixed with laser surgery: billmuehlenberg.com/2020/02/22/the-need-for-improved-spiritual-vision/
The results were terrific for a while, but my eyes are now again starting to go downhill somewhat – as they do in old age. So I again look forward to the next life and the new and improved me – including perfect eyesight and perfect everything else.
The second incident that inspired this article was a terrific comment from my friend Kerry on a social media site. She spoke of digging into the 8th (of 14) volumes on Romans by Martyn Lloyd-Jones. The opening chapters speak of glorification, and she quoted parts of what he had to say.
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