Life from Death – God's great plan.By Emmett Rushing
Life from Death – God's great plan.(Emmett Rushing is an assistant pastor in the Glendora, CA congregation of GCI).
Nineteen hundred and eighty years or so ago, something happened in Jerusalem that affects the life of every human being who has ever lived or will live.
It is all recorded in a set of writings we call the Four Gospels. They report that Jesus, a carpenter from Nazareth, had been arrested, condemned and crucified. As he died he entrusted himself to One he believed was his eternal heavenly Father. Then, for three days his battered corpse had lain in a tomb carved out of solid rock, sealed by a heavy stone rolled across the entrance.
Even so, Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor, had placed a guard at the tomb. Jesus had prophesied that the grave would not hold him, and Pilate was afraid the followers of the dead man would try to steal the body.
However, that seemed unlikely. Those followers were demoralized and in hiding. They had seen the brutal end of their leader – flogged nearly to death, nailed to a cross and, after six hours of agony, stabbed in the side with a spear. They had taken the battered body down from the cross and hastily wrapped it in linen.
It was only intended to be a temporary burial. Some planned to come back after the Sabbath to prepare Jesus’ mortal remains for a proper burial. They had no illusions about what they would find in the tomb. Their beloved leader was dead – He was going nowhere. They thought.
Artists have tried to depict the resurrection – Thomas feels the wounds.The body of Jesus lay in the cold, dark tomb from Friday to Sunday. Then, sometime early in the morning of the third day, the shroud that held the mangled flesh stirred, and out of it stepped something that had never existed before – a resurrected and glorified human being.
The New Testament tells us Jesus had been resurrected by his heavenly Father and in the power of the Holy Spirit (Romans 1:4). But he was raised in a way that did not just restore his human existence, as he had done for those such as his friend Lazarus whom he had brought back from the dead (John 11), but who would later die again.
No, Jesus’ resurrection was not just a resuscitation. Jesus had become a new kind of creation, never to die again. He folded the burial shroud, and walked out of the tomb to continue his work. And nothing would ever be the same again.
When He was with us on earth, Jesus was one of us, a flesh-and-blood human being, subject to hunger, thirst, weariness and the limited dimensions of a mortal existence. He also lived in communion with One he called the Holy Spirit, while still bring one of us.
Theologians call this “the incarnation.” But in this Jesus was also one with God as the eternal Word or Son of God. This is a concept that is difficult, and perhaps impossible to completely grasp, given the limitations of our human minds. How could Jesus be both God and human? The evidence we do have, from Scripture, from history and our own experience supports the belief that Jesus was both one in being with God and one with humanity – fully God and fully man. Hebrews 2:9-18.
So while it is intriguing, it is not essential for us to understand every detail about how this can be. Insisting on it may actually get in the way of fully appreciating what happened that resurrection morning. When Jesus the man was resurrected, the two natures reached a new dimension of being together that resulted in a new kind of creation – a glorified human being, no longer subject to death.
Many years – perhaps as many as 60 – after this event, Jesus appeared to John, the last of his original disciples, who had seen him die. John was now an old man. Jesus told him, “I am the Living One; I was dead, and now look, I am alive for ever and ever! And I hold the keys of death and Hades” (Revelation 1:18).
Still a great question.When Jesus the man was resurrected, his two natures reached a new dimension that resulted in a new kind of creation – a glorified human being, no longer subject to death and decay. Revelation 1:18. is a verse that needs to be unpacked carefully. So look again at what Jesus is saying. He was dead. He is now alive. As if that were not enough, he says He will stay alive forever. And He also has the key that opens up the way for others to also escape the grave. Even death isn’t what it used to be after Jesus’ resurrection.
Wow! At least, we can respond with a “wow.” What this verse is saying is that Jesus has revolutionized what it means to be a human being. Not just for himself, but for everyone. That is the astonishing promise of another verse that has become a cliché: “For God so loved the world that He gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). Jesus, resurrected to eternal life, has opened up the way for us to also live forever with him.
But wait – there’s more.
Look again at what Jesus prayed before he died: “Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world.” Jesus, having shared our mortal existence for about 30 years, says He wants us to be with him and share his glory in his immortal environment forever. That’s in John 17:22-24.
Paul, writing to the Romans, believed it: “Now if we are children, then we are heirs – heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory” (Romans 8:17-18).
Yes, Jesus was the first human to transcend mortal existence, but God never intended that he be the only one. We were always on his mind. “Those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters” (Romans 8:29).
Although we cannot yet understand the full impact of this, our eternal future is safe in his hands. “Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as He is” (1 John 3:2). God’s kind of life can become our kind of life.
Through his life, death and resurrection, Jesus has shown us the way – He is the first to reach the full perfection that God had in mind for human beings from the beginning.
But by no means is He the last. Jesus says we can’t get there by ourselves. “I am the way and the truth and the life,” Jesus explained. “No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). But he “by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body” (Philippians 3:21).
We see this even more in Luke 24:30-31, 35-43.
So when we read the scriptures carefully, an exciting preview of the future of the human race begins to unfold.
“What is mankind that you are mindful of them, a son of man that you care for him?” asks the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews. “You made them a little lower than the angels; you crowned them with glory and honor and put everything under their feet” (2:6-8).
This much He knew. He was quoting a Psalm that had been written a thousand years before. But, he continued “at present we do not see everything subject to them. But we do see Jesus, who was made lower than the angels for a little while, now crowned with glory and honor because he suffered death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone” (verses 8-9).
And so when the women came back to finish preparing Jesus’ body for burial, they found the stone rolled back and the tomb empty except for the neatly folded body shroud and head covering. But that empty space was filled with promise – for them and the other disciples. And for every human being.
Jesus’ destiny is our destiny. His future is our future. God demonstrates his willingness to irreversibly bind himself to all of us in an eternal relationship of love, lifting us up into the very life and communion of our Triune God.
Jesus came to save us. And He has.