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The Death of Death - Resurrection E2
96 Plays11 months ago
The resurrection of the Messiah before the end of the age was a surprising event. What does it mean to be living between the start and the end of the resurrection? Death is defeated but our bodies are still mortal. New creation is here but we’re still so sinful! The New Testament puts Jesus' resurrection at the center of Christian identity, hope, and ethics. Nick and Matt discuss the importance of resurrection within the Biblical story of redemption for humanity and for the cosmos.
Resources Referenced: Paul and Time by Ann L Jervis, Jesus and the Forces of Death by Matthew Thiessen, A New Heaven and a New Earth by Richard Middleton
Interlude Music: Dreaming at Night by Heyson
Theme Song: Believe by Posthumorous
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Transcript
Introduction to Resurrection and Jesus
00:00:02
Speaker
It's the Re Paradise Podcast, and today is our second conversation on resurrection. Today we discuss Jesus of Nazareth and his breaking of the sin-death cycle with resurrection hope.
Messiah's Unexpected Resurrection
00:00:28
Speaker
It's been said that there's almost nothing new in the New Testament. Almost everything that happened was connected to Jewish expectations. However, there were no Jewish expectations that a Messiah would come, die, and be resurrected ahead of the future resurrection and final judgment. This was a shocking new idea. Now, it wouldn't have been shocking that somebody be raised from the dead. That had happened before. Israel's prophets had raised the dead. Jesus raised multiple people from the dead as well.
00:00:56
Speaker
Throughout his ministry, Jesus is consistently at battle with the forces of death that are at work in humanity. But all those people who are raised from the dead were still subject to the work of death in their life. They were raised back into their mortal life, not into an everlasting one.
Significance of Jesus' Resurrection
00:01:11
Speaker
right yeah Jesus' resurrection, however, was not simply a return from death back into a dying body. He was resurrected into an incorruptible, glorified body. This was more than just a return to mortal life. Jesus was resurrected as the first human since Genesis 3, free from the curse of death. Romans 6, 9-10.
00:01:33
Speaker
Because we know that Christ, having been raised from the dead, will not die again. Death no longer rules over him. For the death he died, he died to sin once for all time. But the life he lives, he lives to God. Irenaeus, in the demonstration of apostolic preaching, writes, And because in the original formation of Adam all of us were tied and bound up with death through his disobedience, it was right that through the obedience of him who was made man for us, we should be released from death.
00:02:02
Speaker
And because death reigned over the flesh, it was right that through the flesh it should lose its force and let man go free from its oppression. So the word was made flesh, that though that very flesh which sin had ruled and dominated, it should lose its force and be no longer in us." In Revelation 1, 17-18, John encounters Jesus.
00:02:22
Speaker
When I saw him, I fell at his feet like a dead man. He laid his right hand on me and said, don't be afraid. I'm the first and the last, the living one. I was dead, but look, I'm alive forever and ever. I hold the keys of death and Hades. Jesus has, as Michael Heiser liked to describe, but taken deaths lunch money. Yeah, I own them.
Theological Implications: First Fruits and Eschatology
00:02:44
Speaker
Paul describes Jesus' resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15 as a first fruit, the first crop of a larger expected harvest. 1 Corinthians 15, 20 through 26. But as it is, Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead also comes through a man. For just as in Adam, all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive. But each in his own order, Christ the firstfruits and afterward at his coming, those who belong to Christ. Then comes the end when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father.
00:03:17
Speaker
when he abolishes all ruin, all authority and power. For he must reign until he puts all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be abolished is death, for God has put everything under his feet. Now when it says everything is put under him, it's obvious that he who put everything under him is the exception. When everything is subject to Christ, then the Son himself will also be subject to the one who's subjected everything to him, so that God may be all in all.
00:03:44
Speaker
So this means that for Christians living between Jesus' resurrection and the future resurrection, they're living in this time between the beginning of the resurrection, but still before the
Living Between Resurrections: Already Not Yet
00:03:54
Speaker
end of it. Right, like the first crop came, but there's an extended rainstorm, which nothing else is coming ripe for a while now. So what does it mean to be living in a time where death is defeated, but we're still in need of incorruptible bodies? Where Jesus was victorious, but the final judgment and restoration still lies in the future?
00:04:13
Speaker
Jews had expected God's return to end their age and begin the next age, but it didn't happen quite that simply. Scholars and theologians have attempted to understand and describe this in a variety of ways. As an overlap of the ages, as an already not yet, or an inaugurated eschatology, the future has invaded the present.
00:04:32
Speaker
Ann Jarvis has written about Paul and his understanding of time. She's noted that the distinction Paul makes is between the present evil age and being in Christ. The present evil age is headed towards destruction. It exists in what she calls death time. For those who are in Christ, those who participate in the Messiah, they exist in what she calls life time. For believers, when they're joined to Christ, death is defeated.
00:04:57
Speaker
Death has no dominion over those who are in Christ. They participate in eternal life in Christ now. They can begin to participate in the restoration of all things. It's like a weird time shift that goes on when you're in Christ. It's like the hope is so secure that it's as good as done that you might still experience some of the things that you don't want to experience. Yeah. It shouldn't come as a surprise that Jesus' restorative work and his reversal of the fall is described in the language of creation.
00:05:27
Speaker
of returning to God's good design. So in Genesis, death works against God's plans for creation. It separates humans from God. It brings death. It impedes the human ability to function as the image of God. But in Colossians 1, 15-20,
00:05:43
Speaker
He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation, for everything was created by Him in heaven and on earth, the visible and the invisible. Whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities, all things have been created through Him and for Him.
00:05:58
Speaker
He's before all things, and by Him all things hold together. He's also the head of the body, the church. He's the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that He might come to have first place in everything. For God is pleased to have all His fullness dwell in Him, and through Him to reconcile everything to Himself, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through His blood shed on the cross.
00:06:23
Speaker
So death impedes image-bearing. It ends human life and causes separation from the Creator. But this passage celebrates Jesus, the Creator, the true image-bearer, restoring all things on heaven and earth to God through His resurrection from the dead. It's like we're reading the fall narrative in reverse. Right. At this point, we're rhyming a lot with some of the things we said in a couple episodes on The Son of Man.
00:06:48
Speaker
When Jesus met his disciples after the resurrection, he breathed the Spirit onto them. This is reminiscent of God's creation of Adam. John 20, 21 through 22.
Restoration and New Creation Themes
00:06:58
Speaker
Jesus said to them again, peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, I also send you. After saying this, he breathed on them and said, receive the Holy Spirit. Whoa, I have never connected that in my life to the Genesis 2 account of God breathing into the dust dweller and infusing Adam with life. And here Jesus is breathing into his disciples the breath. The restoration that Jesus brings isn't only for humanity. It's about restoring God's intentions for all creation. Genesis tells that creation was good, and creation with image-bearers ruling as God's representatives is very good. We can get so focused on the human-focused aspects of the restoration that we miss the clear language of restoration of the cosmos. John 3, 16, and 17.
00:07:47
Speaker
For God loved the cosmos in this way. He gave his one and only son so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his son into the cosmos to condemn the cosmos, but to save the cosmos through him. Romans 8, 19-21.
00:08:06
Speaker
For the creation eagerly waits with anticipation for God's sons to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself would also be set free from the bondage to decay into the glorious freedom of God's children. in second peter three thirteen But based on His promise, we wait for new heavens and a new earth, where righteousness dwells.
00:08:31
Speaker
The end of the vision in Revelation shows the new heaven and the new earth, the new Jerusalem brought to earth. This new creation is full of imagery from the Genesis creation account. Revelation 22, 1-3.
00:08:43
Speaker
Then He showed me the river of the water of life, clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb, down the middle of the city's main street. The tree of life was on each side of the river, bearing twelve kinds of fruit, bearing its fruit every month. The leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations, and there will no longer be any curse. The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and His servants will worship Him. They will see His face, and His name will be on their foreheads.
00:09:11
Speaker
Night will be no more. people will know People will not need the light of a lamp or the light of the sun because the Lord God will give them light, and they will reign forever and ever." Yeah, that passage is littered with that creation language, specifically of Genesis 1 and 2. He got the water of life, the tree of life, God dwelling with people in his new cosmic temple. This is creation made new.
00:09:36
Speaker
Yeah, and the light and darkness, but God is functioning as the light. You don't need the stars and the sun that God put in the firmament. In Genesis, God had created humanity to function as His image-bearers, and the Hebrew Bible and other Jewish writers had not forgotten that this was His purpose for humanity. Psalm 8, 6-8. You made Him rule over the works of your hands. You put everything under His feet, all the sheep and oxen, as well as the animals in the wild, the birds of the sky and the fish of the sea, that passed through the currents of the seas.
00:10:08
Speaker
and the wisdom of Solomon 9, 2-3. And by your wisdom formed human beings to rule over the creatures that were made by you, and to manage the world in holiness and righteousness. So when Revelation describes God's restoration work, this is exactly what it describes. Humans reigning and ruling. This is what image-bearers of God were always meant to do. In Revelation 5, 9-10, you've got the four living creatures and the 24 elders before the Lamb singing of those who've been purchased by the blood of the Lamb.
00:10:39
Speaker
And they sang a new song, you are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals because you are slaughtered and you purchased people for God by your blood. From every tribe and language and people and nation, you made them a kingdom and priests to our God, so they will reign on the earth. In the depiction of the New Eden in Revelation 22 that we just read, the humans dwell with God in the New Jerusalem, and they will reign forever and ever. Right, yeah. As Middleton says, resurrection and rule go hand in hand when God restores his people. Of course they do, because it's a resurrection to that which God intended, which was for humans to function as his image, which is a vocation of rulership over the rest of God's good creation.
00:11:47
Speaker
is defeated, but we're still living in these mortal bodies in need of a resurrection restoration. Living between the first fruits and the culmination of resurrection does not mean simply waiting for the future resurrection.
Living as New Creation and Apostolic Teachings
00:12:00
Speaker
Jesus has broken the power of death. So we're called to live as God desired humanity to live, as new creation, seeking to be the image of God the way humanity is always supposed to.
00:12:12
Speaker
Jesus' victory over death means that we are not enslaved by our fear of death anymore. Hebrews 2, 14-15 Now since the children have flesh and blood in common, Jesus also shared in these, so that through his death he might destroy the one holding the power of death, that is the devil, and free those who were held in slavery all their lives by the fear of death.
00:12:35
Speaker
In Second Temple Judaism, there is a lot of disagreement over who would be among the righteous resurrected on the day of the Lord. They didn't all agree on the proper standard of righteousness. We have letters detailing arguments about which works of the law are necessary to be counted among the righteous. but If you pour liquid from a clean vessel into an unclean cup, does that contamination go up the stream and contaminate the clean vessel?
00:12:57
Speaker
This is the kind of detail they get into. But for the New Testament authors, this was an answered question since the righteousness of God has been revealed in Jesus Christ. It is in Christ that we are new creation. He is the true image of God.
00:13:13
Speaker
If we want to know what it means to live as God intended humans to live, we look to Jesus. We look to His teachings and to His example. The path to resurrection is in Christ. It is following Jesus' example of sacrificial love that led to His death. We don't have to worry about whether contamination is faster than gravity. Whether contamination moves faster than 9.8 meters per second squared.
00:13:37
Speaker
Philippians 3, 10 through 11 says, I want to know Christ, yes, to know the power of His resurrection and participation in His sufferings, becoming like Him in His death, and so somehow attaining to the resurrection and from the dead. Jesus broke the death sin cycle through His death and resurrection. It is in our being united to His death that we participate in the breaking of the cycle.
00:14:00
Speaker
So when the process of resurrection and transformation happens in the lives of believers, it serves to demonstrate Christ's victory over death to the world. 2 Corinthians 4, 10 through 12.
00:14:11
Speaker
We always carry the death of Jesus in our body, so that the life of Jesus may also be displayed in our body. For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus' sake, so that Jesus' life may also be displayed in our mortal flesh. So then, death is at work in us, but life in you. Participating in Jesus' death and resurrection isn't easy. It it requires beginning a radical transformation in our lives. As fallen humanity, we're very comfortable living in that sin-death cycle.
00:14:39
Speaker
as long as I can be on the upper end of that sin-death cycle. Yeah, if it works out for us, we're pretty happy to participate in it. It's rather unfortunate for the thousands and millions of bodies that accumulate under the feet of the oppressors at any given time.
00:14:53
Speaker
But if through Jesus we can know that in the future we will have resurrected, incorruptible bodies, there shouldn't be a problem. The New Testament is adamant that this difficult process of transformation through death and resurrection is one that is to begin now for believers. Romans 6, 5-8.
00:15:10
Speaker
For if we have been united with him in the likeness of his death, we will certainly also be in the likeness of his resurrection. For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that our body ruled by sin might be rendered powerless, so that we may no longer be enslaved to sin, since a person who has died is freed from sin.
00:15:29
Speaker
Now, if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him because we know that Christ, having been raised from the dead, will not die again. Death no longer rules over him.
00:15:41
Speaker
So this passage describes that in being united to Jesus' death, the reign of sin and death in the believer is destroyed. They have been set free from sin. It is no longer their master. Death no longer has mastery. And believers will share in the ultimate defeat of death, the resurrection. Verse 13 says, offer yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life.
00:16:06
Speaker
The law was intended to guide Israel toward life, away from death. But as the Old Testament prophets lamented, the law wasn't enough to keep Israel obedient to God's design. The power of death was too strong. They turned away from Yahweh. Jesus has won victory over death. It is in Him and through Him that we are rescued from death.
00:16:26
Speaker
The New Testament celebrates that through Jesus' victory comes the Holy Spirit, which aids believers in disobedience that was so desired. Those who are in Christ are new creation. 2 Corinthians 5, 17.
00:16:41
Speaker
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is new creation. The old has passed away and see the new has come. I think it's better to leave out the indefinite article there, a new creation as a lot of translations read, because it's not there in Greek, so it's just a matter of making it more readable in English. But I think if we just leave it out, it does a little bit of a better job connecting us to this new reality that's being opened up. For the people that are in Messiah Jesus,
00:17:09
Speaker
that is a taste of the reality of what? Of new creation. We talked about all those passages where through Jesus, God is restoring his original creation. And so I find that powerful to just leave that indefinite article out and it reads a little bit better. And how does he restore new creation? It's through the Spirit. Galatians 6, 15. For both circumcision and uncircumcision mean nothing. What matters instead is new creation.
00:17:39
Speaker
2 Timothy 1, 7-10, describes the power of the Spirit in the life of a believer. For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but one of power, love, and sound judgment. So don't be ashamed of the testimony about our Lord or of me, his prisoner. Instead, share in his sufferings for the gospel, relying on the power of God, for he has saved us and called us with a holy calling,
00:18:02
Speaker
not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace, which was given to us in Christ Jesus before time began. This has now been made evident through the appearing of our Savior, Jesus Christ, who has abolished death and has brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.
00:18:19
Speaker
I think it's easy and probably comfortable to talk about following Jesus and being conformed to Him so long as we kind of keep it theoretical and not very practical. If we want to really start challenging ourselves to live this out, the best place for Christians to start is in Jesus' teachings.
00:18:36
Speaker
One of the earliest Christian teachings, the Didache, begins like this. There are two ways, one of life and one of death, and there's a great difference between the two ways. The way of life is this. First, love God who made you. Second, love your neighbor as yourself. And whatever you would not have done to yourself, do not do to another.
00:18:56
Speaker
This goes on to discuss the importance of living out Sermon on the Mount ethics. It says, Love those who hate you and you will have no enemy. Love your enemies is the most quoted command of Jesus by the early church. They understood that this was a central and radical component of the transformation Jesus brings. The way we treat others, especially those who hate us, is a key indicator of whether we're living the way of death or whether we're living the way of life.
00:19:23
Speaker
And that's so powerful how that passage in the Didache begins where he says, like, there's two ways, the way of life and the way of death. That reminds us of that passage we read in Deuteronomy at the start of the last episode where Yahweh sets before the ancient Israelites. There's the way of life and the way of death, choose life. So the Didache is kind of picking up that language and saying, choose life and the way of life is to follow Jesus's teachings.
00:19:53
Speaker
And Jesus' teachings are summed up by a lot of the early Christians as loving, not only neighbor, but enemy. It's interesting that if the call is to love your enemy, then the call to choose life is a call to die to the death cycle. You called it the cycle of sin and death.
00:20:14
Speaker
And I like how you threw in the word sin there, because yes, according to the key revival, the result of sin is death, or kind of the sign, the first fruits of death, so to speak, is sin. It's that corruption that ultimately leads people to death.
00:20:30
Speaker
In that passage in Romans 6 that we read, Paul uses that language of being crucified with Jesus so that our bodies ruled by sin would be rendered powerless. He talks about dying to the cycle of sin and death. So to die to the cycle of sin and death is to choose life.
00:20:52
Speaker
Yeah, that's exactly what the dedicated authors and the New Testament authors see, that if we want to be conformed to Jesus' resurrection, and we we're wondering, well, how do we get there? What does that pattern look like? Well, it looks like the pattern of death and resurrection that we see in Jesus' life.
00:21:09
Speaker
If you want to be with Jesus for the resurrection, then you got to seek to be like Him in His death. You got to be willing to put off that sinful nature that is so enslaved and trapped by the cycle that humanity has existed under, trapped by this rule of death.
00:21:46
Speaker
Would you see this then, practically speaking, as a call to reject violence toward others? Yeah, I certainly would. I mean, I think that's clearly the way Jesus lived. His teachings for his followers don't leave any wiggle room. To reject and to die to the sin and death cycle is to reject and to die to that fallen way of thinking.
00:22:08
Speaker
Yeah, I think what you see super clearly in the New Testament is that if we want to see the Restoration, if that's what we hope for, if we want to live as image-bearing humans the way God desired, that means that we are in need of resurrection. We are in need of restoration. The New Testament authors are clear that if we want to attain to the resurrection, we have to seek that pattern of Jesus' death, and we have to emulate that in our lives.
00:22:34
Speaker
as just a matter of simple obedience, as a demonstration of our fidelity to Messiah Jesus? It is fidelity, but I think it's grounded in hope. It's grounded in that hope of seeing creation restored, that hope of participating in the resurrection, that hope of new creation.
00:22:51
Speaker
So what Jesus offers the world and indeed his followers is a package. Choose life. Life is going to look like the rejection of these cycles. And guess what? That may call you to take up your cross and follow me.
00:23:06
Speaker
Yeah, when we look at every possible ethical example in Scripture, there's exactly one that was a perfect image-bearing human living in a fallen world, and it's Jesus. So if we have hope of new creation, and that's what we are wanting to participate in, to live out and demonstrate here and now, and we want to know what that looks like, the answer is actually kind of simple, at least in theory. It's difficult in practice, but it's you have to seek to be conformed to Jesus.
00:23:35
Speaker
And of course that isn't some strange masochism where you desire hardship and desire suffering or something weird like that. But it's almost like if we examine our lives and we notice that we just follow the patterns of the world, the patterns of the sin-death cycle,
00:23:53
Speaker
We have to be challenged and we have to maybe question, have I been transformed? Has Jesus breathed His Spirit upon me? Or is all my talk of Jesus just my comfortable religiosity talking? Have I said yes to Jesus and the package that comes with it? Have I said yes to true life, which may entail a million little deaths?
00:24:17
Speaker
It's quite the challenge, but the theme of resurrection makes the challenge worth it. And it almost makes it obvious. Like, what else are you going to do but to continue to do what humans have always done? What humans did before Christ? What humans have done in the absence of the knowledge of Christ? You're left thinking, where else will we go, Lord? You have the words of eternal life. Yeah, without a clear resurrection hope, humanity has no chance.
00:24:45
Speaker
It has no chance of changing the way it's always been. That is striking.
Centrality of Resurrection in Christianity
00:24:50
Speaker
This story of God's good creation and his plan to restore his creation through resurrection is central to Christianity. So the Apostles' Creed was based on earlier Christian creeds and is only 12 lines long, but see how much of this is focused on this story.
00:25:06
Speaker
I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth. I believe in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord. He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary. He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried. He descended to the dead. On the third day He rose again. He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again to judge the living and the dead.
00:25:32
Speaker
I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Holy Catholic Church, the Communion of Saints, the forgiveness of sins, and the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Amen. In 12 lines, you have God the Creator of heaven and earth, Jesus' incarnation, his death, and his resurrection on the third day.
00:25:52
Speaker
You have hope of the future, resurrection of the body and the life everlasting. The bodily resurrection, both in Jesus and in the future, is not negotiable for Christianity. Because God, the creator of heaven and earth, has a good plan for creation.
00:26:06
Speaker
This biblical story of God's redemption was very clear to the early church. Middleton notes that one of the distinctive doctrines of the Christian faith is the resurrection of the body, both the raising of Jesus three days after his resurrection and the expected resurrection of believers at the end of the age. Indeed, it was the centrality of the resurrection that served to to distinguish Orthodox Christian faith from Gnostic interpretations in the first centuries of the early church.
00:26:33
Speaker
Pauli Karp in his letter to the Philippians wrote, For everyone who does not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is an antichrist, and whosoever does not confess the testimony of the cross is of the devil, and whoever perverts the oracles of the Lord for his own lusts, and says that there is neither resurrection nor judgment, this man is the firstborn of Satan.
Heaven, Resurrection, and Future Discussions
00:26:55
Speaker
So resurrection is central and non-negotiable to Christianity. But when I hear Christians express hope today, what I often hear is hope that upon their death, they will immediately enter into an eternal, disembodied state of bliss, that they will go to heaven when they die. This belief abandons key elements of the biblical story. It abandons God's good creation, His image-bearing purposes for humanity, the defeat of death, resurrection, and the restoration of heaven and earth.
00:27:24
Speaker
Go search your Bible for what it says about going to heaven. You'll find that Jesus went to heaven, and that we're looking for His return. You'll find that our citizenship is in heaven, because that's where our King Jesus is until He returns. You'll find that Jesus is preparing a place for us in heaven. Revelation describes the New Jerusalem coming from heaven to earth.
00:27:46
Speaker
you'll see that God is in heaven and we want to be with Him. Again, Revelation describes God's coming to dwell on earth with His people. What you won't find in the Hebrew Bible or the New Testament or the early Christian creeds is any expression that our eternal hope is going to heaven the way most imagine it today. Of course you won't. It wouldn't make any sense within the biblical story that tells of God's desire to rescue what He created good.
00:28:13
Speaker
what you just described, the longing, the hope to go to heaven after I get out of this body, after I die. It's completely foreign to everything we've talked about in the last two episodes here, to all these scriptural passages.
00:28:29
Speaker
Of course, that belief is birthed out of some passages, a hope that God cares for those who have fallen asleep and tell the resurrection state, today you'll be with me in paradise, some other stuff like that. So I'm not saying it's an ill motivated belief, but to put our focus and our attention and our hope upon what happens to us the moment after we die is to just not be faithful to how the Jewish scriptures and Christian scriptures talk about the hope for the people in Messiah Jesus. It doesn't get the story right, and I don't think it offers the right motivations to get our present right. Yeah, I agree. Next episode we're going to talk about where this idea comes from, how it became so prevalent, and some of the ways that this kind of otherworldly mindset can twist the way we read the Bible. Yeah, let's get into it more then.