Worth Living For

This past weekend Christians celebrated the Crucifixion and Resurrection of Jesus Christ. Even so, according to a Rasmussen poll, those who believe in the real Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead dropped 13% from last year.

Doubt about the Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, of course, is not new. The Disciples themselves doubted, and it took Thomas 8 long, dark days to finally be convinced of the reality by sticking his fingers in the piercings of Christ's Resurrected body.

But still, this modern trend of disbelief should cause Christians some concern and we should begin to ask what is causing this trend.

Might I suggest that our societies' lack of belief is not so much a result of the need for the proof of the event (which does require faith in the eye-witness testimony of the Disciples), but rather a result of the fact that the Church has not done a good job of communicating the meaning and significance of the Resurrection? Perhaps the fact that most church-goers do not find meaning in the Resurrection leads many to succumb to the temptation to disbelieve the miraculous event. But to give up the event, gives up the meaning and power.

So what is the meaning of the Resurrection? In short, the Resurrection means that in the Resurrected Jesus Christ, we find Someone worth living for.

The Resurrection means that Jesus is a glorious, majestic, and worthy king

This world is filled with misconceptions about who Jesus is. Most people today believe that Jesus was no more than a man. Perhaps a good man. Perhaps a good teacher. A man for the history books who offers cute moral lessons on love, peace and unity.

Others, of the more spiritual type—even New Age—suggest that Jesus tapped into some “Divine consciousness” better than the rest of us, but that He is in essence no different than we are or can be.

Those who hold these conceptions about Jesus very often suggest that Jesus Himself is not the problem, but rather it is His Disciples who are the problem, making Him into some mythical figure. But is that true?

11 of the 12 Disciples-turned-Apostles were persecuted, beaten and killed because they believed so firmly in the Resurrection of Jesus Christ from death. Add Paul to that equation, a man who hated Jesus, who was happy that Jesus was dead, but who nevertheless met the Resurrected Jesus. Add Paul to this list of followers who died for Jesus, and we have at least 12 men who died because they would not back down, they would not backtrack, they would not lose their conviction or renounce their unshakable belief that they were eye witnesses to the fact that Jesus Christ was killed on a Cross, was buried in a tomb to rot, but instead did that which was unthinkable to them: He conquered the grave, conquered death, and walked and talked and ate and drank showing Himself to hundreds of His disciples that they might believe in Him and live for Him.

So what does the Resurrection of Jesus Christ mean? Romans 1:4 says that His Resurrection from the dead declared Jesus to be the Son of God. It says literally that the Resurrection “marks out,” or “defines,” or “explains” Jesus as the Son of God. The Resurrection does not make Him the Son of God, it reveals Him to be the Son of God. What does that mean?

This means that the Resurrection authenticates who Jesus claims to be. Jesus said in John 8:58, “Before Abraham was [2000 years before Jesus walked the earth], I AM.” Jesus claimed, not to be a great teacher, a good leader, or a good man. When Jesus said, “Before Abraham was, I AM,” He was claiming that when we read in Genesis that “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth,” He was claiming that HE was the creator. He was claiming that He always was, always is, and always will be, that God, the One in whom all creation holds together. The Resurrection authenticates this claim that Jesus, the Son of God, is “the Resurrection and the Life,” the eternally Living One, the One through Whom all things that live, do live.

Jesus claims that He is not merely a man; even if a man to be admired as an inspiring example for us; He claimed to be the very LORD, Jehovah who delivered the Hebrews miraculously from the hand of the Egyptians; the One who parted the Red Sea in two, and led them to the Promised Land, and He claims that He can also deliver us from our slavery to sin through His death, and into the land of His promise through His Resurrected Life.

This means that “God so loved the world that He sent His only-begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him will not perish but have everlasting life.”

No, not a man to be admired, but the Lord our God to be worshiped, the One to whom every knee will bow, and every tongue confess.

The Resurrection means that Jesus is a glorious, majestic, and worthy king, the Creator, Sustainer and Redeemer.

And so for us, the Resurrection means that Jesus is worth living for.

The Resurrection means that Jesus Christ is ALIVE today

In the Gospel of Luke, we read about the women who came to tend to Jesus’’ tomb, only to find that the tomb was empty. Distraught, they began to ask where they had taken His body, not comprehending what had taken place. Two angels in dazzling clothing called out to them, “Why do you seek the living One among the dead?  He is not here, but He has risen” (Luke 24:5-6).

Every Easter, a cartoon is passed around Facebook which taunts the Christian view of the Resurrection. It has a 1950s family gathered around the table with the father telling the children about the Resurrection story. The mother chides her husband, saying “Bill stop scaring the children with those [bad word] Zombie stories!”

The atheist rolls with laughter at this cartoon. But what is a zombie? Dictionary.com defines zombie as “The body of a dead person given the semblance of life, but mute and will-less...”

But this is not what the Gospels teach. Jesus is not mute; is not will-less. And the Resurrection of Jesus teaches us that Jesus does not merely have the semblance of life, but that He IS the Resurrection and the life; that He has always been Life and Always will be Life, and He is the One through Whom we can have life. No. This is not a zombie story. This is a story to save zombies like you and me—those of us who have the semblance of life, but not the fullness of life without Him.

The Resurrection of Jesus means that Jesus Christ is alive; He lives, He is not found in the land of the dead.

Jesus is not stuck in the annals of history like the great leaders Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, the Pharaohs of Egypt, George Washington, Abe Lincoln, or even religious leaders like Confucius, Krishna, the Buddha, Mohammed, Moses or Abraham.

Could you imagine a person today in 2013 giving up his life for a dead man, like George Washington or Alexander the Great? He would be a fool.

But because Jesus Christ has been raised from the dead and is ALIVE, and brings life to those who believe in Him, you would be a fool not to live and die for Him.

The Resurrection means that Jesus is worth living for.

The Resurrection means that we who believe will LIVE

Today we tend to focus on the death of Jesus, the Crucifixion, the Cross. The death of Jesus is really easy for this world to believe in. After all, everyone dies, right?

But it was not the death of Jesus that the Apostles staked their life on and died for, but rather the Resurrection. This is because without the Resurrection, Jesus’ death was just another death—inspirational, to be sure, but not transformational. Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 15 that “if Christ has not been raised [from the dead]”...if the Resurrection is a myth as some are saying today, “your faith is worthless; you are still in your sins.”

Peter writes in 1 Peter 1, that we are “born again to a living hope” not through the Crucifixion of Jesus, but we are “born again to a living hope through the Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.”

Our new life comes, not in His death, but in His Resurrected life. In His death, we can die to ourselves and our sins, but in His life we can walk in newness of life, as Romans 6 says.

And not only do we gain spiritual life through the Resurrection, we gain our own physical life after we die when our bodies are resurrected. Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 15 that Jesus is the First Fruits of the dead, which simply means that there are more fruits to come—that believers will be brought back to newness of life. That we will be resurrected in new, glorious bodies that are pain free, disease free, and death free.

The Resurrection of Jesus Christ means that we who believe are Alive. It means that we LIVE in newness of life.

And this means that Jesus is worth living for.

The Resurrection means that we can live through pain, sorrow, trials, temptations and any difficulty

As I have mentioned before, the Apostles suffered much for the cause of Jesus Christ. And they constantly encourage us, that, as Peter says, though for a “little while,” we encounter “various trials” (1 Peter 1:6), that, as Paul says, our afflictions are “momentary” and “light” (2 Corinthians 4:17), in contrast to the eternal joy and weight of glory that awaits us.

The Resurrection of Jesus is simply His first stroke against evil in this world. The Resurrection strikes at the heart of humankind’s greatest problem—death. The Resurrection is the first stroke against the chief penalty of our sin, for in the day that Adam eats of the forbidden tree, he will surely die. But the stroke against death is not Jesus’ final stroke.

The Resurrection of Jesus means that all of those things which cause us pain, difficulty, sorrow and tears will be done away with. It teaches us that all that we have made “not good,” and even bad in our sin, He is working to recreate to once again make very good. That the end of the story will mirror the beginning of the story, “In the end,” we will read “God recreated the heavens and the earth, and we all saw that it once again was very GOOD.”

The Resurrection means that there is a new sheriff in town, a new kingdom is coming, a new order is being served, and this life with its miseries, pains difficulties and deaths is passing away. It is being put to death.

The Resurrection means that Jesus is worth living for.

This is the truth which so captured the hearts of the Disciples who clung to it through persecution and death, and must capture our hearts as well. This is the truth which captured the heart of the Apostle Paul whose words must become our words.

The Resurrection of Jesus Christ means that we must, with Paul, “count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus [our] Lord, for whom we must suffer the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish so that we may gain Christ, [...] that we may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death; in order that we may attain to the resurrection from the dead” (Philippians 3:7-10).

The Resurrection of Jesus Christ means that He is worth living for. That He is worth giving up our lives for. That He is worth our living sacrifice.

The Resurrection means that living for Him is worth dying for, and dying for Him is worth living for.