The Central Importance of The Resurrection

When I was thirteen, I attended a church retreat in the middle of a frigid January. It was five degrees below zero Fahrenheit (-20° C). A low bridge crossed a four-foot-deep stream. A few friends and I wrestled a bit as we crossed the bridge, and I was pushed off into the stream.

I plunged into a stabbing pool of cold. I gasped in shock. Bitter iciness astonished me. The freezing water began to suck all the heat from my body. (I’m told, though, that cold didn’t suck heat; instead, my little body tried to heat hundreds of gallons of ice water). The water was below freezing, unfrozen only because of its rapid movement.

It felt unbelievably, shockingly, paralyzingly cold. So did I.

After sin, the spiritual condition of humanity is that same artic-chill, our lives ebbing away in an icy river of death. Sin is not just bad behavior (“I lied,” “You cheated); sin is the power of death, ceaselessly, relentlessly, inexorably draining every unit of real life from each human soul.

I once heard a pastor conclude an Easter sermon with, “So Christ rose in our hearts,” as though the resurrection is an after-thought from God, a kind of rosy outlook on life, just like saying,  “It’s always darkest before dawn.” His idea of the resurrection was that it feels good, but not really all that significant.

But if the gospel is only about Christ dying for our sins, why didn’t the Father just bring Jesus to heaven like a spiritual beam-me-up Scotty? What’s so important about the resurrection?

Depravity

It’s not just our bodies that are dying. The term depravity means sin’s ruthless corruption of human nature affects every part of us, such that each part of us is dying. Nothing of God’s original, good design is unhurt:

• Of course, our bodies are dying; we used to see 20/20 and now we need bifocals.
• Yes, we love others, but even our best love is a bit selfish (if we are honest).
• Our few moments of genius are mere ghouls taunting us with their transience.

We have been plunged into the icy river of death, and each element of our nature is being drained of life. Great artists admit that even their greatest masterpieces are mere first-drafts of a greatness that might have been.

Everything in our lives—from life to love to art—is disfigured, spoiled, and dying.

Why Wasn’t the Crucifixion Enough?

If Jesus had only died for us, it means he was plunged into our same icy river of death until he succumbed. All for use. But we would be left freezing in the glacial grip of that life-sucking stream. If Jesus had simply died for us—unbelievably loving as it seems—we would still be slowly freezing.

After I fell in the stream, my friends dragged me out, threw me in a steaming shower, and let it bathe me with its warmth. Left to myself, my tiny, thirteen-year-old body couldn’t have heated those hundreds of gallons of icy river.

The crucifixion means Christ was plunged into the icy-cold river of death. The resurrection means He absorbed into Himself all the freezing evil of that icy river; and His goodness heated it hotter than a sauna. He soaked into His body the billions of gallons of sin’s wintry selfishness; and then His purity and righteousness boiled the oceans of cold indifferent sin inflicted on creation by all of humanity through the centuries.

Death didn’t overcome Him. Jesus drenched up death and defeated it. Jesus didn’t come simply to forgive sin. He came to wage unlimited warfare and then subjugate both sin and death.

So what does that mean?

If the resurrection is true (and it is), it means that Jesus not only reached the limit of human endurance, He pushed beyond. Like a cosmic nuclear reaction, He used his last ounce of good to reheat those frigid waters. What once was the river of death is born anew as the river of life.

The resurrection means the clock is running backwards, warmth is reflooding the waters, the spoiled is becoming unspoiled, and that death that worked against us is dead.

Someday the final old part of us—our body—will be buried and our true bodies will be raised. Someday you will write that poem you always dreamed of or that symphony that lies just beyond your grasp. You will be who you always knew you could be. The thief of death and sin has been robbed of its power.

Is the resurrection a big deal? More than we can imagine. It gives me goosebumps.

Sam