Resurrection of the just

About a year ago we moved from the city to the middle of nowhere. We like it better here, but it was a pretty drastic move. Obviously we're not remembering the Lord with the same small group in the city. It's not that we were trying to get away from them or anything, just that we're now too far away to make regular visits. And then Coronavirus hit and changed a whole lot of things quickly.

Around the same time we moved, I'd begun to see that I'd allowed a lot of my views on Scripture to lead me into some problems. I wrote about that in "Best Wine" and "Losing Sight". So I've been doing a lot of thinking and reading, re-examining my ideas, questioning my beliefs, trying to throw away what isn't Scripture, embracing what Scripture actually says.

I've been meditating on 1 Corinthians 15:1–8, which naturally led me to contemplate the Resurrection of Christ, and resurrection more generally. The core belief of Christians is that Christ has risen from the dead. All through Acts, this is the central message of the Apostles. A great deal (if not all) of the teaching of the Epistles stems from this one fact. The Resurrection proves who Christ is, what He has done, and what He will do. It is proof that He is the Son of God (Romans 1:4), that He has been appointed Judge of all men and women (Acts 17:31), and that He will raise us too (1 Corinthians 15:20).

Scripture doesn't speak about "resurrection life", but it does talk about the power of His resurrection (Philippians 3:10) as something we can personally know. Sadly, we seem to try and turn that into some statement about the power of God in the sense of what God can do. But that's not really what the Epistles are teaching. It's not merely that the Resurrection is a demonstration of what God can do – it is that, but it's much more – it's that we are participators in Christ's Resurrection because God sees us "in Christ." We have died with Him, we have been buried with Him, we are raised with Him, we shall be seen with Him (Colossians 3:1–4).

The Lord spoke about two distinct resurrections: the resurrection to life, and the resurrection to judgment (John 5:29).  Revelation 20 talks about the "first resurrection" (Revelation 20:1–5) and the "second death" (Revelation 20:12–15). Those line up very clearly with what the Lord said of two resurrections.

Interestingly, Revelation 20:5 places the two resurrections 1,000 years apart, which might give us some hints about eschatology in Scripture. In one passage they're mentioned closely together (John 5:29), in another we're given more concrete information about their spacing in time. This is worth noting as we read through the Scriptures.

1 Corinthians 15:51–57 and 1 Thessalonians 4:13–18 both describe a resurrection when the Lord comes. I don't think this is the same event described in Revelation 20:5, but clearly they're related.  The statement in Revelation 20, "this is the first resurrection," appears to me to be clarifying that the resurrection of the martyrs is part of the first resurrection. I don't think it's saying that the first resurrection is solely comprised of those martyrs, but that those martyrs are also included in the first resurrection that began earlier. 1 Corinthians 15:20 leads me to believe that the first resurrection began with the Lord's Resurrection, continues on through the event in 1 Corinthians 15:51–57 and 1 Thessalonians 4:13–18, and comes to a close when the martyrs are raised in Revelation 20:1–5. These three are each part of one single resurrection. Those who are part of that resurrection are not to be hurt of the second death.

Scripture teaches that we are raised with Christ already (Colossians 3:1). But we are waiting for the resurrection of the body, described in Romans 8:23 and Philippians 3:20–21. But the epistles put us on the ground of that resurrection as far as our conduct, behavior, and testimony in this world are concerned. We are to live in un-resurrected bodies as though we had already been raised. Because in Christ, our resurrection is an accomplished fact.

But we notice that our destiny is not to be disembodied spirits. We aren't looking forward to going to heaven to live there as spirits forever (2 Corinthians 5:1–4). We are looking forward to our bodies being raised, being changed to be like His. My eternal destiny is to see the Lord with these eyes (Job 19:25–27), to see Him standing on the earth. It's easy to lose sight of this.

This idea anchors our thoughts to reality. We're not to be content with this world as it is. We're not to be content with ourselves as we are. We expect the Son of God to come from Heaven to claim us (1 Thessalonians 4:13–18), to redeem our bodies (Romans 8:23), to change us (1 Corinthians 15:51–57),  and to make us like Him (Philippians 3:20–21). And we expect the Son of God to come from Heaven to rule personally, bodily on the earth (Revelation 20:4). And we expect Him to judge all the living and the dead in the last day (Acts 17:31; Revelation 20:11–15).

We expect these things in the real, physical world. We're not talking about some "other", some sort of spiritual reality. We expect the feet of the Son of God to touch the ground in some actual, physical location on the Mount of Olives (Zechariah 14:4).

To be clear, I believe these things will happen in three distinct events, separated in time by the others. I don't believe the Son of God will come to claim us and to rule and to judge all at the same time. There are too many distinctions in Scripture between those events for me to think they all happen at once. Certainly the second and third are separated by 1,000 years in Revelation 20, but I'm convinced the first is distinct from the second as well.

But at the end of the day, Resurrection anchors our hopes to this physical reality. That is a profound thought.

A couple years ago, I was in a Bible reading going through Leviticus. Someone brought up Mark 7:14–23 with respect to the dietary laws. That sparked some discussion...

When we read through the Levitical law with the Lord's words in mind – it's what comes out of us that defiles us, not what goes in – we begin to see that even when we're so careful about what we take in, what comes out still defiles us (Deuteronomy 23:12–14).

Think about that! Take every precaution we can to only allow what's pure in, and what comes out will still defile. That's worth thinking about.

Losing Sight

I've been thinking a lot about Francis Schaeffer's admonitions that Christ should be Lord over all the areas of my life. I keep going back to Colossians 3:17, everything we do needs to be done in the name of the Lord Jesus. There's nothing really exempt from that: the most trivial thing I do is included, as is the most complex thing. "Everything" includes it all.

It seems to me like this has been missing in my life: I've tended to separate the "mundane" from the "spiritual". The "spiritual" is examined in the light of Scripture, but the "mundane" is just sort of allowed to go its own way. And I know I'm not alone.

Francis Schaeffer warns that when we allow that to happen, the "mundane" will eventually overtake, overshadow, choke out, and consume the "spiritual" parts of our lives.

So it's of tremendous interest to me that Colossians 3 starts with the admonition to "seek the things which are above" (Colossians 3:1), and then moves on to say that everything we do – all things, whether word or deed – need to be done in the name of the Lord Jesus. That seems almost like a contradiction: if I'm to seek the things that are above, then aren't the things "down here" really of no importance? Well... the Scripture doesn't actually say that. I agree that so many Christians I have met seem to think and act that way, but it's not what Scripture actually says.

And so I've spent the last six months or so grappling with this question: if Christ is to be Lord over all of my life, if I am to do all things in the name of the Lord Jesus – then what does it mean to seek those things above?

I'll be the first to say that worldliness is rampant in the Church. It's all too easy to find examples of Christians living for this life, with no thought for the next. And I've done an awful lot of that myself. I'm not blind to that. But at the same time, it seems that many, many Christians I have known have fallen into what we might call the opposite error.

It seems to me that a lot of "brethren" have a puritanical streak buried not too deep below the surface. And that seems to produce an almost Gnostic tendency to see "this world" things as unimportant, or perhaps even evil. So we have this strangely detached view of the world where we're called to live. And, of course, it's impossible to do "all things" in the name of the Lord Jesus when we think (deep down) that many of those "all things" don't matter.

And, in fact, I have seen over and over again that this sort of detached pseudo-Gnosticism leads right back into worldliness. Because we end up in this place where we think Scripture has nothing to say to our everyday lives. And I've fallen into that: I've been so wrapped up in trying to be heavenly minded that I've just sort of let "this life" go on autopilot. And eventually, it's the "mundane" that pushes out the "spiritual".

Oddly, it was contemplating 1 Corinthians 15 that led me to question myself here. Resurrection must mean that God is concerned with my physical body. And when we realize that, we begin to see that the physical world must be important to Him.

So I've wrestled a lot with this, and I've come to very few conclusions. But I have come to two, and I want to share them.

First, I notice that Colossians 3:17 tells us the first step to doing all things in the name of the Lord Jesus – giving thanks to the Father by Him. And so I've been thinking a lot about giving thanks. And I'm specifically talking about "this world" here. There is a sort of self-righteousness we can fall into: when we start talking about how God has blessed us with all spiritual blessings in Christ, we can take that and turn it into looking down on the other blessings God has given.

I don't mean that we shouldn't bless God and thank Him for all the spiritual blessings we have in Christ. I mean the attitude that dismisses physical blessings in this life is wrong. There's no other word for it: it's sin. Colossians 3:17 tells us first that everything needs to be under the Lordship of Christ, then that we need to thank the Father.

I am tremendously blessed in this life. God has been open-handed with me, and for many years I was mired in a self-righteousness that led to me to dismiss those blessings as somehow "lesser", so that I could focus on the "greater" spiritual blessings in Christ Jesus. Let me say again, that is sin. Gratitude for spiritual blessings in Christ Jesus cannot lead me to ingratitude for blessings from the Father in this life. That's merely using Scripture to mask our fleshly ungratefulness.

Second, I've come to understand that it's possible to enjoy blessings along the way, and thank God for them, without losing sight of the goal.

Don't get me wrong: it's very common for the flesh to turn a blessing into an idol. But it's not to turn us to idolatry that God blesses us. It's possible to thank God for the blessings along the way without losing sight of the end that He has promised.

So when He takes us to a place where there are twelve wells and seventy palm trees, that's not so we can settle down and forget the promised land. But... to insist on staying in the desert, to think that sitting under the palm trees or drinking from the wells is a sign of decline: that's not being spiritual, it's being ungrateful. It's sin.

After what seems like a very long time, I'm starting to see that it's possible to seek the things that are above and do all things in the name of the Lord Jesus at the same time. Colossians 3:1 isn't an excuse for neglecting Colossians 3:17, or vice-versa.

Shepherding

I heard someone say once, when we hear about "shepherds" in Scripture, our minds should go back to Genesis 31:38–42. That's a tough job! It's about sweating in the summer and freezing in the winter. It's about sleepless nights and bearing the lost of what is stolen. That's what it means to be a shepherd.

It seems to me there's another part of shepherding, in Genesis 33:13. Jacob tells Esau, if you overdrive a flock, it will die. That's the voice of experience. That's someone who had had to bear the loss of dead sheep.

I don't think I've truly appreciated how incongruous it is that God took Jacob and made him a shepherd. He's not a patient man, he's not a particularly honest man, he's not a particularly selfless man. But here he is after twenty years, and he insists on keeping a slow pace, lest he overdrive his flocks.

We've almost certainly seen shepherds trying to overdrive a flock. I take that to mean, not necessarily leading a flock astray, but trying to lead them at a pace they just can't keep up. There's an old saying about good intentions, and I think there are good intentions under a great deal of the wreckage we see among Christians.

I'm not a shepherd by gift, nor by calling, nor by office. But I have known some pretty amazing shepherds over the last forty years. I've seen it done right, and I've seen it done wrong. And there is no lack of shepherds who haven't really learned the lesson that Jacob learned. There are many who think of themselves as shepherds, but don't know what it is to bear loss themselves. They haven't frozen in the winter and sweated in the summer. They haven't learned that you can't overdrive sheep.

Eternal Life

I was telling a friend about visiting a Sunday School class in a pretty typical evangelical church a few months ago. The class was called "Thinking Rightly about God", and at one point, the teacher asked, "When does eternal life begin?"

I answered naïvely, "If it has a beginning, it's not eternal."

The look on his face told me all I needed to know about my lack of wisdom in answering that question.

I wasn't trying to be clever, I was just answering honestly. "Eternal" means without beginning or ending. Scripture doesn't confuse eternal life with everlasting life – they're not the same thing. Eternal life isn't just life that doesn't end.

(It's worth reading William Kelly's comments in The New Testament Doctrine of the Holy Spirit, Chapter 1: "The New Birth and Eternal Life". There's a lot of meat in that chapter, and it's time well spent to read it.)

Colossians 3:4 starts out, "When Christ, who is our life, is revealed..." That's not a poetic statement. It's not hyperbole. It's telling us the nature of eternal life: Christ is eternal life. 1 John 5:11 makes the statement that we have eternal life, "and this life is in His Son" (NASB). Then we read that Jesus Christ is "the true God and eternal life" (1 John 5:20).

So eternal life isn't the sort of thing where I have one and you have another. It's not like my eternal life began when I believed and yours began when you believed. It's true that when we believed, we became partakers in eternal life. It's true that when we believed, we became possessors of eternal life. But that's not the start of eternal life, it's just the start of our claim to it. That's the start of our participating in it.

In a similar way, I don't say the highway begins where I start driving on it. My trip on it starts at that definite point, but it stretches for miles and miles and miles up to that point.

The statement in John 5:11 is remarkable: we have eternal life, and it's in the Son of God. We're not the guardians of eternal life, it's kept safe in God's Son. If eternal life were something we had to protect, if it was something we had to guard, then we certainly would lose it. Only one Man has ever been able to live up to His responsibilities, we'd be able to guard our eternal life to exactly the same degree Adam was able to guard Eden. But the fact is that God gives us eternal life in His Son, where we can't do anything to jeopardize it. He is guarding it, and no failure of mine can ruin it.

But there is a responsibility: "lay hold on eternal life" (1 Timothy 6:12). Eternal life isn't only a hope for the future – it's supposed to be something we experience here and now. It's great that I have title to eternal life. It's wonderful that God has hidden it in the Son, so there's nothing I can do to endanger it. But Scripture calls me to go past merely knowing it's mine to experiencing it. And I have to say this burns my conscience. Do I know what it's like to have eternal life?

Update

Just a quick note: I found a few days ago that a whole lot of comments were awaiting moderation, some going back almost a year. I'm very sorry: I didn't realize I had fallen down on the job.

I published all the comments that weren't obviously spam. Thanks, everyone, for your patience!

Best wine

John 2:1–11 tells the story of the first of the signs in John's gospel: turning water into wine. I've been thinking a lot about this story over the last several months, because it seems to me like it shines light very clearly on an error I fall into. This is a story we hear in connection with marriage quite frequently: the Lord attending a wedding, which we cite as evidence that marriage is endorsed by Christ Himself. I think that's a completely valid conclusion to draw from the story.

We remember the story: the Lord attends a wedding, and they don't have enough wine. A friend of mine said in a Bible reading, "'no wine' is a serious problem – not as serious as 'no water' – but serious nonetheless." I think that's a good summary. I'm afraid (having grown up among Canadian evangelicals) "no wine" doesn't strike me as very serious... but the Lord took it seriously, and so does John.

So the Lord has them pour water into six earthen vessels, and when they draw out the water, they find it's turned to wine. And then they take this new wine to the master of the feast, who comments that they planned the feast wrong: they ought to have served the good wine at the start of the feast, then they should have served the lesser wine after the guests have drunk enough (John 2:10). (Presumably the guests' drinking was supposed to have dulled their palates.) But at this wedding, they served the best wine last.

My buddy went on in that same Bible reading to say that we're going to taste that vintage, but we need to wait until the Kingdom. I'm not much of a wine drinker, but I'm looking forward to tasting that one.

I've been mulling over the fact that the Lord made the best wine. The feast master's appraisal doesn't actually add anything to the miracle: Christ shows who He is by turning water into wine. But the Scripture includes it anyway, which indicates there's a lesson to be learned in it. There is a point beyond the "mere" miracle of turning water into wine: it shows that the Son of God paid attention to something as frivolous as the quality of the wine at a wedding. He didn't take an austere position and tell them that too much wine is bad for them, He didn't tell them they should be grateful for any wine He gave them: He made the best wine.

I confess that my views on Christianity – on sanctification and salvation and manifesting the life of Jesus in our mortal bodies – can lead to a completely passive Christian life. It's not hard from there to fall into a sort of a Gnosticism, where the world around us is somehow irrelevant. And I'm sorry to say that I've known many believers who have fallen into this exact error: they end up almost enslaved to their theology, afraid to act lest they do so "in the flesh" and contrary to the work of the Holy Spirit. It's all too easy to take what Scripture says about "death working in us" to an idea where we strive to be nothing so that Christ can be everything. But as one friend said, "striving to be nothing isn't Christianity, it's Buddhism."

Francis Schaeffer warns in Escape from Reason that if we divorce "Grace" from "Nature", we end up with an autonomous "Nature" that will eventually destroy "Grace" (pp. 28–29). Of course his concern was mainly about humanist intellectuals starting with Thomas Aquinas, but I have fallen into the exact error he cautions against, and I'm not alone.

The problem is as simple as tunnel vision. The truth of our unity with Christ in His death, burial, and resurrection is glossed over to the point of complete neglect in many Christian circles. So we end up with a glut of "ministry" that urges counterfeit spirituality, where men and women attempt to be made perfect in the power and energy of the flesh. And when someone sees the truth of their unity with Christ, and the freedom that comes from that, the natural tendency is to share that with everyone. And the more it's resisted, the more it becomes the focus.

So let's just say that our death, burial, and resurrection with Christ is the key to a godly life. There can't be fruit for God unless we have been made dead to the Law by the body of Christ (Romans 7:4).

But let's not lose sight of the whole counsel of God.

Consider 1 Corinthians 6:19–20; we're called to glorify God in our bodies. Consider 2 Corinthians 4:10–11; we're called to manifest the life of Jesus in our mortal flesh. Consider Romans 12:1–2; we're called to present our bodies as living sacrifices. We could go on, but the point is that we're not called to a hypothetical life. We're called to live the life of Jesus in physical bodies, in the physical world.

Yes, the creation is fallen. Yes, our bodies are fallen. Yes, we look for a new heaven and a new earth. But I can't find in Scripture where I'm allowed to treat this creation like it doesn't matter.

A while back, Rodger shared a quote where someone said that Scripture talks about the "new creation", but it never once mentions the "old creation". There's an "old man" and an "old covenant", but there isn't an "old creation" in Scripture, because God isn't finished with the first creation yet. God doesn't call something "old" until He's done with it.

But I have frequently fallen into the trap of calling this present world the "old creation", out of a desire to draw attention to the [Scriptural] idea of New Creation. And I'm not alone.

So let's go back to the wine at Cana... when the Lord Jesus made wine, He made the very best wine. That comment doesn't just give us a hint into the wedding customs of that day: it shows us that the Lord Jesus treated the first creation with dignity as being the work of God. It's fallen, but it's not nothing. It matters. And good wine matters: Christ didn't act like it's unimportant whether the wine is good. He made the very best wine.

And I'm having to remind myself that when I allow myself to divorce this life from heavenly truth, I end up with an autonomous view of this life that eventually overtakes and pollutes my view of the heavenly. It's not just a philosophical trick Schaeffer was playing: it was a very serious warning about a truly dire problem.