Christ is Lord: Easter 2017

Read through the four Gospels in the New Testament, and the main take away you get from each is this: Jesus died, He rose again, and He is Lord. This is what Matthew, Mark, Luke and John wanted to get across to their readers. The reality of these things make or break authentic Christianity. The denial of these things separates the sheep and the goats, believer and unbeliever, Christian and pagan. You can get into a comparative religion conversation and talk volumes about the way Jesus sided with the poor and taught unparalleled wisdom, but get ready for some controversy if you dare speak of Christ death, resurrection and Lordship. Islam, for example, rejects the very idea that Jesus died upon the cross, and to affirm Jesus is Lord in the sense of being God incarnate is an unthinkable sin. Atheists likewise would never think the historical Jesus was God incarnate who resurrected from the dead. The problem is this: all the evidence weighs in favor of the testimonial of the New Testament Gospel writers. 

The tomb was empty. Friday evening the lifeless body of Jesus was put into the

sepulcher, but on the third day, women went to anoint the body and found the empty tomb. A messenger then appeared informing them that the Lord had risen from the dead and commissioned them to spread the news.

Who would believe them? A woman’s testimony was worthless in the ancient courts. Could they even make sense of what just happened? They would have been familiar with Ezekiel’s valley of dry bones vison (Ezek. 37:1-14) and the resurrection of the just and unjust spoken of by Daniel (Dan. 12:1-2). Job even knew his Redeemer lived and while his own flesh would undergo decay, he would yet one day see him with his own eyes (Job 19:25-27). The women would have understood that general resurrection would be something to happen in the distant future at the end of the age (John 11:24; cf. 5:28-29); yet, something about that future arrived ahead of schedule, the Son of God had resurrected from the dead.

The women would have still remembered Jesus teaching them about the Son of Man being in the grave three days and three nights, and that He would rise again on the third day after being put to death (Matt. 12:40; 16:21; 17:23; Mark 8:31; 9:31; 10:34; Luke 9:22; 18:33; 24:7, 21, and 46; John 2:19).

Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Joses witnessed the body being placed in the tomb on Friday, and when they went to the tomb on Sunday, the body was gone. Did they go to the wrong tomb? Was the body taken somewhere else in their absent? Producing a corpse would have certainly put to rest any validity to what the women were reporting about the empty tomb.

The disciples abandoned Jesus at the arrest in Gethsemane, Peter denied the Lord three times, and it is unlikely that they would have mustered up enough manhood to steal the body from the guarded tomb.

What sealed the deal was that the women, Peter, the rest of the twelve, and over five-hundred other folks witnessed the resurrected Lord (1 Cor. 15:3-4). He was seen. He was touched. He ate with them. He walked with them. He talked with them. He rose from the dead. They witnessed the unthinkable, unimaginable, bodily resurrection of Christ. Their world was rocked.

Lives of the witnesses to the resurrected Son of God were transformed. The first followers of Jesus were Jewish, they were convinced their Rabbi was the Messiah (Christ) spoken about by the Old Testament prophets, but the resurrection marked the dawning of a new epoch, old things had passed away and new things had come, and they began to celebrate the risen Lord on Sunday—the first day of the week. They even associated the death upon cross as the last atoning sacrifice necessary for restoring a right relationship between God and humanity. No longer was it necessary for them to make sacrifices of animals, grain, and libations through priests in the temple. Jesus paid it all (Heb. 10:11-14). Key features that gave the first followers of Jesus their Jewish national identity were eventually set aside and the resurrection from the dead would have been the only that that could account for such a radical abandonment from the social norm. Paul counted the everything about his Jewish national identity as a worthwhile loss for the sake of following Christ and the hope of resurrection (Phil. 3:2-11).

The empty tomb, the eye witnesses to Christ returned to life, and transformed lives of the disciples are proof beyond any reasonable doubt that the resurrection occurred.

Christ was the first fruits but sooner or later the rest of the resurrections will follow (1 Cor. 15:20-23). One day Christ will appear a second time, the dead shall be raised from the graves. The saints shall be resurrected to eternal life in a new heaven and new hearth and the sinners to eternal condemnation in the lake of fire (John 5:28-29; 2 Cor. 5:9-10; Heb. 9:27-28; Rev. 20:11-12; cf. Dan. 12:2). Paradise lost with Adam will one day be restored with Christ.

Christ has risen from the dead and He is Lord. Problems due to sin, sickness, suffering and Satan characterize the present age, but there is hope in Christ, and even if our present body should perish on account of life in this sinful and fallen world, those who have faith in Christ will participate in the resurrection to eternal life. Christ followers will be raised immortal, imperishable, and incorruptible. Our hope is in Christ and nothing less.

—WGN