The message of the New Testament is not that Jesus simply survived death, or that he live on in people's memory, or even that he died and merely "came back to life". No, the New Testament proclamation is "God raised him from the dead" (Acts 2:24). "You killed the author of life, but God raised him from the dead" (3:15). "They... laid him in a tomb. But God raised him from the dead" (13:29:30). Jesus did not "die and come back". Jesus died and went on to a wholly new level of being - resurrection life in his glorious resurrection body.
So although I used to sing it very heartily and meaningfully in my youth and I still love its up-beat tune and sentiments, there is something of a deafening anticlimax (biblically) at the end of the familiar old song:
He lives, he lives, Christ Jesus lives today
He walks with me and talks with me along life's narrow way
He live, he lives, salvation to impart
You ask me how I know he lives
He lives within my heart
Wonderful and true - but not how the apostles answered the question in the book of Acts. They were decidedly not proclaiming "Jesus lives in our hearts". The religious and political authorities would not have minded that one bit, for it would have been as unthreatening as it was pitifully sentimental, just so long as Jesus was actually still in the tomb. The apostles were proclaiming that this same Jesus of Nazareth, whom the authorities had killed, had been bodily raised up by God and the tomb was empty. This was an objective witnessed fact, not subjective religious devotion to their late leader's memory.
- Dr. Christopher Wright,
The God I Don't Understand, p. 208, 209
No comments:
Post a Comment