Had the Gospel been like that old-fashioned game of “telephone” in which each person whispers to the next a quick message with the final telling being nothing like the original message, Christianity would be nothing.  It would be worse than nothing—it would be a lie.  But the good news of the Resurrection is that what’s been handed down is true and it is meant to be passed forward as Gospel.

1 Corinthians 15:1 Now, brothers, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand. 2 By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain. 3 For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures.

Isn’t it interesting how the matter of first importance according to the Apostle Paul was the whole Gospel?  Not just Christ’s death for our sins (according to the Scriptures), but His burial, and His Resurrection—every bit true and in fulfillment of Scripture.  And this was so important that it needed to be passed on…exactly as it was received, in Paul’s day as well as now.  Only then can we be truly confident. 

What does it mean to be Resurrected?  In truth, it’s everything to the Gospel message being good news.

This series on 1 Corinthians 15 entitled What It Means to Be Resurrected can be read fully from the archives beginning April 2017. 

On Easter morning, we call out “He is Risen!  He is Risen Indeed!” But what does it mean to rise, to be Resurrected?  Is a Resurrection really all that different from being resuscitated, reincarnated, revived, or recovered?  You bet it is! 

It’s been a week since Easter.  Is your life any different?  Or nothing more significant than resuming what you gave up for Lent?  When Christians truly understand What It Means to Be Resurrected their post-Easter life can, and ought to be, dramatically different.

How, you ask?

Well, the Bible has some clear instruction about that topic in 1 Corinthians 15 which we will explore in detail over the coming days. 

Merriam-Webster offers this definition of resurrection

• 1
  • a capitalized:  the rising of Christ from the dead
  • b often capitalized:  the rising again to life of all the human dead before the final judgment
  • c:  the state of one risen from the dead
• 2
  • :  resurgence, revival

In the Christian understanding, Resurrection explicitly refers to one’s specific physical life again after that same person’s physical death.  It’s why Jesus’ Resurrection had to involve His body.  His body died.  His dead body was entombed.  His dead body was given new life.  He rose and it was always His identity and His body, now glorified.

For those who want to believe it’s the same as resuscitated, reincarnated, revived, or recovered, let’s distinguish Resurrection from those. 

• Resuscitated, revived, and recovered are about something or someone that wasn’t truly dead for 3 days because their life spirit was still present somehow to return to the same old body of flesh.  Therefore it implies more of a rescue from the brink, the precipice, and like Lazarus (John 11:1-44), it wasn’t the amount of time he’d been entombed, it was the depth of death to which he descended. 
• More on this later, but for now, let’s just acknowledge that when Elisha (2 Kings 4:8-36), the earthly Jesus (Mark 5:21-43), Peter (Acts 9:36-42), or Paul (Acts 20:7-12) “raised” someone from the dead, it was more like being revived or a resuscitation since all those raised would face death someday when each must face judgment (Hebrews 9:27-28).
• Jesus’ being raised from the dead was wholly different on a cosmic scale. 
• And finally, reincarnation implies more of an embodiment, a new body for the old soul, not the old dead body.  The belief in reincarnation doesn’t even need to involve a new human body, it’s just a new body for one’s soul to inhabit as it improves.

But with the Resurrection of Jesus and for us someday, we will be the same old identity and soul “born-again” in the old body somehow changed after death.  We’ll get into this deeper as our series unfolds.  But for now, let’s marvel at what the angels (“the men”) said to the women at the tomb:

Luke 24:5 In their fright the women bowed down with their faces to the ground, but the men said to them,

Why do you look for the living among the dead?

6 He is not here; he has risen! Remember how he told you, while he was still with you in Galilee: 7 ‘The Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, be crucified and on the third day be raised again.'” 8 Then they remembered his words.

This series on 1 Corinthians 15 entitled What It Means to Be Resurrected can be read fully from the archives beginning April 2017. 

On Easter morning, we call out “He is Risen!  He is Risen Indeed!” But what does it mean to rise, to be Resurrected?  The Bible has some clear instruction about that topic in 1 Corinthians 15 which we will explore in detail over the coming days.  It serves Christians well to consider What It Means to Be Resurrected and the difference that understanding can make in one’s after-Easter life.

Why do Christians care about the empty tomb?  Why was it important for Easter morning to acknowledge that He is Risen?

Jesus wasn’t vaporized out of Pilate’s interrogation or away from the crowd’s shouts of “Crucify Him!”  He didn’t disappear (poof!) off the Cross into heaven on Good Friday or get beamed up like a character from Star Trek.  If you peeked inside the tomb or if there was a hidden grave-cam recording the inside of the tomb on Saturday, His body was still in there.  Dead.  Dead.  Dead.  But by Sunday, He is Risen!  He is Risen Indeed! 

Jesus—in His human flesh—died, just as we do.  His body went into a grave just like ours will someday (provided that’s our burial choice). No matter what, Jesus’ humanity was displayed in His ordinary death (with an acknowledged exponentially elevated level of persecution and wrath-bearing none of us will ever see).  We didn’t witness God on the Cross with superhuman characteristics, immune to what He was experiencing, not feeling really any of it.  He was fully human, fully present, and in this respect, Jesus was entirely ordinary in His death.

So what’s the big deal about the empty tomb?  What happened to make it a big deal?  And why do Christians care?

Had Jesus’ body remained in the tomb and only His spirit and soul resurrected, it could be argued that it’s just wishful thinking and He said, she said.  But His body was gone too and people can talk about why He was missing, but the fact remains that He wasn’t there.  He is Risen.  He is Risen Indeed!  We can even go back to what He said before it ever happened:  Matthew 16:21 From that time on Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, chief priests and teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.

The empty tomb is proof that Jesus told us the truth.  He went before us to conquer death and as the Apostle Paul explains, to usher in a resurrection hope (1 Corinthians 15). Without the resurrection, we’d still be lost in our sins and victims of death forever.  But Jesus is also the One who paved the way for us by His resurrection as the first and best.  He’s preparing a place for us (John 14:1-3) and we will follow and be resurrected too.  And all this is why the empty tomb is still a most remarkable event in the history of the world.  In Christ our hope is found because He is Risen!  He is Risen Indeed!

It’s the final day of Lent, often called Holy Saturday, and our Lent devotional series Light: There’s Nothing Like It is drawing to a close.  The true Light upon the earth was extinguished in Jesus’ death.  There is nothing but darkness and silence almost as if people consider Saturday just a filler in Holy Week.  Jesus is off Good Friday’s Cross but not out of Saturday’s tomb.  

Is Jesus doing nothing, perhaps, but resting? 

Like a Sabbath after the work of the Cross? 

What do we make of this Holy Saturday, Holy Silence?

It isn’t until the pensive darkness descends upon us that we realize the impact Light has made upon us and our world.  We can wish for the night to end.  We can pine for the sunshine to blind us again with its brilliance. 

But we will wait in the darkness.  We will watch for the dawn.

For now, we have a reminder of death.  Of the grave.  Of human sin so bad that Jesus was compelled by the love of the Father to die.  We have only a memory of His Light, His life, His love, His mercy, and His grace.  But for this one day each year we pause in the Holy Saturday, Holy Silence to remember He was once dead–cold, dead, and buried. 

Isaiah 60:2 See, darkness covers the earth and thick darkness is over the peoples, but the LORD rises upon you and his glory appears over you.

His body was in the grave, but He was in “paradise” along with the repentant thief (Luke 23:39-43).  His body would be raised Easter morning, but let’s not be too eager to rush there headlong, forgetting the darkness of Holy Saturday and in doing so, fail to appreciate the true significance of the Light of the World and how much we need Him and the Light He brings.

Fun Fact of Light:  Bits of light and color. It takes more bits to make pixels of color than just black and white.  What are bits?  They refer to color depth, the number of color values, subpixels within a single pixel in an image. Color depth ranges from 1 bit (black-and-white) to 32 bits (which can form over 16.7 million colors).

How Stuff Works writes, “a display that operates in SuperVGA (SVGA) mode can display up to 16,777,216 (usually rounded to 16.8 million) colors because it can process a 24-bit-long description of a pixel. The number of bits used to describe a pixel is known as its bit depth.

With a 24-bit bit depth, eight bits are dedicated to each of the three additive primary colors — red, green and blue. This bit depth is also called true color because it can produce the 10,000,000 colors discernible to the human eye … To create a single colored pixel, an LCD display uses three subpixels with red, green and blue filters. Through the careful control and variation of the voltage applied, the intensity of each subpixel can range over 256 shades. Combining the subpixels produces a possible palette of 16.8 million colors (256 shades of red x 256 shades of green x 256 shades of blue).

Loring Chien, electrical engineer says, “If you are looking at a plasma or a true light emitting diode display then it takes power to turn on the three colors to make white.  And no power to make black.  But if you are looking at a LCD display with a LED backlight or a conventional backlight, then the backlight is on at all times for all pixels. The LCD pixels become transparent or opaque to allow white light through or stop it for a black pixel.”

For Further Thought:

• If Jesus is the backlight, the true Light, shining even beyond the grave, then power to stop His light was only there while death still had the upper hand.  Death had the upper hand only at the Cross and only because Jesus humbled Himself to it as the Father’s will.
• Read John 2:18 Then the Jews demanded of him, “What miraculous sign can you show us to prove your authority to do all this?” 19 Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days.” 20 The Jews replied, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and you are going to raise it in three days?” 21 But the temple he had spoken of was his body. 22 After he was raised from the dead, his disciples recalled what he had said. Then they believed the Scripture and the words that Jesus had spoken.
• But was Jesus just resting on Holy Saturday or was that when He was displaying His triumph over death?  Read Colossians 2:13-15,  1 Peter 3:18-20 and Hebrews 9:27-28 for insight.

Thank You, Lord Jesus, for Your shed blood.  Thank You for being sacrificed once to take away the sins of many people for all time.  Thank You for Your promise to return.  May we be found faithfully watching for You in that Day.  Amen.

I always find myself wondering if anyone watching the events unfolding as Jesus was betrayed and scourged and crucified…”Didn’t anyone have a conscience to bother them about what was happening?”  It was a black Friday for the conscience, a Good Friday for what Jesus did with it.  He paid it all.

In the world of retail, Black Friday is the symbolic date at which retailers make up their expenses, get out of a balance sheet running in the red (debt) and emerge to a positive accounting.  In the Christian world, Good Friday is, in fact, the day in which our sins were paid in full and we can receive that positive accounting going forward by faith because Jesus died for our sins.  Our debt was paid.

1 John 1: 5 This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. 6 If we claim to have fellowship with him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live out the truth. 7 But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.

Purified from sin!  That’s what happened on Good Friday, Black Friday.  The Son of God, the Light of the World, was extinguished from our visible sight.  He did battle against death as His true Light invaded a place we did not see for the deepest darkness.  His Light turned our Black Friday into a Good Friday.

Luke 23:44 It was now about the sixth hour, and darkness came over the whole land until the ninth hour, 45 for the sun stopped shining. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two. 46 Jesus called out with a loud voice, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.” When he had said this, he breathed his last. 

When the sun stopped shining and darkness came upon the land (as recorded in Luke 23:39-48), did no one think about what they were doing? 

Do we?

Fun Fact of Light: Projecting Black.  Have you ever wondered how a projector showing a movie or a display monitor of a computer could project the color black?  Physicist Dr. Christopher Baird explains,

Our human eyes and brains are designed to evaluate a color based on how it looks relative to the colors of the surrounding objects, rather than based on the absolute spectral content of the color…. When you turn on the room lights, you flood both the black and white regions of the projected image with white light, thereby decreasing the contrast between dark and light in the image…The fact that we watch projected movies in darkened rooms is direct evidence that projectors can’t emit literal black, but instead emit dim white light which is interpreted as black when the contrast is high enough.

For Further Thought:

• When viewed next to the purity of Christ, His holiness, His perfection, and His divinity, how does anyone look with respect to sin? 
• Many people tend to have a sliding scale with Mother Teresa on one end and Hitler on the other end in terms of goodness and depending on our actions we can slide toward Mother Teresa or Hitler.  How does God view this sliding scale? 
• Read Romans 3:20 Therefore no one will be declared righteous in his sight by observing the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of sin. 21 But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. 22 This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, 23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. 25 God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood.

Lord Jesus, we’re sorry that human sin ruined our relationship with God Almighty.  We’re sorry that we caused it and that You were sent to die because of it.  And yet, Lord, we’re grateful that You didn’t count our sins against us, but that You died so that we should no longer live for ourselves but for You and Your glory. Thank You Father that it is through the Son we receive this gift of reconciliation.  (2 Corinthians 5:15-19). We praise You that our Black Friday can be such a Good Friday because of Your victory over death and canceling the written code that stood against us, reminding us of the folly of believing we could be good enough to enter heaven on our own.  Thank You, Jesus, for redeeming us anyway.  Amen.

.

It’s Maundy Thursday.  In the progression of the final week of Jesus’ life, it’s getting dark, really dark.  He knows He’s nearing the end of His earthly ministry so He observes His final Passover with His beloved disciples, one of whom will betray Him.  Jesus takes the bread and the cup and transforms the Passover feast into the Eucharist (Communion) and a New Covenant in His blood that He shares with the traitor, His betrayer, as well as the remaining disciples.  It’s getting dark and they all ask, “Surely not I, Lord?” 

It’s a dark, dark Thursday so Jesus offers hope that even when His death is around the corner, He will rise and rescue the godly:

2 Peter 1:19 We also have the prophetic message as something completely reliable, and you will do well to pay attention to it, as to a light shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts…2:4 For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but sent them to hell, putting them in chains of darkness to be held for judgment; 5 if he did not spare the ancient world when he brought the flood on its ungodly people, but protected Noah, a preacher of righteousness, and seven others; 6 if he condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah by burning them to ashes, and made them an example of what is going to happen to the ungodly; 7 and if he rescued Lot, a righteous man, who was distressed by the depraved conduct of the lawless 8 (for that righteous man, living among them day after day, was tormented in his righteous soul by the lawless deeds he saw and heard)—

9 if this is so, then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials and to hold the unrighteous for punishment on the day of judgment.

Fun Fact of Light:  Not really fun, but in keeping with the darkness of Maundy Thursday (or Good Friday) tradition: the Tenebrae.  The Calvin Institute of Christian Worship explains the Tenebrae:  “A Service of Shadows

The service of Tenebrae, meaning “darkness” or “shadows,” has been practiced by the church since medieval times. Once a service for the monastic community, Tenebrae later became an important part of the worship of the common folk during Holy Week. We join Christians of many generations throughout the world in using the liturgy of Tenebrae.

Tenebrae is a prolonged meditation on Christ’s suffering. Readings trace the story of Christ’s passion, music portrays his pathos, and the power of silence and darkness suggests the drama of this momentous day. As lights are extinguished, we ponder the depth of Christ’s suffering and death; we remember the cataclysmic nature of his sacrifice as we hear the overwhelming sound of the “strepitus”; and through the return of the small but persistent flame of the Christ candle at the conclusion of the service, we anticipate the joy of ultimate victory.”

For Further Thought: 

Back in 2001, I saw the cartoon from today’s photo in a Minneapolis newspaper.  It depicted the Tenebrae flames extinguishing and branches falling off a menorah with the resulting branches forming a Cross.  Online it was captioned “Good Friday BC Comic Strip:  A strip published on Easter Sunday in 2001 drew protests from Jewish groups and led several newspapers to drop the strip.”

I was taking a class called “Reading Each Other’s Mail” for Jews and Christians.  The conservative rabbi instructor took offense saying its meaning was “Lights Out for Judaism.”  What do you think of his take?  Read the following for insight

• Matthew 5:18 I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished.
• Hebrews 9:15 For this reason Christ is the mediator of a new covenant, that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance– now that he has died as a ransom to set them free from the sins committed under the first covenant.
• Isaiah 53:5 But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed.

Father, how we praise You for Your plan of redemption, of fulfilling everything You said in prophecy about the Messiah, and fulfilling it in Jesus Christ.  Thank You for this gift of Love, immeasurable, priceless, and everlasting.  Thank You for Your grace, seen in the face of our Lord and Savior whose sacrifice for our sin we remember with sorrow and joy at this season of the year particularly.  On a dark, dark Thursday, Lord Jesus, You said to remember You.  We remember and gratefully call You, “Lord.”  Amen.

Parents hate it when their kids fight.  Unless that parent is our Father in heaven and the fight is the good fight of the faith, embracing His cleansing Light.  Fighting that fight is good because perseverance in our good confession brings glory to God.

1 Timothy 6:12 Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called when you made your good confession in the presence of many witnesses. 13 In the sight of God, who gives life to everything, and of Christ Jesus, who while testifying before Pontius Pilate made the good confession, I charge you 14 to keep this command without spot or blame until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ, 15 which God will bring about in his own time– God, the blessed and only Ruler, the King of kings and Lord of lords, 16 who alone is immortal and who lives in unapproachable light, whom no one has seen or can see. To him be honor and might forever. Amen.

* * *

I’m glad Jesus didn’t give up in the Garden of Gethsemane…throw in the towel, so to speak…or wilt under pressure.  I’m really thankful that He didn’t capitulate to human rulers and deny Himself under penalty of scourging and death. 

It’s called Passion Week because of the sufferings of Christ.  These days, people prefer the term “Holy Week” which—while true—lends a different nuance.  I think many modern people don’t like the idea of the suffering Servant (Isaiah 53).  They don’t like blood.  They don’t like sacrifice.  They don’t like the grisly notion that their sin is so bad that Jesus had to die.  Holiness sounds so much better and can feel easier on our uneasy consciences.  It doesn’t point directly to the depth of our sin. It just points to the beauty of God’s perfection.  Except for one thing: Cleansing!  Hebrews 9:22 “In fact, the law requires that nearly everything be cleansed with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.”

If you want to be forgiven, that means cleansing, and that means…blood…of the perfect Lamb of God.  Christ’s blood shed for you.

Fun Fact of Light: It disinfects!  There’s bleaching and cleansing!

• Fabrics: NaturaLux explains, “UV rays (found either in sunlight or artificial light such as fluorescents) act as a bleaching agent. Through a complex process, UV rays transform the water found in all fabrics into hydrogen peroxide, (a common bleaching agent) that leads to the fading of dyestuffs. High energy photons of light, typically found in the ultraviolet or violet spectrum, can disrupt the bonds in the chromophore (a chromophore is the part of a molecule that is responsible for its color), leaving the resulting material colorless. “
• Water:  “Using ultraviolet (UV) light for drinking water disinfection dates back to 1916 in the U.S. Over the years, UV costs have declined as researchers develop and use new UV methods to disinfect water and wastewater. Currently, several states have developed regulations that allow systems to disinfect their drinking water supplies with UV light.” 
• Hospital Rooms:  “Germicidal ultraviolet light is the part of the electromagnetic spectrum that is particularly effective at killing bacterial and viral agents. No known pathogen can withstand prolonged exposure to UVC light, [and]…most contaminated areas can be serviced at a guaranteed three to six log disinfection confidence level in 20 to 30 minutes. Rooms are ready to occupy and use immediately.” 

For Further Thought:

• Read Jeremiah 2:22 Although you wash yourself with soda and use an abundance of soap, the stain of your guilt is still before me,” declares the Sovereign LORD
• How does the Light of Christ “disinfect” our lives from sin?
• How does it remove even the stubborn stain of guilt and offer forgiveness in its place? Read Hebrews 10:1-22 for insight.

Thank You, Lord Jesus, for Your shed blood on the Cross.  Thank You that Your sacrifice cleanses once for all time and that when we encounter You by the gift of faith, we can be forgiven by Your grace.  We praise You for the abundance You give, even the faith to enter a relationship with You.  Thank You, Father.  Thank You, Jesus.  And thank You, Holy Spirit, for Your refining fire at work in our lives.  Amen.

The end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it is a concept we’ve probably known since Noah survived the Flood.  Having witnessed the end of the world as he knew it, it wouldn’t surprise him to see it happen again.  After all, it’s easier to believe something so horrible happening a second time than to imagine it ever happening for the first time.  That day, the Last Day of all last days, is coming.  Jesus talked about it (Luke 17:26-30) and so did the Apostle Paul.

1 Thessalonians 5:1 Now, brothers, about times and dates we do not need to write to you, 2 for you know very well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. 3 While people are saying, “Peace and safety,” destruction will come on them suddenly, as labor pains on a pregnant woman, and they will not escape. 4 But you, brothers, are not in darkness so that this day should surprise you like a thief. 5 You are all sons of the light and sons of the day. We do not belong to the night or to the darkness. 6 So then, let us not be like others, who are asleep, but let us be alert and self-controlled. 7 For those who sleep, sleep at night, and those who get drunk, get drunk at night. 8 But since we belong to the day, let us be self-controlled, putting on faith and love as a breastplate, and the hope of salvation as a helmet.

9 For God did not appoint us to suffer wrath but to receive salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ. 10 He died for us so that, whether we are awake or asleep, we may live together with him.

It’s Passion Week on the Church calendar and a time we remember what Jesus did so that we would not be “appointed to suffer wrath [in that Last Day] but to receive salvation” through the Son of God.  The world was bad.  So Jesus came.  The world was still bad when the Apostle Paul encouraged the Christians enduring persecution.  The world has gone from bad to worse now, but children of the Light, children of the Day do not need to be afraid.  After the Cross, there is victory!

Fun Fact of Light: Solar Flares.  According to SpaceAnswers.com,   The Sun has reached its solar maximum where its surface should be peppered with sunspots and erupting with solar flares and coronal mass ejections but, according to spacecraft, our star hasn’t been this inactive since 100 years ago. It has released the odd solar flare, however, and you can learn more about them here:

1. The fastest ejections reach Earth in less than two days.  Solar flares are sometimes accompanied by coronal mass ejections (CMEs), huge outpourings of energy and material that travel at up to 1,000 kilometres (620 miles) per second.
2. They release ten million times more energy than a volcano.  A volcanic eruption pales in comparison to a solar flare. In a matter of minutes a solar flare, thought to be caused by magnetic fields, can eject billions of tons of charged particles.
3. During peak times there are over 20 solar flares a day.  When the Sun is at solar maximum, the period in its 11-year cycle when its activity is at its highest, the Sun can unleash over 100 solar flares every week.
4. They are almost as hot as the core of the Sun.  A solar flare can have a temperature of several million Kelvin. For comparison the hottest natural temperature ever recorded on Earth was a relatively measly 330 Kelvin in Death Valley, California.
5. A solar eruption once knocked out a power grid in Quebec.  In March 1989 a huge CME, one of the largest on record, caused a geomagnetic storm in Earth’s atmosphere that crippled the Hydro-Quebec power grid in Canada.

 Just this past week our Sun’s inactive status changed.  According to Space.com:

The sun has unleashed three intense solar flares in just two days — each one stronger than the last — in an unexpected uptick in solar activity.

The flares began on Sunday (April 2), when the sun fired off a moderate, M5.3-class solar flare. A stronger, M5.7 solar flare followed later that same day. Then, today (April 3), the sun erupted with an M5.8 flare. NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory spacecraft captured video of the flares as they occurred.

For Further Thought: 

• How might living with an awareness of the Last Day be helpful to our living as children of the Light, children of the Day?
• How does complacency set in?  What does it say about faith?

Thank You, Jesus for pointing us forward to the day of Your return and a day of judgment.  Thank You for dying on the Cross so that Christians do not need to fear that day.  Thank You for Your mercy and grace.  Thank You for the joy we can have in You.  And we thank You for the privilege of calling You “Savior!”  Amen.

Have you ever bought canned Lite fruit at the grocery store?  Sometimes, it’s real fruit packaged with fruit juices and no added sugar.  Sometimes it’s real fruit packaged with an artificial sweetener.  It’s pretending to be healthful when really, it’s not the real thing. 

The Christian life can be the same way.  Real fruit and nothing but fruit.  But sometimes there are pretenders compromising a little bit here and a bit there and in the end, not being just fruit.  That life lacks wholeness and frankly, integrity. 

That’s what today’s passage speaks about when it talks about the fruit of the light.  For emphasis today, I’ve chosen the paraphrase (instead of a translation) of Ephesians 5:1-16 from The Message.

5: 1-2 Watch what God does, and then you do it, like children who learn proper behavior from their parents. Mostly what God does is love you. Keep company with him and learn a life of love. Observe how Christ loved us. His love was not cautious but extravagant. He didn’t love in order to get something from us but to give everything of himself to us. Love like that…

5 You can be sure that using people or religion or things just for what you can get out of them—the usual variations on idolatry—will get you nowhere, and certainly nowhere near the kingdom of Christ, the kingdom of God.

6-7 Don’t let yourselves get taken in by religious smooth talk. God gets furious with people who are full of religious sales talk but want nothing to do with him. Don’t even hang around people like that.

8-10 You groped your way through that murk once, but no longer. You’re out in the open now. The bright light of Christ makes your way plain. So no more stumbling around. Get on with it! The good, the right, the true—these are the actions appropriate for daylight hours. Figure out what will please Christ, and then do it.

11-16 Don’t waste your time on useless work, mere busywork, the barren pursuits of darkness…So watch your step. Use your head. Make the most of every chance you get. These are desperate times!

It is true that we’re in desperate times—times that are revealing the authenticity and integrity of self-proclaimed Christians. 

Do you display fruit of the light, or just Lite fruit? Is your light slowing down?

Fun Fact of Light:  Can light be slowed down?  According to Physlink.com  Gary Russell replies, “The short answer is No. Einstein’s theory of special relativity is based on the idea that the speed of light is always constant. However, we CAN make it take longer for light to travel a set distance. In fact, we say that light travels more slowly in optically dense media. That statement is somewhat misleading…The delay between the time that the atom absorbs the photon and the excited atom releases as photon causes it to appear that light is slowing down.”

Gregory Ogin says it this way: “This apparent slowing of a light wave is responsible for the way light bends as it enters mediums like glass and water…Prisms work because of the fact that different wavelengths of light have different speeds in the material, and so get bent different amounts. The different colors composing “white” light get bent differently as they go through a prism, and the resulting separated colors form the rainbows you generally see coming out of prisms. “

For Further Thought:

• As you re-emit the light of Christ to the world, is it the full-hued light of Christ or something less?
• If the purity of the media through which light passes determines the “fruit of light” then what kinds of things can keep us from displaying the full-hued light of Christ and end up with Lite fruit instead? 
• What are some of the easy concessions that Christians make which serve to compromise our integrity?

Thank You, Father, that Your Son Jesus “is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. After he had provided purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven” (Hebrews 1:3).  We thank You, Jesus, for pressing on to the Cross and laying down Your life so that we might have true life in You. Help us never to compromise our Christianity and never to deny You under threat of persecution or opposition.  Grant us strength since these are desperate times!  Amen.