Happy Independence Day!

To some of us, the Fourth of July is descriptive only of the date, after all we wouldn’t say “Happy February 14th,” December 25th, or even April 1st.  The meaning for us is Independence, grounded in American history (and patterned after the freedom in biblical history from Genesis to Revelation and its connection to life).

Therefore, the Fourth of July is less about the fireworks we love than what they celebrate: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.  Freedom and everything that Liberty makes beautiful. 

Not all nations are free, but those nations that aren’t still know what freedom means.  To oppressive governments, America and its freedoms pose a threat to their way of life and control.  To those being oppressed, freedom is a distant hope they desire to taste and see someday.

It means something wonderful to those who passed through Ellis Island or today take the Naturalization Oath of Allegiance to the United States of America:

“I hereby declare, on oath, that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty, of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen; that I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I will bear arms on behalf of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform noncombatant service in the Armed Forces of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform work of national importance under civilian direction when required by the law; and that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; so help me God.”

People take this oath and obligation freely because the freedoms of the United States of America represent to them a fresh wind of opportunity and a blessing, particularly in contrast to the violence and persecution many have fled.

It is no surprise that in nations of tyranny the first things to go are often monuments to a prior history.  There is a reason why ISIS (and other regimes) destroy places of historical importance, especially religious significance. 

Erase a history, forget its meaning, and oppression will have no competition.  There is vulnerability in being a nation with no memory.

On this Independence Day, it is good to remember that to our founders, the Fourth of July wasn’t a date on a calendar for a picnic or a barbecue or a convenient document signing.  It was a day to remember as history because our founding fathers knew what it was to be in bondage and what it feels like to be free.

Happy Independence Day!

“Hold on,” you might say. “How could Jesus be the last Adam?”  Isn’t that like saying Jesus was the Last Man?  And haven’t plenty of men been born and lived since Jesus?  What on Earth is Paul saying as we continue our study of 1 Corinthians 15  to answer the question, What Does It Mean to Be Resurrected?  Well, it’s not hard to understand when we see it’s as easy as the difference between being given life and giving life.

1 Corinthians 15:45 So it is written: “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam, a life-giving spirit. 46 The spiritual did not come first, but the natural, and after that the spiritual. 47 The first man was of the dust of the earth, the second man from heaven.

When Adam was created out of the dust of the earth, he was given life.  God breathed it into him.  Easy, right?

Jesus was and is not a created being.  He’s God.  He’s always existed.  In a sense, it was Jesus (before He had a body of flesh) breathing life into the very first Adam and Eve.  About Jesus we read, John 1:4 In Him was life, and the life was the light of men.

To any men looking in the wrong place (among other men) in order to find life, Jesus makes it clear that He is the last Adam.  In effect, He’s the other bookend to the Image of God in man.  If one bookend on the shelf was Adam made in God’s Image and Adam’s decision to sin extended into every volume on the shelf, the other bookend is Christ’s forgiveness.  It is finished.  Jesus is the Last Man standing when it comes to being sinless and therefore, the only Man we’ll ever need.

John 6:31 “Our forefathers ate the manna in the desert; as it is written: ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.'” 32 Jesus said to them, “I tell you the truth, it is not Moses who has given you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. 33 For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world … 38 I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me. 39 And this is the will of him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all that he has given me, but raise them up at the last day”

Are you still looking among men and among the created things of this world to find true life and eternal happiness?  Are you looking to acquire life for yourself by amassing all the things you can and thinking they are giving life? 

Or have you chosen to trust Christ, the last Adam and life-giving Spirit of God?  He is the bread from heaven and is the only One who is giving life to you.  What Does It Mean to Be Resurrected?  Listen and hear the words of Jesus who said,

John 6:. 40 “For my Father’s will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day.” 

It’s the difference between being given life and giving life.

How amazing the Resurrection will be!  That moment when the truly transforming power of God completes the work and changes the natural into the spiritual.  That day when the reality we cannot presently see becomes every bit as natural to us as the world we presently see.  Both are real, but one is hidden in glory.

This is what Paul talks about as we continue our look at What it Means to Be Resurrected from1 Corinthians 15. 

1 Corinthians 15:42 So will it be with the resurrection of the dead. The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable; 43 it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; 44 it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body.

When the dead are raised, there is a transformation.

• Perishable>>>Imperishable
• Dishonor>>>Glory
• Weakness>>>Power
• Natural>>>Spiritual

Just look at the transformation and what the natural world can offer presently!

Death, perishable, dishonor, weakness and natural. 

And then look at what God does!

Eternal, imperishable, glory, power, and spiritual!

I don’t know about you, but there are plenty of days when I look at the world we live in and the day ahead and feel a looming sense of fatigue and weariness.  I long for that transforming power.

This natural world is, by consequence of sin, in a constant state of dying, oppression, and dishonor.  But for the Christian, this natural world will be replaced someday by a New Heaven and a New Earth as God makes everything new, including you and me.  Looking forward to that day.  What about you?

I don’t know about you, but I wonder sometimes what the post-resurrection me will look like.  No, I’m not thinking you’re wondering about me and my body, but have you ever thought about you and yours?  To each its own? Let’s continue our look at What it Means to Be Resurrected and a study of 1 Corinthians 15.

I used to joke that I wanted my post-resurrection body to have a nice tan and a flat stomach.  I was imagining heaven as being no skin cancer and the Bible says there’s no more sun, so I guess it’d have to be a lasting sunless tanner or a permanent natural tan.  Jesus wouldn’t serve food that’d kill you at the wedding feast of the Lamb, so I guess there’d be no need for Nutrisystem to get rid of stubborn belly fat for that flat stomach.  When I imagine heaven, I don’t think I’ll eye every future meal as a potential assassin looking to kill me like earthly food can sometimes make me feel. 

Every week there’s a new food reported to kill me and if I don’t eat at all, that’ll kill me!  Post-resurrection, nothing will.  Just let that sink in.

I don’t know what our bodies will look like.  But if I understand what Paul is saying, to each its own.  God will take materials–perhaps the very ones used to give us a body now—and God will perfect it, not just back to the pre-Fall body, but to an eternal one.  We’ll be us, but different.  Somehow Jesus could look like Jesus, but at the same time…not look like Jesus (Luke 24:15-32) to the men on the road to Emmaus.

How is this possible?

The Apostle Paul offers an analogy of the various bodies that exist now and as he builds his case and points ahead to what redeemed humanity’s glorified bodies will be someday.

1 Corinthians 15:38 But God gives it a body as he has determined, and to each kind of seed he gives its own body. 39 All flesh is not the same: Men have one kind of flesh, animals have another, birds another and fish another. 40 There are also heavenly bodies and there are earthly bodies; but the splendor of the heavenly bodies is one kind, and the splendor of the earthly bodies is another. 41 The sun has one kind of splendor, the moon another and the stars another; and star differs from star in splendor.

Perhaps Paul (in his vision unto thorn) received insider knowledge or maybe the Holy Spirit revealed a pattern … that there’s more to the story.  Paul talks about our resurrection bodies in the same way that Genesis talks about Creation.  To each its own.

Read through the Creation account again and how God gave all created things mass, flesh, being, or substance.  If God could do that ex nihilo (out of nothing at Creation) God can give us something wholly new through His same creative genius.

But unlike reincarnation, when we get new bodies, we will not become a different kind of creature to cycle through in an endless quest for perfection.

Biblically speaking, to each its own and we remain human. 

And to every human being, there is one life, one death, and then resurrection to a forever status: redeemed perfected or not-redeemed sinner, that is the question.

By its definition, resurrection requires death first.  Given that death is a guarantee—your chances of dying are 100% if Jesus doesn’t preempt it by His return—resurrection changes the whole human trajectory.  The unavoidable fact of death (something even non-Christians believe is real) testifies to the truth of God’s existence and God’s law.  It transports every man, woman, and child back to the Garden of Eden and the Fall of mankind.  Evolution can’t explain mortality.

In our look at “What Does It Mean to Be Resurrected?” and study of 1 Corinthians 15, we’re now at verses 35-37 to deal with that unavoidable fact of mortality.

1 Corinthians 15:35 But someone may ask, “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body will they come?” 36 How foolish! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. 37 When you sow, you do not plant the body that will be, but just a seed, perhaps of wheat or of something else. 

The Apostle Paul was dealing with Resurrection-deniers, those cynics who were asking how dead people can possibly rise.  After all, in a natural world, mist settles and rises, dead people don’t.  They stay dead.  But in a supernatural world of Christ’s intervention, people can rise to life again.  

I like Paul.  He uses gardening analogies.  He says a seed ceases being a seed when it is planted.  That’s true: it dies to being a seed.  But the seed will produce what was sown. 

A seed contains DNA that will produce what its DNA says it will be.  A zucchini seed will produce a zucchini plant which will produce zucchinis that eventually make zucchini bread or grilled zucchini (or the unavoidable fact that too many zucchinis end up as baseball bats that no neighbor wants or gardener in good conscience gives away).  But the point is: a zucchini seed produces zucchini plants which produce zucchinis.

A sinner (when he dies in his sin) has a sinner’s DNA.  That’s why Christians need to be born-again by the Holy Spirit.  By faith, we get transformed by the death of Christ in order to have DNA that says “Redeemed!”  Resurrection will either be to eternal life as Redeemed or to eternal separation, commonly called Hell, for those who have tried the do-it-yourself method of salvation.

We not just natural, physical beings.  We have supernatural souls and spirits–that breath of life God gives which transcends our body’s physical death.  What does your spiritual DNA say about you?  The unavoidable fact of death is … well, unavoidable.  So is resurrection.  So the question is: will you rise redeemed or with the sinner’s DNA? 

Ya’ hang around bad theology long enough and you’ll adopt it.  It’s as simple as that.  And many people you’d otherwise respect in prominent evangelical and “mainstream” Christendom are leading the pack.  Today’s Social Gospel preachers are turning a culturally relevant theology into a culturally based theology. 

What’s the difference, you ask? 

A culturally relevant Gospel is a God-glorifying, Resurrection-based, evangelically motivated, historically preserved, and socially concerned Gospel promoting good works to a culture from a Christian’s changed heart. 

The Social Gospel is culturally based.  Its aim is an increasingly perfect world by glorifying man’s innate motivations and abilities.  The Word of Truth in a Social Gospel becomes subservient to relative truth (i.e. what’s true for you and what’s true for me are different things).  The necessity of man’s improving social circumstances betrays a belief that God isn’t actually real and Christ isn’t needed.  We’re all we’ve got and that’s enough.  

The two gospels (the Gospel of Jesus Christ versus the Social Gospel) are markedly different to the discerning mind because they are founded on different views of the Truth.  But, God doesn’t evaluate our world and our actions the way we do.  

A case in point: The hysteria regarding the US non-participation in the Paris Climate Accord. Where’s God–especially among the countries pushing for it?  To some, we’ve abandoned the world and condemned it to death.  Mankind is going to perish completely unless we find technologies to make Mars livable for when the Earth is not.  This is not what the Bible teaches. 

According to the Bible, when the Earth goes, Mars goes. God is still sovereign and the only thing left when it’s “Game Over” is … what you did with Christ.

A Social Gospel is being preached in plenty of churches these days.  They’re preaching racism and refugees more than Christ’s Resurrection; injustice more than the One who justifies; relative truth versus Jesus as “the Way, the Truth, and the Life;” and an the-end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it consequence of climate change and politics versus the “end of the world” because frankly, God promised it (2 Peter 3:11-13).

In a Social Gospel, there is a blending of Christianity with multi-cultural awareness until it becomes genuine syncretism (a theological smoothie of many religions), and adopting a chameleon gospel that changes with its political surroundings—all of this is way too easy and really, really wrong.

To that kind of mentality among the Resurrection-deniers, the Apostle Paul tells the church at Corinth,

Do not be misled: “Bad company corrupts good character.”  Come back to your senses as you ought, and stop sinning; for there are some who are ignorant of God– I say this to your shame. (1 Corinthians 15:33-34)

To Social Gospel proponents, we must ask “What Does It Mean to Be Resurrected?”  Resurrection is both the Gospel’s turning point and the determinant of humanity’s future.  This Earth will perish—it’s supposed to. 

As good environmental stewards, we won’t hasten its demise, but eternal life requires Resurrection and a New Earth.  The Kingdom of God isn’t better health care while nurturing Mother Earth, or colonizing Mars just to be safe.  The Kingdom of God in the hearts of believers displays sacrificial service until Jesus’ return.  Then there will be a New Heaven and a New Earth just as Jesus promised. 

This is the Gospel that the Apostle Paul talks about to those of his day:  Galatians 1:6 I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you by the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel– 7 which is really no gospel at all. Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ.

How do we get through to many evangelical, Protestant, and Catholic leaders of our day?  How can we show them the seductiveness of exchanging exclusive truth of the Gospel for a worldly facsimile, just enough off to become corrupt?  To become a different gospel? 

The truth is the Resurrection changed everything now and forever. In the future, we don’t need a Social Gospel and we don’t need Mars to live. 

What do we need to live?  We need Jesus whose Resurrection paved the way for ours.  And that’s the Gospel truth.

You may have heard the phrases, “Eat, drink, and be merry” or “Life’s short, eat dessert first” or “Life stinks then you die.”  All of those buy into modern ideas that human beings are no different than leaves on the forest floor.  We have a season of life, living for today, and then we return to dust as soulless physical beings on our way to being tomorrow’s compost.  In such a view, there is no other being to hold you to account, no other life to live for as tomorrow.  No rules, just right…in your own eyes…and your right to do what you want. 

The obvious result of such ideas would be enjoy life to the hilt and don’t let anyone else’s rules get in your way of your good time.

Kind of like that scene from Groundhog Day in which Bill Murray’s character, weatherman Phil Connors, realizes that his death in a cycle of Groundhog Days doesn’t matter.  Therefore he can live life without rules and without consequences:

I’m not going to live by their rules anymore … It’s the same thing your whole life: “Clean up your room. Stand up straight. Pick up your feet. Take it like a man. Be nice to your sister. Don’t mix beer and wine, ever.” Oh yeah: “Don’t drive on the railroad tracks.”

In a similar way, that same kind of “logic of no rules” is used by the Apostle Paul in today’s passage:  1 Corinthians 15: 29 Now if there is no resurrection, what will those do who are baptized for the dead? If the dead are not raised at all, why are people baptized for them? 30 And as for us, why do we endanger ourselves every hour?  31 I die every day– I mean that, brothers– just as surely as I glory over you in Christ Jesus our Lord. 32 If I fought wild beasts in Ephesus for merely human reasons, what have I gained? If the dead are not raised, “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.”

Paul’s answer, as he builds his cyclical case, is that the dead ARE raised.  Therefore you’ve got an eternity ahead of you with your decisions prior to your death determining where that eternity will be spent.  And moreover, whether heaven or hell, each of us will have our earthly lifetime flash before our eyes.  We’ll recall all the decisions that we made and all the rules we disobeyed.  And justice means there will be consequences.  Most of us quake at that thought.

What Does It Mean to Be Resurrected?    It means this life has consequences beyond today.  We will all experience consequences for what we have done (Revelation 20:12-13, Revelation 22:12).  Only Christians have received forgiveness and the grace of Christ who paid for our sins on our behalf.  Other people wanting a do-it-yourself project of earning their way will find that receiving wrath really isn’t a job for amateurs and eternity is a hell of a long time to pay for breaking the rules.

If you find yourself presently in the do-it-yourself category and you don’t know how to get started on a relationship with Christ and the forgiveness He offers, please contact me and I’d love to explain why it’s infinitely preferable and requires nothing from you but surrender to God and agreeing with Him about who you are and what you’ve done.  He already knows it.  He’s just waiting for you to admit it.  

 The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.” (2 Peter 3:9)

Continuing my thinking about What It Means to Be Resurrected and a sovereign God as a final authority, I was remembering a time in seminary when one of my professors talked about being in college and his roommate asked, “Hey Dude, do you think God could create a rock so big He couldn’t lift it? Whooaaaaa. Deep.” (OK not really deep, but it was pretty funny and I still chuckle at it.)

The Apostle Paul deals with that same kind of thinking in today’s passage (continuing in flow from these verses before it):  1 Corinthians 15:24 Then the end will come, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father after he has destroyed all dominion, authority and power. 25 For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. 26 The last enemy to be destroyed is death.

1 Corinthians 15: 27 For he “has put everything under his feet.” Now when it says that “everything” has been put under him, it is clear that this does not include God himself, who put everything under Christ. 28 When he has done this, then the Son himself will be made subject to him who put everything under him, so that God may be all in all.

Can God put everything under Himself … until it means He’s under … Himself? Waaaaat?

Of course not. That’s Paul’s point.

Loosely quoting Psalm 110:1 and attributing it to Christ, Paul says that Jesus submits to God’s authority and became God’s commissioned One to do battle and to complete it. He’s doing a march of total victory, that final enemy (death) and all other enemies (sin)…boom! They’re all conquered! And then Jesus faithfully reports back to His Commander-in-Chief, the final authority–the Father Himself.

The Message (a Bible paraphrase) helps to make this clear: “When everything and everyone is finally under God’s rule, the Son will step down, taking his place with everyone else, showing that God’s rule is absolutely comprehensive—a perfect ending!”

In a medal ceremony of sorts, God the Father rewards the final victory. The Father bestows upon His Son Jesus the position of head over everything (Ephesians 1:22-23), and the Name above every name (Philippians 2:9-11) so that the Father, the final authority for the Resurrection, is glorified.

What Does It Mean to Be Resurrected?  It means we have a day in the future in which prayers prayed through the centuries ‘Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, On earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10) will be finally accomplished, once done and for all time.  The Father, the final authority for the Resurrection will see to it “that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Philippians 2:10-11).

Death stinks. I’ve been thinking a lot about death lately. So when Facebook reminds Seminary Gal “It’s been a while since your readers have heard from you,” I wonder if you’d all think “Just as well” so long as this is where my mind is. My mind has been pondering death in part because our longtime furry companion (a permanent loaner from our daughter whose apartment only allowed one dog), our Bichon named Sammy had cluster seizures this past week despite ample doses of anti-seizure medications. He ended up with extensive neurological/brain damage and paralysis and so on Friday, I told him he was a very good dog and that I loved him. I held him while he went to doggie heaven. (OK, the Bible says nothing about it, but I cannot bring myself to believe otherwise. Not this week.)

And then there was the attack at the Ariana Grande concert in Manchester.   Primarily children, teenage girls who looked forward to enjoying entertainment with a pop icon were targeted for murder by terrorists who have no value for life, for whom death is their currency of evil, and well I’m angry at what death does.  And what death leaves behind.

When we last left off with the Apostle Paul, he was laying out his legal case for the Resurrection (1 Corinthians 15:20-23). Today, he reaches the conclusion that humanity has had an enemy since the Fall. That enemy is death. And having held yet another part of God’s creation as it passed from life into the shadows of death, I think about the source of life, God, and the breath of life, His breath and how the body may look, even feel the same, but there’s a profound difference between one who is alive physically and one who is dead, permanently.

Back in Eden when mankind fell into mortality…Satan, it seems, won the day.  But he didn’t win the war.  Jesus came and conquered!

Revelation 12: 10 Then I heard a loud voice in heaven say: “Now have come the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God, and the authority of his Christ. For the accuser of our brothers, who accuses them before our God day and night, has been hurled down. 11 They overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony; they did not love their lives so much as to shrink from death. 12 Therefore rejoice, you heavens and you who dwell in them!

So, when the Bible tells us that Jesus was the firstfruits of the Resurrection and that eternal life belongs to those who defeat death by the blood of the Lamb and the word of their testimony, it’s a cause for joy. It’s a source of hope. It’s a truth worth believing in and a power worth waiting for.  It’s a balm to the hearts of the broken and devastated.

The Apostle Paul says Jesus, the firstfruits, has already been raised and as followers of Christ, we will someday, in turn.  1 Corinthians 15:24 Then the end will come, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father after he has destroyed all dominion, authority and power. 25 For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. 26 The last enemy to be destroyed is death.

I’m eagerly awaiting that final destruction of our accuser. I hate him. I’m tired of death. I am tired of thinking about death. So, I’m looking for Christ at His return with the rock-solid assurance of resurrection, that day in which death is no more…and of the glorious day in which we’ll hear a loud voice from the throne saying, “Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” (Revelation 21:3-4) 

When we left off with the Apostle Paul’s legal case for the Resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15, he drew the inevitable conclusions from the false assertion of the Corinthian Resurrection-denyers.  Paul logically concluded that if Jesus was not raised from the dead, all who proclaim that He was are not only being deceived and deceivers, but we’re also fools.  We are to be pitied because we’ve believed a lie.  And now Paul states the truth. The other shoe drops in Jesus’ being the firstfruits of the very real Resurrection.

1 Corinthians 15:20 But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. 21 For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. 22 For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive. 23 But each in his own turn: Christ, the firstfruits; then, when he comes, those who belong to him.

Do you see Paul’s intellect?  No one can deny that all people die.  It’s one of the most empirically proven facts of the universe.  Paul says, if you believe all people die (which traces back to the Fall of Man and the introduction of mortality) then it’s not a stretch to believe that if Jesus was Resurrected, He’s the firstfruits and the same will apply to those who belong to Christ. 

Adam represented us in sin leading to earthly death.  Jesus Christ–the firstfruits–represents us in eternal life which means Resurrection for all who believe!

In Bible-speak, firstfruits are the best of the crop which can represent the first of the harvest (Leviticus 23:10-11, 17, 20) as an offering to God acknowledging the whole harvest belongs to Him, and the term firstfruits also denotes the best.  First in time.  First in quality.

Jesus is the firstfruits.  Jesus is the best!  As the author of Hebrews writes:

Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.”  (Hebrews 12:2)

What Does It Mean to Be Resurrected?  After the perfect sacrifice and firstfruits of Christ in His Resurrection, Jesus paved the way for the rest of the harvest.  That’s you and me and all of us who acknowledge the Lordship of Jesus Christ.  He is the author, the pioneer, the perfecter, the firstfruits–wholly acceptable to God.  Not just wholly but holy, therefore acceptable to God, just as we will be because of the blood of Christ has made us acceptable to the Father!

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