In every generation, there is a hunger to know fact from fiction … an intrinsic need to have something reliable-rock solid-on which to take a stand.  Something … somewhere … worth believing in.  Something worth dying for.                      

Today, the Apostle Paul demonstrates that his hands may have been a tentmaker’s but his heart belonged to God.  His life’s vocational training prepared him for tent-making, but God prepared him for so much more than that.  Paul could have been a top litigator as today’s passage displays.  God takes tentmaker Paul’s love for Christ, his legal mind, his preacher’s style of exhortation and turns his theological thoughts to What It Means to Be Resurrected. 

Paul begins today to lay out his rock-solid case:

1 Corinthians 15:11 Whether, then, it was I or they, this is what we preach, and this is what you believed. 12 But if it is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? 13 If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. 14 And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. 15 More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead. But he did not raise him if in fact the dead are not raised. 16 For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either. 17 And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. 18 Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. 19 If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men.

You see, not all Jewish sects believed in a resurrection, and not all Gentiles believed in it either. To this situation, Paul says,

Take a stand!  Decide for yourselves if it’s rock-solid or a futile faith!” 

If the Resurrection of Christ is real (and it is) then you’re headed for resurrection, too.  Because if it weren’t real and true and reliable, then this delusion would be a dangerous one.  In fact, we ought to be pitied for placing our hope in something that didn’t happen. If it didn’t happen for Christ (who was perfect), then it certainly won’t happen for us and we’ve still got a sin problem.

What Does it Mean to Be Resurrected? 

It DID happen for Christ, and therefore it WILL happen for us.  It’s rock-solid and not a futile faith.  We are not to be pitied for believing the truth and for the upward trajectory Christians have in a Gospel that’s true, rock-solid, and reliable.  By faith in God’s Word, through the grace of Christ, and the mercy of the Father, a Christian’s sin problem ends at our death. To quote Randy Alcorn from his book Heaven : “For Christians this present life is the closest they will come to Hell. For unbelievers, it is the closest they will come to Heaven.”

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

Do you know the powerful working of God’s grace in your life? Paul did.

But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder than all of them– yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me. (1 Corinthians 15: 10)

I know it too.  It doesn’t mean there isn’t residual pain or stubborn doubt or opportunity to feel angry or be discouraged.  The joy is that God’s grace turns these wounds into scar tissue allowing us to remember the way God’s grace heals, it forgives, and those stigmata (scars) on Jesus’ hands and feet force us to recall that God’s mercy came at a very heavy, painful cost.

Remember my story from last week about AllExperts and the way 18 years of my life’s work simply vanished from the physical record?  Today’s Wall Street Journal had a story about About.com explaining a bit more about why it vanished.  Did I hear it from the authorities to whom I sent email inquiries? Noooo. I had to get it from a tech article in a newspaper.  The website has been in decline and the Chief Executive Neil Vogel is quoted as saying, “About.com is a funny thing.  Everyone knows what it is, but it doesn’t mean anything to anyone.”

Now perhaps it means even less.  And why?  Would the grace of God be in it anymore if His Word that brought Him glory was banished? 

It’s kind of like God’s modern nod back to the glory of God departing the temple (Ezekiel 10).  So About.com is changing its name.  Perhaps Ichabod would have been a more fitting choice (1 Samuel 4:21-22). 

No presence, no grace, no glory.

It was launched in days prior to Google and in 2000, it was valued at $690 million, 5 years later it was bought by the New York Times for $410 million, and was sold again in 2012 for $300 million.   Not exactly a winning trajectory.  And why?  Because the grace of God that made sites like AllExperts successful in answering people’s Bible questions (sometimes sincere, sometimes not) was lost a bit when About.com threw us into their den of Wiccans in 2000 and marginalized us again by selling us to the New York Times (sarcasm alert) that notable bastion of God-fearing evangelists.

Yet, some of us worked hard anyway.  Was it my success there?  Nope.  It was God working on me, and with me and in me there until the very end.  And the powerful work of God continues.  Now I have a personal object lesson on why it’s important to store up treasures in heaven.  My investment since 1999 as a volunteer had been in people and God’s grace was not without effect.  My investment timeline has been for eternity…a beautiful powerful hiddenness that is the essence of faith, and a reminder that God sees things we don’t.

Thank you to all of you who resonated with the loss I’ve known this week.  But let’s not leave it with a loss. 

What does it mean to be Resurrected?  God’s powerful grace is still at work in the seeds we plant and leave behind.  By faith, we know His grace is not without effect.

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

“I AM WHO I AM.”  God’s famous words to Moses, revealing God’s own Name in Exodus 3:11-14.  His Name alone conveys truth and authenticity!  Just think about it!  As followers of Jesus Christ, we should aim to reflect the same kind of truth and authenticity.  To echo the Apostle Paul’s words “But by the grace of God I am what I am.”  Simply acknowledging that God’s grace alone is what makes a saint out of one who…ain’t. 

I am WHO I am, I am WHAT I am.

1 Corinthians 15:8 And last of all [Christ Jesus] appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born.  9 For I am the least of the apostles and do not even deserve to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. 10 But by the grace of God I am what I am.

We have a record of only one person who ever saw the Risen Lord after He ascended to heaven.  That person is the Apostle Paul.  This was not just a vision per se or a dream.  It was Jesus, glorified, confronting Paul/Saul and asking, Acts 26:14 ‘Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? It is hard for you to kick against the goads.’ 15 “Then [Saul/Paul] asked, ‘Who are you, Lord?’ “‘I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting,’ the Lord replied. 16 ‘Now get up and stand on your feet. I have appeared to you to appoint you as a servant and as a witness of what you have seen of me and what I will show you. 17 I will rescue you from your own people and from the Gentiles. I am sending you to them 18 to open their eyes and turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God, so that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me.’

Paul never lost the shock and awe of that moment.  How could he?  He was fully aware of the horrible things he’d done his whole adult life.  He was completely ashamed of having persecuted the Church, and he was fully humbled by the grace of God available to sinners –among whom, Paul considered himself the worst (1 Timothy 1:15).

What does it mean to be Resurrected?  It means God’s grace and Christ’s sacrifice are enough to cover even the worst of what we do and what have done with who we have been: sinners.  Resurrection grace takes repentant sinners, forgives them, and makes them saints.

In the words of television personality and Christian brother Steve Harvey, by God’s redeeming grace, “I am who I am, and I was who I was. I’m cool with both people.”  It means when we walk around in a Resurrection to grace, we have been rescued from sin’s body of condemnation for who and what we were and are set free to be who I am in God’s sight.  Steve Harvey knows it.  Paul knew it.  Do I?  Do you? 

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

“An empty tomb could be accomplished in so many different ways,” you say, “What proof do you have that Jesus rose from the dead?”   Ah, but there’s more to the empty tomb than just a say-so.  There are the Resurrection appearances of Christ that are more than just appearances.  They provided eyewitnesses and evidence!

1 Corinthians 15: 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, 5 and that he appeared to Peter, and then to the Twelve. 6 After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. 7 Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, 8 and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born.

We’re not talking Zombie Apocalypse, the Walking Dead, or Night of the Living Dead.  Jesus wasn’t a zombie and He was not a dead man walking.  He was and is alive and certainly not walking around in the body of a corpse. 

He was in the body of the Christ, the Savior,

and that’s how He appeared to so many. 

He looked enough like the living Jesus of His earthly ministry to be recognized, but glorified so that He wasn’t immediately obvious (Luke 24:13-49).   His appearances to so many people were to designed to encourage future generations of disciples by creating eyewitnesses of the fact that He is Risen!  He is Risen, Indeed!

What does it mean to be Resurrected?  A living God and Savior who gives us Resurrection appearances as evidence on which to base our faith.

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

So here I am writing a series on Resurrection and suddenly I find myself feeling rather devastated.  Since 1999, I’ve been a volunteer answering Bible questions and questions regarding relationships from a biblical perspective on a site called AllExperts.  I was a volunteer there prior to its sale to About.com (2000) and suddenly this week, there’s an email in my spam folder saying AllExperts has been closed.  Devastation.  If you search AllExperts and find a link, all you get is “After more than 19 years, and over two million questions answered, AllExperts.com is now closed. We apologize for any inconvenience.  You can find our latest Expert-answered content at…” and I don’t think I’ll give them free advertising.  There is no Christian section on it.

I have lost 18 years of carefully documented work—writings—which I suppose could be redone.  It had been my most enduring ministry but now, it’s gone. 

I have lost touch with many people whose questions I answered over the past 18 years but who never contacted me personally.  And that connection is irretrievable since their contact information was always kept private, as it should be.

The world has lost the ability to read through past answers—not just mine, but on a whole range of topics from many different experts—and I know this stealth searching happened because some people asked follow-on questions to someone else’s answer many years prior.

I’m devastated.  And being a person who likes analogies, I’ve been trying over the past few days to understand why I feel this way.  It’s worse than a computer crash because computers can be backed up, these days in the cloud or on special services, or even external hard drives.  What I have lost cannot be recovered.  It’s worse than losing one’s job after 18 years of dedicated employment because there would have been 18 years of paychecks along the way with contributions to a company and co-workers who can still get in touch with you.  It’s not quite like losing a family member, but there are definite similarities because I’ve lost people.  Perhaps the best analogy regarding my work comes from the realm of art.  It’s like a warehouse of your best paintings burning to the ground, or a series of handwritten screenplays or symphonies never performed going up in smoke.  Your life’s work, suddenly gone.  And you’re left with … nothing.

But there’s hope beyond devastation.  Because that’s the God I serve!  His earthly ministry died on the Cross, but after 3-days-dead in a tomb, He was Resurrected.  Resurrection doesn’t happen without death.

I do not know what form this hope will take, but I’m looking for it.  I want to believe I’ve made a difference in a few lives, made a few friends for eternity, helped some folks along the way for no benefit to myself, and that what has been destroyed in a suddenly closing is still recorded for the Lamb’s glory and the quality of this woman’s workmanship stored up in heaven will be something positive that I will see someday. 

What does it mean to be Resurrected?  Hope is ours and hope is real and hope is eternal…even when life devastates for a moment.  Psalm 119:116 Sustain me according to Thy word, that I may live; And do not let me be ashamed of my hope. 

Our series on 1 Corinthians 15 entitled What It Means to Be Resurrected will resume after this personal note on hope beyond devastation.  The series can be read fully from the archives beginning April 2017. 

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.