The Substance of the Gospel
Now, my friends, I want to remind you of the gospel I preach to you and which is preached throughout the world. In spite of the open divisions within Christianity, this is the gospel common to them all from one end of the earth to the other.

It is the gospel which you received and on which you have taken your stand. By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preach to you. Don’t let anything loosen your hold on the gospel. Otherwise, you have believed in vain.

In a nutshell here is the gospel. Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, he was buried, and he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures. However great or small is your understanding, hold on to this gospel. Whatever pressures come to bear on your life, hold on to this gospel. The death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus are the instruments of our salvation from sin and death.

Because this is Easter Sunday, let’s focus on the resurrection of Jesus. By resurrection Christians don’t mean that Jesus came back as a ghost. His body, which any medical examiner would have declared dead, was brought back to life – permanently and splendidly; and people saw Him.

He appeared to Peter, and then to the Twelve, the innermost circle of Jesus’ followers. After that, he appeared to more than five hundred Christians at the same time, most of whom were still living a quarter century later. Isolated individuals might have been confused, but 500 people are not likely to hallucinate at the same time. Then he appeared to James, His brother, then to all the apostles, and last of all he appeared to the Apostle Paul.

Paul said he did not even deserve to be called an apostle, because he had persecuted the churchof God. Nevertheless, by the grace of God he became an apostle, and he worked harder than all the others. Whether, then, it was Paul or the others or I, whether it was then or now, this gospel is what they preached, and it is what the Church has preached for 2000 years, and this is the gospel that you believe.

The Importance of Holding on to the Gospel
Don’t let anything loosen your hold on this gospel. Let me show you why holding on is so important. There are people who say that there is no resurrection of the dead. When you’re dead, you’re done for. Your candle has gone out, and none can relight it. Before you believe that, be sure you can live with the consequences.

First, if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. Whatever happened to His body, it wasn’t brought back to life. And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith.

It goes even deeper. We who preach this gospel are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead.

It gets worse. If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. Furthermore, those Christian loved ones of yours who have died are lost. All those comforting words people spoke at the funeral were just so much hot air. If you need them to help you handle the grief and the loss, that’s your business, but they are nothing but an illusion, if there is no such thing as resurrection from the dead.

Here’s the stark truth: if only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than anyone else on earth. All this religious apparatus, all this piety, all this suffering, all the martyrs for the faith – all of it is just so much claptrap. If the resurrection of the dead is not real, go find another gig; this one is less than worthless.

But if God raised Jesus from the dead, everything, everything is changed. The power of God that reversed death on the first Easter is already at work in the affairs of mankind and especially in the Church.

Jesus Christ and the New Humanity
The reason Christians believe that the resurrection of the dead is real is that Jesus Christ has indeed been raised from the dead. He is the prototype, so to speak, of what those who die will some day experience. Jesus is the beginning of a new humanity. The Bible says Adam was the beginning of humanity as we know it; and thanks to him death is our inevitable lot in life.

We can think of it this way: Since death came through a man, Adam, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man, Jesus Christ. For as descendants of Adam all die, so in solidarity with Christ by faith all will be made alive.

But it doesn’t happen all at once. It is each in his own turn: Christ, the prototype was first; then, when he comes again to the earth, those who belong to him will be raised from the dead. Then the end of the present creation will come, when Christ hands over the kingdom to God the Father after he has destroyed all dominion, authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death.

If you will indulge me for a minute, I’d like to personalize what I have been saying. If there is no resurrection, why have I spent my life the way I have? All my worldly ambitions died that December night in my 17^th year, when Christ called me to the ministry. In the intervening years I have been aware of the material rewards of business, law, and medicine. I often feel attraction to worldly pleasure and the lure of ambition? In a sense I have to die every day to those worldly ambitions and pleasures; and you are my compensation. I glory over you in Christ Jesus our Lord. But if I have done this for merely human reasons, what have I gained? I would say that if the dead are not raised, then “Let us eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die.”

But Christ has risen from death to an indestructible life in a glorified body. The Church represents Him, imperfectly but certainly; and its tens of thousands of local expression all over the earth erupt into our world like so many crocuses, heralding the coming of eternal spring for the human family. That is worth many sacrifices, greater than any we have ever made or will likely be called on to make.

The Resurrection Body
But back to our theme! Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the prototype, so to speak, of what those who die will some day experience. Jesus is the beginning of a new humanity. But someone may ask, “How are the dead raised?” What does a resurrection body look like? I’d like to give you three answers, but none of them is scientific. They appeal to your faith and imagination.

Think first of a garden or a flowerbox. Let’s say you start from scratch by planting seeds – tomato seeds, nasturtium seeds, that kind of thing. If you leave the seeds in their packet, they never will change, and you’ll never have tomatoes or nasturtiums. You have to put them in the ground if you want fruits and vegetables. But the seed you put into the ground doesn’t look anything like the thing that grows up out of the ground.

The body that God raises from the dead will be like that. In several important ways, it will be as different from your present body as a nasturtium is different from the seed it came from – and much more beautiful.

Let’s get away from agriculture and use a different illustration. All flesh is not the same: Men have one kind of flesh, animals have another, birds another and fish another. There are also heavenly bodies like stars and there are earthly bodies like giraffes; but the splendor of the heavenly bodies is one kind – stars twinkle, and we like that – and the splendor of the earthly bodies is another – giraffes have color and long legs and necks, and we like that. The sun has one kind of splendor, the moon another and the stars another; and star differs from star in splendor.

The point is this: our present bodies, even though they are doomed to die, are splendid things with their opposable thumbs and genetic mysteries. But our resurrection bodies will have a different splendor.

For example, the body that is buried is perishable, it will be raised imperishable; it is buried in dishonor in that it has already begun to decay and quickly becomes useless for human purposes, it will be raised in glory; it is buried in weakness, the ultimate weakness, it will be raised in power; it is buried a natural body, it will be raised a spiritual body. That doesn’t mean we come back to life as ghosts; it means that we come back to life with a new body, fully animated by the Holy Spirit.

Here is a third way to look at this. Let’s go back to our comparison between Adam and Christ. Adam was the beginning of humanity as we know it; and thanks to him death is our inevitable lot in life. Jesus is the beginning of a new humanity. Genesis 2:7 says that “the first man Adam became a living being.” That was a wonderful gift; it’s great to be alive. Jesus Christ, on the other hand is a life-giving spirit, an even more wonderful gift. He doesn’t just have life, He can give life.

Here’s the point. Just as we have borne the likeness of the earthly man, Adam, so shall we bear the likeness of the man from heaven, Jesus Christ. If we are going to do that, we need new bodies. Mere flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdomof God. The perishable cannot inherit the imperishable.

The Resurrection Hope
There is an unexpected wrinkle in this story. There’s not a lot I can say about it. It is a mystery. It is this. We will not all die. Who knows? Maybe ours will be the blessed generation that will be spared death when Jesus Christ returns to the earth.

But even then, we will all be changed – in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. When that last trumpet sounds and rings down the curtain on the old creation, the great miracle will occur: the dead will be raised imperishable, and those who died and those who escape death will be changed. For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality.

Then, eternal spring will begin. Then the saying that is written will come true: “Death has been swallowed up in victory.” “Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?” There will be dancing in the graveyards of earth. Thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

The Pastoral Center of Gravity
The power that raised Jesus from death to indestructible life in a glorified body is at work in the affairs of mankind and especially in the Church. God has given to our “great and troubled country that yearns so to be good” (Peggy Noonan) a demonstration of His power just in time for Easter.

By now, we have all heard the story of Ashley Smith and Brian Nichols in Atlanta. I read part of the transcript of her testimony, which she gave to reporters in her lawyer’s office.

She described how Nichols, who had killed four people earlier that day, bound her wrists with masking tape and her ankles with masking tape and an extension cord. At one point they went into her room, when Ashley asked him if she could read.

“He said, ‘What do you want to read?’

“‘Well, I have a book in my room.’ So I went and got it. I got my Bible. And I got a book called The Purpose-Driven Life. I turned it to the chapter that I was on that day. It was Chapter 33. And I started to read the first paragraph of it. After I read it, he said, ‘Stop, will you read it again?’

“I say, ‘Yeah, I’ll read it again.’ So I read it again to him.”

I thought you might like to hear what the first paragraph says. “We serve God by serving others. The world defines greatness in terms of power, possessions, prestige, and position. If you can demand service from others, you’ve arrived. In our self-serving culture with its me-first mentality, acting like a servant is not a popular concept” (257).

Maybe, someday, we will find out why Brian Nichols wanted Ashley to read that paragraph again. The most striking thing to me about that wonderful story is Ashley’s ability to keep her wits about her and serve Brian Nichols, when she was powerless physically to resist him. She actually cooked him a pancake breakfast. She also encouraged him to let her see her daughter the next day, and she encouraged him to give himself up. The killing in Atlanta was stopped by a weak, young Christian woman who became a servant to the killer.

In that same chapter are two short paragraphs that Ashley lived out in a powerful way. “Are you available to God anytime? Can he mess up your plans without you becoming resentful? As a servant, you don’t get to pick and choose when or where you will serve. Being a servant means giving up the right to control your schedule and allowing God to interrupt it whenever he needs to.

“If you will remind yourself at the start of every day that you are God’s servant, interruptions won’t frustrate you as much, because your agenda will be whatever God wants to bring into your life. Servants see interruptions as divine appointments for ministry and are happy for the opportunity to practice serving” (The Purpose-Driven Life, 259).

Christ, who died for our sins according to the scriptures, was buried, and on the third day was raised according to the scriptures, is Lord. Christ is Victor. Hold on to Christ. Join yourself to others here or elsewhere who are holding on to Christ and in whom the power that raised Jesus from death is at work. Stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.