April 17, 2014
When Jesus died on the cross, His work was done, and the Scripture says so; our salvation was won. He said, “It is finished.”1 Finished!
When Mary Magdalene started to touch Him when He appeared to her by the tomb, He said, “Don’t touch Me yet, for I have not yet been to My Father.”2
He didn’t have to roll the stone away to get out, because He had a body which could have walked right through the stone! Why then did the angel have to roll away the stone?3 So that His disciples and the whole world could see that He was no longer there. The stone wasn’t rolled away so Jesus could get out; He could have walked right through the mountain or the stone. It was rolled away so that others could see that He was gone and He was really resurrected.
Knowing how much Mary Magdalene loved Him, He waited so that He could see her. She stayed there and wept, and when she saw this man whom she thought was the gardener, she said, “Please tell me where they’ve taken Him! They’ve taken away my Lord and I know not where they have laid Him.” And He said, “Woman, why weepest thou?” After she gave Him a good look, she realized it was Jesus. So she started to embrace Him, but He said, “Wait, I haven’t yet gone to the Father.”4
We don’t know exactly why, but He was to go to the Father first. Perhaps because the Father wanted to be the first to embrace Him, the first to receive Him, the first to honor Him! It certainly was a matter of honoring the Father, the Son returning to the Father in heaven from whence He had come. But when He came back, which He did very shortly, He embraced them all, and He ate with them, drank with them, read the Scriptures with them, talked with them, and cooked for them.5 For 40 days He was seen by over 500 different people!6
Imagine the love of Christ, the compassion of Christ! He could have gone up with the Father and stayed there, but He wanted to come back and encourage them to prove that He was still alive and that He had really risen from the dead. He appeared to His disciples numerous times, and a total of over 500 people saw Jesus after His resurrection, so that it would be firmly confirmed that He was no longer dead and had been resurrected, so that the people would really know it and believe it.
He was willing to try to help convince some of the reasoners who were walking down the road to Emmaus, still wondering about the Scriptures, to show them that He was really the Messiah. He reasoned the Scriptures with them as they walked along. He was able to conceal His identity and convince them that Jesus was the Messiah, although they didn’t realize it was Jesus walking with them. Then they invited Him in to have supper with them, and as it was the custom to invite the visitor to break the bread and pray, He did so, and at that time revealed Himself to them and they were astonished.7
He spent 40 days and 40 nights on earth—encouraging His disciples and teaching them and encouraging their faith, proving that He had risen from the dead, so there would be no doubt about it. He walked through doors. He appeared and disappeared. He time-traveled or space-traveled. He did a lot of miracles while He was back here from the dead in His resurrection body. He did some very amazing things, but He also showed Himself to still be quite human. He ate with them, He drank with them, and He even cooked for them.
He walked through solid locked doors to prove that He was really a resurrected Lord and had a supernatural, miraculous, resurrection body. And also, I believe, to demonstrate to us what we are going to be like when we are resurrected from the dead, to encourage us.8—David Brandt Berg
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What happens when a Christian dies is not a matter of speculation, but of certainty based on truth. Something tremendous happened in history that has taken the issue of life after death out of the realm of conjecture and moved it into verified fact. Paul openly and clearly states the reason for his confidence. “We know that the one who raised the Lord Jesus from the dead will also raise us with Jesus and present us with you in his presence.”9 The resurrection of Jesus Christ is a precedent for the resurrection of all those who are in Christ. In other words, our future resurrection is based on the historicity of Christ’s resurrection. The resurrection of Jesus Christ is not a peripheral issue, but is central and crucial to the Christian faith. … The fact that Jesus is alive and makes His home in us doesn’t only change our perspective on the next life, but in this life as well, because until we are ready to face death, we will never really know how to live freely. The Christian faith is not about escapism, but about life here and now, lived in the love, strength and wisdom of the presence of Christ within us. In this, we have the assurance of the One who was raised from the dead raising us up to our eternal home with Him.—Charles Price
*
Sacrifice ceases to be a gauge for love when it becomes an instrument of exchange, part of a system of reciprocity in which persons are duly compensated for costs incurred. This is why Jesus states, “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.”10 In laying down his life at the Cross, Jesus offered himself in sacrifice of suffering that cannot be compensated (certainly not by us). Only the sacrifice of a suffering that cannot be compensated and does not ask to be compensated is a true gauge of love in a fallen world. … In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus beseeched the Father to let this cup pass from him if it were possible. But there was no other way. Our sin demanded the ultimate cost. It is a cost our Lord willingly paid. He paid it at the Cross. He bears the marks of the Cross to this day.—William A. Dembski
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Do not abandon yourselves to despair. We are the Easter people and hallelujah is our song.—Pope John Paul II
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A man who was completely innocent offered himself as a sacrifice for the good of others, including his enemies, and became the ransom of the world. It was a perfect act.—Mahatma Gandhi
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The resurrection completes the inauguration of God’s kingdom. … It is the decisive event demonstrating that God’s kingdom really has been launched on earth as it is in heaven. … The message of Easter is that God’s new world has been unveiled in Jesus Christ and that you’re now invited to belong to it.—N. T. Wright
*
Christian hope is faith looking ahead to the fulfillment of the promises of God, as when the Anglican burial service inters the corpse ‘in sure and certain hope of the Resurrection to eternal life, through our Lord Jesus Christ.’ Christian hope is a certainty, guaranteed by God himself. Christian hope expresses knowledge that every day of his life, and every moment beyond it, the believer can say with truth, on the basis of God’s own commitment, that the best is yet to come.—J. I. Packer11
*
He, the Life of all, our Lord and Savior, did not arrange the manner of his own death lest He should seem to be afraid of some other kind. No. He accepted and bore upon the cross a death inflicted by others, and those others His special enemies, a death which to them was supremely terrible and by no means to be faced; and He did this in order that, by destroying even this death, He might Himself be believed to be the Life, and the power of death be recognized as finally annulled. A marvelous and mighty paradox has thus occurred, for the death which they thought to inflict on Him as dishonor and disgrace has become the glorious monument to death’s defeat.—Athanasius of Alexandria
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I don’t care to inquire why they cannot believe an earthly body can be in heaven, while the whole earth is suspended on nothing.—Augustine of Hippo
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No tabloid will ever print the startling news that the mummified body of Jesus of Nazareth has been discovered in old Jerusalem. Christians have no carefully embalmed body enclosed in a glass case to worship. Thank God, we have an empty tomb. The glorious fact that the empty tomb proclaims to us is that life for us does not stop when death comes. Death is not a wall, but a door.—Peter Marshall
*
How wonderful, how marvelous is Your love for us, dear Savior, to think You were willing to do all that and go through that for us! You didn’t really want to. You didn’t desire it, but “nevertheless not My will, but Thine be done.”12 Not my will, but Thine be done. May these be the words and the thought and intent of the hearts of all of us.
Thank You for Your love, for being willing to go through all that. What a day of rejoicing that must have been when You rose and You realized it was all over. You had won the victory, the world was saved! You had accomplished Your mission. You had gone through the horrors of hell for us and death, agony, all of it, and it was over.
You rose in victory, joy, liberty, freedom from Your enemies and from the hands of men and the cruelty of men, never to die again. So that You could redeem us as well from the same, and prevent our having to go through it. “O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? The sting of death is sin. But who hath delivered us from the body of this death? I thank the Lord through the blood of Jesus Christ.”13 Thank You, Lord, for that glorious victory! In Jesus’ name, amen.—David Brandt Berg
Published on Anchor April 2014. Read by Jon Marc.
1 John 19:30.
2 John 20:17.
3 Matthew 28:2.
4 John 20:11–17.
5 Acts 1:3.
6 1 Corinthians 15:6.
7 Luke 24:13–31.
8 Luke 24:30–43; John 20:19, 26, 30; Philippians 3:21.
9 2 Corinthians 4:14 NIV.
10 John 15:13.
11 Adapted.
12 Luke 22:42.
13 1 Corinthians 15:55–56; Romans 7:24–25.
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