Resurrection Life Today

By Rev. Chris Baker

Resurrection. How improbable! The Greeks scoffed at it. Returning to life from the dead. How unsettling! The Jews were angered by it. New life after life. How surprising! It gave wings to the heels of the apostles, and it made everything in the world different.

The world has experienced nothing more profound or more difficult than the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. To this day, when confronted with the news of His resurrection people will explain it away, deny it, challenge it, puzzle over it, wonder at it, and sometimes receive it. But no one will or can ignore it. Atheists may attempt to annihilate it as mere artifice by the Church, and pantheists clambering to cosmic consciousness may conceive to conscript it for their service, and post-moderns may suppose it to be passé power-mongering, but the resurrection stands uniquely against all the machinations of men…and men know it. It is a world-shattering, world-shaping incident. The resurrection of Jesus Christ shouts that death does not have final say; not today, not ever.
Some people treat the resurrection as a merely historical event or as a useful theological construct to keep the faithful faithful. But certainly there is much more than being simply a proposition or one more religious event. The resurrection has changed the rules of engagement with life.

The Bible speaks almost off-handedly about the believer “dying with Christ” and being “raised with Christ.” Such language is not literary device used by the ancient writer. There is a power and an effectiveness in the resurrection that enables us to live today. Today, we are “raised with Christ” and today we have the spirit of resurrection dwelling in us. Perceptions of life and reality can no longer remain untouched and unchallenged. Purposes and motivations can no longer go unquestioned now that there is much more than what daily meets our fleshly eye.

The resurrection of Jesus Christ is the vigor and vitality of a creative Western civilization. Through the last two thousand years, Western Europe has experienced a series of renaissances because the resurrection has injected into life an energetic creative hope; a sort of sanctified restlessness. Such sanctified restlessness should impact our perceptions, our actions and our motivations.

Resurrected Perceptions

“So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.” (Romans 6:11)

The general discourse of the New Testament expects that we will view all things through resurrected eyes. Of course, this is a radical change from mankind’s real condition. William Blake, 18th century British poet, artist and mystic, noted well the deformity of our perceptions.

“This life's dim windows of the soul
Distorts the heavens from pole to pole
And leads you to believe a lie
When you see with, not through, the eye.”

Mankind can take the most beautiful and most wholesome things and create from them the ugliest gargoyles and monstrous idols. But through the resurrection it is not only paradise that is restored. In Christ, we have wholesome vision restored. It means that we can perceive life more clearly and accurately. Viewing all things through resurrected eyes means that we place the proper value on the things that God values. And we more readily resist false values.

Racism is a good example here. We love diversity in floral arrangement, musical expression, literary achievement and zoos. But if someone has a different skin color, the deformed perceptions of man deems that to be a mark of inferiority, or at least an excuse for enmity. This of course, produces prejudice and results in estrangement, alienation and, sometimes, death…quite literally.

If the death and resurrection of Christ are the means of salvation for all men and women, then where does skin color enter in to it? If there is “no Jew or Greek” in Christ, then what place among us has prejudice against white, brown, green or blue skin? Of all the people on the planet who should be color blind, it is those who have been raised up in Christ. This is what it means to see through resurrected eyes.
Obviously, the example can apply to economic status, political status, educational accomplishment or perhaps dozens of other false distinctions that people use to separate themselves from one another.

Imagine for one mad moment living in a city where everyone viewed one another with dignity, respect and appreciation. Such is a wholesome resurrected kind of vision. How much do you want to bet that the CSI team would go out of business for lack of anything to do?

Resurrected Actions

“If the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you.” (Romans 8:11)

We are to engage the world with resurrected perceptions and through resurrection enabled bodies. By this we mean living today as Jesus lived in His day because His spirit is living in us and giving resurrection power to us. The Bible talks about “the Spirit that raised Jesus giving life to our mortal bodies.” What would life be like do you think if the character of people’s interactions was kindness and service? What might life look like if all our interactions with people were full-fledged compassion and understanding? We might actually care for our neighbor’s property by vigorously resisting the municipal practice of imminent domain. We might protect others’ liberties and marriages and children by slowing our lives down a bit and keeping to the speed limit in a residential zone.

To engage the world through a resurrected body means that all the wicked tendencies we fight with no longer have the dominant influence in our actions and all the wholesome, helpful, and loving things that we want to do we actually do.

It was this kind of compassion and understanding that moved Americans to help rebuild villages and homes after a giant tsunami wiped them out. It was the same compassion and understanding that caused people in this nation to give aid to the Katrina victims in New Orleans.

In the city of Madison Wisconsin, college students have an annual party that leave sections of the city a complete mess. The party crowd leaves in its wake trash and dishevelment representing a significant cost to the city for clean-up, and a poor impression for those visiting. Last year, a local TV station sent film crews the day after to document the disaster only to depart puzzled and without a story, because the streets and parks were clean and neat. One university church decided to attend the party with the sole objective of cleaning up after the party goers, just to be a blessing to the city. Now, that’s living out resurrected actions.

Resurrection Motivations

“If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above.” (Col. 3:1)

I long ago lost count of how many things I do with selfish intent. They became innumerable and an ever-growing burden of condemnation. I’m no different than anyone else I’ve ever met.

Mankind’s broken motivations are manifest in how parents love their children to look good for others or how they fix their kids mistakes in order to have a hassle free existence or to feel better about themselves. Parents give their kids an education with hopes that the kid will fulfill the parents’ unsatisfied dreams they carry with them in their daily lives. We take care of our houses and lawns to make our neighbors look like the slovenly fools we think they are. We do a kindness to someone in the church in order to be considered for some near future reward like landing a sale or meeting a commission quota. Our ruined motivations have the stamp of our own image all over them. The result is architecture to the glory of pride, and business success to the glory of our name, and consumerism to the glory of looking good at school, and church attendance to the glory of a better portfolio.

When the resurrection of Christ reshapes our affections and motivations the result is freer and fresher and far more appealing. A sort of transcendence is ushered in to what we do. For example, instead of education that is driven by one’s economic hopes or power status, resurrected motivations result in education that is designed for human ennoblement; to help a human to be more human, and to delight in goodness and beauty. Instead of sports being an all consuming corporate venture that everyone supports at great expense, it becomes community and camaraderie mingled with a huge dose of gracious fun.

Georges Florovsky, late professor of Eastern Church History at Harvard University correctly observes that “a civilization declines when that creative impulse which originally brought it into existence loses its power and spontaneity.” The power and spontaneity that brought about Western civilization was the creative vigor that arose with the news of the resurrection of Christ. A decline in our day flows from an unimaginative malaise arising out of nihilistic philosophies that offer no hope. The dignity and creativity that we long for and that we have enjoyed in the past can be recovered and revitalized as Christians live out of a resurrection that is not simply an historic data point, but a resurrection that gives light to the mind, life to the mortal body and a transcendence to the motivations.

Rev. Chris Baker is Assistant Pastor of Heritage Presbyterian Church & Headmaster of Wildwood Christian School located in Wildwood, MO. A native of Illinois, Chris grew up in Libertyville and graduated from Southern Illinois University with a M.S. in Forest Ecology. He then attended Covenant Theological Seminary, earning a Master of Divinity in 1991. Chris served as pastor of Reformed Presbyterian Church in Duanesburg, NY, where he also taught at Schenectady Christian School. In 1998, Heritage called Rev. Baker to be the Assistant Pastor serving as Headmaster of Wildwood Christian School, which uses the facilities of Heritage.