Thoughts on Easter and the Resurrection?

Answered by Randy Alcorn:

Our future resurrection, of course, is solidly grounded on Christ's past resurrection. No wonder the devil is so adamantly opposed to Easter, and the historicity of Christ's resurrection, and all it means (including Satan's doom). In the late 1990s, a group of scholars assembled to evaluate whether Jesus actually said the things attributed to him by the Gospel writers. Although they employed remarkably subjective criteria in their evaluation of Scripture, members of the self-appointed "Jesus Seminar" were widely quoted by the media as authorities on the Christian faith.

Marcus Borg, a Jesus Seminar leader, said this of Christ's resurrection: "As a child, I took it for granted that Easter meant that Jesus literally rose from the dead. I now see Easter very differently. For me, it is irrelevant whether or not the tomb was empty. Whether Easter involved something remarkable happening to the physical body of Jesus is irrelevant."

As a child, Borg was right. As an adult—though considered a spokesman for Christianity—he couldn't be more wrong. What Borg calls irrelevant—the physical resurrection of Christ's body—the apostle Paul considered absolutely essential to the Christian faith. Paul wrote to the Corinthians, "If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. . . . [and] we are to be pitied more than all men" (1 Corinthians 15:17, 19).

The physical resurrection of Jesus Christ is the cornerstone of redemption—both for mankind and for the earth. Indeed, without Christ's resurrection and what it means—an eternal future for fully restored human beings dwelling on a fully restored Earth—there is no Christianity.

John Updike wrote of Christ's resurrection,

"Make no mistake: if he rose at all it was as His body; if the cells' dissolution did not reverse, the molecules reknit, the amino acids rekindle, the Church will fail. Let us not mock God with metaphor, analogy, sidestepping transcendence; making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the faded credulity of earlier ages; let us walk through the door."

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