The Resurrected Christ

What is our hope?

Future glory with Christ. Discuss the hopelessness of the world during the NT period and all of the theories going around. Moyer Hubbard writes: “The Homeric tales popularized the idea of Hades, the cheerless underworld where faceless souls wandered drearily after death. Plato taught that the soul of the noble philosopher would survive death and attain perfect knowledge (Phaedo)…Epicureans were known for their metaphysical materialism and their absolute denial of any kind of postmortem existence. In the words of Epicurus (341–270 BC): “Death is nothing to us; for the body, when it has been resolved into its elements, has no feeling, and that which has no feeling is nothing for us” (Epicurus, Principal Doctrines 2; in Diogenes Laertius, Lives 10.139 LCL). The notion of complete extinction surfaces in other forms as well, quite apart from Epicurean influence” (121).

What gives us hope?

The resurrection of Christ.

What is hope?

A confident expectation.

This is the stark contrast between Christian hope and hope of any other sort. Christian hope, far from being “wishful thinking,” is rooted in the person, character, and working of God. The Christian confidently gives the “amen” to the blessing of God by Paul in Ephesians 1:11-14 when he writes: “In him (Christ) we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will, so that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory. In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory.” Those three elements that we just noted are on full display here: our confident expectation concerning the future inheritance is rooted firmly in the person, character, and working of God.

Our concern this evening is with the person and working of God, with particular attention given to his working through Christ (by means of Christ) upon the cross. Our goal is to accentuate the event as a historical reality. We are not just concerned about the emotional fervor of religiosity tonight, nor are we overly worried about metaphysical arguments concerning the existence of God. We are primarily concerned about demonstrating from the earliest documentation that Christ did indeed live, die (by crucifixion), that this death was believed to serve a sacrificial purpose by the earliest followers, and that he rose from the dead and was seen by many eye witnesses.

That is our real focus:

The eyewitnesses

And it is important to note that the earliest Christian preaching focused in on this eyewitness element as well. Peter, on the Day of Pentecost [50 days after the Passover, and during this period of time Luke records that Jesus “presented himself to them (the apostles) after his suffering by many proofs, appearing to them during forty days and speaking about the kingdom of God.” Notice the focus on the proofs and the reliability of the testimony of the apostles. They saw him], he appealed to two kinds of witnesses: the witness of Scripture and the contemporary witnesses to the events.

Concerning that second type of witness he stated in Acts 2:22-24 “Men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs that God did through him in your midst, as you yourselves know (notice the appeal to the crowd as being a witness of these events)—this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men. God raised him up, loosing the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it.” He goes on to say again in verse 32: “This Jesus God raised up, and of that we all are witnesses.” Our hope is rooted in the working of God through Jesus on the cross and the resurrection that were historical events with many eyewitnesses.

But, I know what some of you are thinking: “Acts was written in about 62 A.D. by Luke a travel companion to Paul, not Peter. That puts it about 30 years after the crucifixion, and thus gives about three decades for historical events to develop into popular myth.” Two things about that: 1. Church history places Peter in Rome at about the same time as Paul’s own Roman imprisonment. We should not think that Luke, being the reliable historian that he has so proven to be (the more archaeologist dig, the more reliable they find Luke to be) would not have availed himself of such a valuable witness to these events.

2. Let’s take the premise for granted and set Luke’s record of the Acts to the side (which, by the way, is completely unnecessary, since myths generally do not develop and gain wide acceptance over decades but centuries because you’ve got to have enough time for most of the witnesses to die off, but this is not always the case), it is quite easy to trace the church proclamation concerning the resurrected Christ to not just a few decades from the event (which historically speaking, is impressive in itself), but to within three years of it. This is certainly not enough time for event to become myth and myth to become legend.

First, let’s point to a few arguments surrounding the

Gospel narratives

that point to an early Christian tradition surrounding the resurrection, then we will get into the earliest Christian confession that we have recorded.

Robert Stein provides a number of “powerful arguments that can be raised to support the fact that the Christian tradition of the empty tomb is very early and that the tomb in which the body of Jesus was placed was indeed empty” (10). We’ll just highlight three:

1. “The story of the empty tomb is found in all four gospels…The very variation in the different narratives of the empty tomb, which are in one sense embarrassing, argues that these accounts stem from separate and independent traditions, all of which witness to the tomb’s being empty” (10). Why, in this case, is some variation a good thing (keep in my the notion of an eyewitness account)?

2. “The fact that the witnesses to the empty tomb were women whose witness was disallowed by the Jews makes an apologetic fabrication of the account unlikely. It is most difficult to understand why the Church would have created a legend of an empty tomb in which the chief witnesses were women, since women were invalid witnesses according to Jewish principles of evidence” (10).

3. “It is difficult to understand why a Jewish polemic against the empty tomb would have arisen if the account of the empty tomb had developed as late as the critics claim. Later there would have been no point in arguing against this ‘legend’ since so many things could have happened in the intervening years to nullify its validity. The development of such a polemic and the fact that it admitted the emptiness of the tomb indicates that the account of the empty tomb had from the very beginning an important place in the early Church’s proclamation of the resurrection” (11).

This then brings us to the incredibly

Early Christian creed

that not only spoke of the death, burial, and resurrection, but makes clear the sacrificial element of the crucifixion as well. It also demonstrates the importance of the eyewitness testimony. This creed is recorded by Paul in 1 Cor 15:3-7 (it is worth noting that even the traditionally skeptical scholar accepts that Paul wrote this letter to the Corinthians).

Now, it is important to note that this is indeed a creed that Paul has received and is reiterating to the Christians in Corinth. The first thing that points to this is the language of “receiving” that Paul uses in verse 3. What Paul teaches here is not his own message, or his views that he has somehow worked out himself. As Morris writes: “he is passing on what had been told him” (198). Taylor notes: “The language of handing down and receiving has long been recognized as technical vocabulary drawn from Paul’s Jewish heritage related to the reception and transmission of traditions” (371).

Habermas points to several other points that indicate that this is indeed a creed. He notes: “the text’s parallelism and stylized content indicate it’s a creed. The original text uses Cephas for Peter, which is his Aramaic name. In fact, the Aramaic itself could indicate a very early origin. The creed uses several other primitive phrases that Paul would not customarily use, like ‘the Twelve,’ ‘the third day,’ ‘he was raised,’ and others. The use of certain words is similar to Aramaic and Mishnaic Hebrew means of narration” (Case for Christ 229). All of these things point to an early date and a Hebrew origin.

We should note that it is not just the opinion of conservative scholars that this was an early Christian creed. Joachim Jeremias refers to this creed as “the earliest tradition of all” and Ulrich Wilckens says that it “indubitably goes back to the oldest phase of all in the history of primitive Christianity” (Case for Christ 230).

The creed form should not be all that surprising for us either, once we consider the historical situation. In a period of history where writing materials were quite expensive it was far more common for things to be passed on orally, which would involve extensive memorization. Keener discusses the notion of “traditioning” where Jewish teachers would pass on their teachings to their students, who would in turn pass them on to their own students. Their favorite method for passing on this tradition was memorization. Keener notes that “memorization was a central feature of ancient education.” He goes on to point out that in the first generation the tradition would be very accurate with some suggesting that the tradition in 1 Cor 15:3-7 would have been a verbatim citation (hold onto that notion when we talk about when Paul received this tradition and from whom he received it).

The question quickly becomes:

“When was this tradition handed down to Paul?”

If we accept the early date of Jesus’s crucifixion of 30 A.D., this places Paul’s conversion around 32 A.D. There is a span of about three years before Paul actually goes and meets with the apostles, which would place this meeting in 35 A.D. Blomberg, in the Case for Christ, writes: “At some point along there, Paul was given this creed, which had already been formulated and was being used in the early church.” This means that this creed didn’t develop over the course of multiple generations or even multiple decades, but less than five years. Why would this point be important for apologetic issues? It is strong evidence against the “later mythology” arguments because at the very least it can be demonstrated that Christians believed in the resurrection within two years of the event itself (though the Gospel record clearly demonstrates that within the week the disciples, though sluggish to believe, accepted the truth of the resurrection).

Now as concerns from whom he received the tradition, the most likely source is the apostle Peter and James the brother of Jesus. In Gal 1:18-19 Paul talks about a meeting that he had with the Peter and James three years after his conversion on the road to Damascus. The term that Paul uses to describe this “visit” is the Gk. ἱστορέω which has the meaning of something like “visit and get information; inquire into.” Paul didn’t just go and shoot the breeze, he was, as Habermas says, making “an investigative inquiry” (Case for Christ 231). Paul either received or simply confirmed the creed with two prominent figures in the creed itself. Concerning this, Pinchas Lapide states that the evidence in support of the creed is “so strong that it may be considered as a statement of eyewitness” (Case for Christ 231).

Two things are affirmed right away in verse 3.

1. Christ died for our sins. 2. This atoning and sacrificial death was “in accordance with the scriptures.”

The first point is a truth that Paul set out to make perfectly clear to the Corinthians in this letter. Paul has been talking about Jesus’s death as a death for others throughout 1 Corinthians. In 5:7 he said “For our paschal lamb, Christ, has been sacrificed.” That text points to Jesus’s death as having a clear blood sacrifice element to it. In 6:20 he told the Corinthians: “For you were bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your body.” It is also perfectly in line with the early Christian sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, to which Paul also appeals in this letter in 11:23-24 where he passes on to them again the tradition of Christ’s words: “This is my body, which is for you.” So, the early Church, within three years of the events of the cross passed on a creed that confirmed that Christ’s death was vicarious (it was for our benefit).

This second point (that it was in accordance to the scriptures) emphasizes the notion that this was not an afterthought or that the divine plan had somehow failed when Jesus was crucified, but that the cross itself was the plan of God and that this was foretold long before the event itself.

Two further points are affirmed in verse 4.

1. Jesus’s burial. 2. He was raised on the third day, again, in accordance with the scriptures.

Taken together with the previous points, Jesus’s burial underscores the reality of his death. As Mark Taylor writes: “Death and burial combine to emphasize the finality and the reality of his death.” There was no doubt among the early Christian’s that Jesus did in fact die upon the cross, and his burial is evidence of this (notice how his burial is mentioned in all four Gospels. The reality of his death upon the cross is a central component of the Gospel).

Now there has been considerable debate concerning the fact that the

NT authors do not state explicitly that the tomb was empty

There is an easy explanation for this. First of all, those in the ancient world who accepted the notion of a resurrection (just the general resurrection of the dead) believed that it would be a physical resurrection (not some nonsense about a spiritual resurrection or something like that). Thus, if the body is physically raised and people see the body, then it cannot still be in the tomb. Thiselton, writing on the phrase “he was buried” states that the role of this phrase in the tradition Paul is passing down here “is to assert the double reality of the genuine death and authentic resurrection of Jesus Christ” (1193).

The verb translated “he was raised” is in the passive voice. This would be what is called a divine passive and points to God’s hand at work. As in all of the NT, Scripture does not say that Jesus raised himself from the dead but that God raised him from the dead (it was the Father’s vindication of the Son, his exalting the one who humbled himself).

Getting into verse 5 the creed highlights

the eyewitnesses to the historical events

First is the appearance to Peter (Cephas). Why include Peter first? His prominence as an apostle. Notice also that the apostles put an emphasis on their being first-hand eyewitnesses to these things when they made a defense of the Gospel. Peter wrote in 2 Peter 1:16-18, speaking of the Transfiguration: “For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we had been eyewitnesses of his majesty. For he received honor and glory from God the Father when that voice was conveyed to him by the Majestic Glory, saying, ‘This is my Son, my beloved, with whom I am well pleased.’ We ourselves heard this voice come from heaven, while we were with him on the holy mountain.” In that passage he begins defending the reality of the second coming that false teachers ridiculed the notion of, but notice how he plainly states that he was an eyewitness of the glorification of Christ (he saw and heard).

We go from Peter to the twelve. Now, when he saws “the twelve” to whom does he refer? Judas wasn’t there, if the reference is to the appearance on the evening of the Resurrection, then Thomas was also absent. He is using a general term to refer to the apostles of Jesus.

From the twelve we move to a much larger group of 500. The fact that this creed is very early makes all the more difference when we recognize that this group is not mentioned elsewhere, and yet their having witnessed the resurrected Jesus is important for apologetic reasons. One of the arguments against the resurrection is the hallucination theory that suggest that those who saw Jesus simply believed they saw Jesus and were all hallucinating at the same time. The thing about this theory is that that is not how hallucinations work at all. One person might hallucinate something, but 500 all at once do not hallucinate the same thing.

Paul bolsters this evidence by noting that many of these witnesses are still alive. Since 1 Corinthians was written in 55 A.D. it is not unreasonable to suggest that many of this 500 would still be alive, and it gives further apologetic credence to Paul’s claim. The way that he talks about their still being alive is important though. There was a terseness in the way that he spoke of Jesus’s death. Jesus died. However, as he speaks about those who have died in this group he uses the idiom they have “fallen asleep.” To say that they have “fallen asleep” points to the temporary nature of death for the Christian on account of the work of Christ. Morris writes: “Death, which is an antagonist no-one can withstand and which was viewed with horror by most people in the ancient world, has become for the Christian nothing more than sleep” (199).

The second name on the list is James, who is identified as James the Lord’s brother by most scholars. Why include James in this list, if you were to hazard a guess? His prominence in the early Church. He would be the leader of the church in Jerusalem in the middle of the first century (LBD). Also recall that Jesus’s brothers and sisters did not initially believe and were actually trying to stop Jesus’s ministry. He went from an opponent to a firm and influential believer. Something must have happened (it seems probable that Jesus’s appearance to James made a believer out of him). Then we are told that Jesus appeared to all of the apostles. The “all” is the important aspect here to demonstrate that not one was missing. There is a uniformity within the apostolic witness. They teach the same Gospel and they all witnessed the same Jesus of Nazareth.

Verse 8, though not part of the original creed, is another appeal to an eyewitness of the resurrected Christ, namely, Paul himself. The phrase by which he refers to himself is quite difficult. The term translated “abnormally born” means something like “premature birth” and can refer to both a still born child or an aborted child. Taylor’s note here is wonderful and I think provides the best explanation: “The simplest contextual explanation is that Paul employs the metaphor of the stillborn child in order to highlight the grace and the power of God…The image of a stillborn child is an especially powerful image in an argument for resurrection” (376).

Now that we see that very early on they were confessing that which they claimed to have seen firsthand, what is left is to determine if you think them to be reliable eyewitnesses. The eyewitnesses professed the same Jesus and concurred concerning the integral events. So, do you think they’re reliable? One test that we can give is if they had something to gain from going through the world and confessing what they had seen. Let me read to you from Eusebius how these three men died:

Many will suffer and die for beliefs and ideals, but no one will suffer and die for that which he/she knows to be a lie. They died for what they saw and heard and confessed, and they stood to profit no worldly benefit for their testimony).