Resurrection, Faith in Action!

[HKHaugan]

Resurrection, Faith in Action!

In our first session we dealt with knowing our spiritual latitude and longitude, our vertical and horizontal reality as individuals. As sinners we were born with a consciousness only of the horizontal. The vertical dimension was all speculation that ultimately ended up relying on whatever the culture defined as good as opposed to bad.

In our second session we delved into the meaning, history and reason for the Resurrection. Along comes Jesus slam bang into the middle of people's anxious and exhausting search for meaning and He says, “I will give you rest (Mt.11:28).” He claims to be the way to live, the truth to justify it and is the spiritual life that makes human life come alive and come alive forever (John 14:6).

In this third session we want to get more of the substance of the Resurrection.

Before we start, do you remember being kids, how we got on a teeter/totter also called a see-saw? It took two, one on either side of the long plank that hovered over a bar in the middle. When you both got on either end you pushed up and then the other went down. He would push up and you went down. Sometimes you would just sit, both with feet on the ground suspended and balanced. Then you'd start again. This went on for awhile until you tired and got off. A lot of our experience in life is like that see-saw. It's an up and down push between what you can see and what you can't see. What makes it work is the bar on which the plank rests. It is the balancing stable centerpiece that enables two weights to work together. Without two of you, you would be grounded.

The point?

There are two parts in us, our visible and invisible being. When the two are in balance they function right but when one does not function then neither functions. They're grounded. We need those two parts in place with the balance bar in the middle. We have a mind, heart and spirit. Sometimes we are all mind or all heart without the balance bar of the spirit. Then we are simply pawns in an internal cultural battle. But if we consider that where our spirit is, what we have faith in, then we are in balance.

So many philosophers and religious pundits have claimed to be the answer or have the answer to what material and spiritual existence is all about. No matter what system or who the philosopher or religious guru, only one person has emerged as the supreme definition of both divinity and humanity, Jesus. And why? He is the only one risen from the dead. His death and its definitive symbol---the Cross, His multi-witnessed Resurrection and the impact of His person on history cannot be denied.

Through four brief accounts of the Resurrection of Jesus and the scripturally recorded growth of the Jesus movement starting two thousand years ago, the world has been confronted generation after generation with these two factors that simply will not go away. One thing we want to make clear as go through this session is about the brevity of the accounts. They take up very little room in the Gospels. And that for a reason. The Resurrection of Jesus points to the life He lived, the teachings He gave and the reactions to Him by people in every human category. Every aspect of His life was the substance of the Resurrection. Our humanity has a new guidance system, a personal living platform for our thinking and our behavior. Jesus. His relational bearing in the face of religious persecution, hostility and indifference was completely unique. If we really assess Him we can't help but make the conclusion that everything He did was 100% human but with a 100% God inspiration. Therefore the Resurrection does not allow us to regard Jesus as just another historical teacher of wisdom with a proper mystical pedigree; untouchable, unknowable and unreachable. He has a God heart in a traceable ethnic family genealogy. He is a real historical figure with a confident inner balance and an outer relational personality, not a self-deluded hysterical 'wannabe.' He is historical not hysterical. He is history; its past, present and future. He was and is fully God and fully man.

So the question then is not whether a resurrection is possible or impossible. Given our world and scientific experience we can say no. People don't rise from the dead. But the issue is much deeper. It is not whether resurrection is real and provable. No, the question is, can you disprove the Resurrection of Jesus? Jesus is the One who was resurrected and for a purpose. What we have is the historical recollection recorded in Scripture and the effect of His Resurrection throughout history. But far more than that, the bottom line for Jesus was much deeper. It wasn't ultimately about seeing Him and experiencing Him physically but about what He rose for, what He wanted and how He lived. It was His love for us delinquents. It was not for physical cultural notoriety, possessions, power and stardom, but about one life giving guarantee, faith. He died and rose so we could experience faith to rise in Him and the life that proceeded from Him alone (John 20:29).

Do we believe Him in our mind, do we trust Him in our heart, do we have faith to act for Him in His name?

For Jesus the ultimate thing He is looking for is that belief, trust and faith in Him rest in the hearts of every individual. This is what the Cross and His death was all about---faith---personal faith and relational faith. Faith is the key that unlocks the gateway to all things unseen and to eternity. Faith in Jesus opens the door to what real love, real truth and real grace are, our eternal relationship with God.

The reason is it involves spirituality not physicality. The physical is God's gift for us to experience the spiritual. So life is not about what we can see but what we can't see. I go back to that basic reality about human experience. 100% of all we think and do is based on what we can't see, not on what we can see. So who or what can we trust when we are dealing with the unseen? He is the only one who has died and risen from death. He came from the unseen into the seen and back again. He was the perfect blend of the seen and the unseen. His Resurrection came by His faith. Scripture puts it clearly “So we fix our eyes not on what is seen but on what is unseen. What is seen is temporary. What is unseen is eternal (2Cor.4:18).”

OK, let's spell out the unseen. There is good and evil, the process of choices and decisions we make that will involve them, our inner desires, our search for identity, meaning and significance, the everyday activity of being a human being. Our plans, goals, judgments, assessments, evaluations summing up our mental processing. The attitudes we have both good and bad. Trust, love, hate, compassion, hope, fear, emotionality, all of it, round out how we act out when we're out and about. All of this is the realm of the unseen, the Spirit; spiritually grounded, instigated and initiated. All of the negative stuff is the bad and is summed up in the word sin. Sin is the blight the devil introduced that interrupted God's plan and separated us from Him (Gen.3). This is why we rest on the final truth of this statement: “We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.” That's what God said in Genesis, 'Let us make man in our image, in our likeness...(Genesis 1:26)'” and “...the Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and the man became a living being (Gen.2:7).” We are spiritual images of God placed in physical bodies to be in relationship with God.

But something spiritual happened.

The devil's sin tempted Adam. He chose it and lost his spiritual bearings with God, thus separating him from God. He found himself afraid, alone, hiding, spiritually naked, passing that condition on to all succeeding humanity so that “Every inclination of a man's heart was only evil all the time (Gen.6:5).” Sin replaced God's Spirit by Adam's choice to think and act without God. Sin is the self centered drive within that spurs the bad. The good is the presence of God and all His attributes seen in Jesus. Our inner conflict erupts when the good and the bad collide. It's decision time. To sin or not to sin. That is the question. The two call for a decision to be made. None of this can be measured or controlled by human intellect, religion or some self help system. You can't take a pill to heal human brokenness. You can't meditate hard enough to escape its pain. Relationships can only be healed relationally by the source of relationships, the Lord. Relational issues are spiritual issues and can only be healed spiritually. And the final blow is, that due to this self inflicted corruption of our humanity, death results. Sin brings death; that unseen spiritual disease kills. Since everyone dies, what happens then?

Enter Jesus the Christ, the Son of God, to live and die as a human being and for our sin He gave His perfect life on the Cross and, through faith, rose from the dead so that we could be rescued, recovered, restored and renewed through a relationship with Him. Here's what Jesus declared and promised, “I am the Resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” Belief is the beginning of spiritual life so who else but Jesus could we possibly trust to deal with our 100% invisible experience?

Now we are talking Resurrection.

Here's the bottom line. It is not the idea of resurrection that is our hope. Rather it is who was resurrected, namely Jesus. He is our hope. His Resurrection showed He is the only one whose life is the way to be truly human as God intended. The Resurrection points to Him. He is the truth about everything that exists, both in the spiritual and physical dimensions. When Jesus said He was the Resurrection and the life (John 11:25) it meant when we accept Him relationally in the unseen, in the spiritual dimension, in the daily processing of our lives, we are receiving His way to live now and to continue that relationship after we die. Our life in this world is temporary but the life we get from Him is eternal because He is eternal. He was here before Creation, He is here now and He will be after it is over when the new Heaven and the new earth emerge. Creation came through Him. It is because He was resurrected that we have Him as our personal and relational experience forever as He promised. Actually it is His lifestyle that sets our mind, heart and spirit on the path to being balanced and productive. His Resurrection is our resurrection. His life is our life and that forever.

Remember how we began with the see-saw? Everyone is on a teeter/totter, a see-saw of some kind. Without a spiritual center in the resurrected Jesus our humanity is grounded without hope. In Jesus rests the truth for the mind, trust for the heart and faith for the spirit. He is our eternal relational balance.

“He has also set eternity in the human heart (Eccl.3:10).”

“As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God (Ps.42:1).”

“I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me (Jn.14:6).”