We live in strange times. It used to be said that the only two things we could be certain of were death and taxes. Taxes you can still be pretty sure of, but death has recently become rather more cloudy. With the advent of assorted technological wonders in the field of medicine we can watch as a patient’s heart continues to beat, but whose brain shows no activity. With the advent of widespread organ transplants we are all the more eager to say of the donor that he or she is dead in one sense, while keeping him or her “alive” in another for as long as we can. Add to this the strange reports we read from those who claim to have “died” but who have “returned.” They claim to have been dead enough to have been embraced by the light, but nevertheless they walk among us. Death has become for us more like dusk than that dark night.
There are, however, limits to this lack of clarity. While dusk seeks to evade the question, is it night or is it day, we do know that midnight is night, and noon is day. And while the comatose, brainwaveless, but still breathing patient may confuse us, we know that the nurses who tend to the patient are alive, and the bodies that have been in cold storage for days down in the morgue are dead. That the bridge across the chasm is shrouded in fog doesn’t change the reality that there are two distinct mountains.
It’s important for us to understand this truth, to not be drawn into the beard fallacy (where one argues that the removal of one, then another, then another whisker will provide no definitive moment from beard to non-beard.) It’s important because central to our faith is this conviction, Jesus died. We are not affirming that the brain wave monitor went blank for a while. We’re not arguing that the Roman medical authorities broke their own rules and continued administering CPR for over half an hour. Jesus was all the way dead, midnight dead.
It may be so that we would know that the God ordained the course of this time. God ordained that the Messiah should hang from a tree before anyone had ever heard of crucifixion. We now know what crucifixion does to a person, the slow suffocation that makes the nails seem like kid’s play. God ordained that Jesus would be pierced on His side. We see there the water and the blood flowing out, a sign of a burst heart, both literally and figuratively. And then three days in the ground. That is the one that has always puzzled me. God didn’t need three days to put Jesus back together again, any more than He needed six days to make the universe and all that is in it. It doesn’t take three days for God to muster the strength for such a miracle. But it might take three days to prove that the resurrection was a miracle, to make us see that this death was not just dusk, but midnight dark.
Paul tells us in “If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins” (I Corinthians 15: 17). If there is no resurrection, our faith is vanity. And if there is no death, there can be no resurrection. The death of Christ, and the resurrection of Christ are inescapably bound together. You cannot have one without the other, and you have no Christianity without both. Our faith is a historical faith, grounded not in our own efforts, not in the mystical powers of an object-less faith, but in historical events. We have peace with God because of what we believe about events that happened on a particular hill, and in a particular tomb outside Jerusalem two thousand years ago.
We affirm first, contra the ancient docetists and their modern heirs, that Jesus was born a man. To die one must first be alive. Jesus was no ghost, no phantom who only appeared as a man. Second we affirm that this Jesus lived not only in complete obedience to the law of God, but that He did so in history and in full view of His enemies who could lay no charge against Him. Next we affirm that this Jesus wrought miracles in particular places, and for historical people. The water was truly water, and it became truly wine. Jesus even brought life from death, most dramatically in the life of Lazarus, dead four days, decomposing, and not merely flat-lined for a moment. And then He, who had the power of life in Him, died, laying down His life for the sheep. He did not swoon. He did not fall into a coma. He died. There was only darkness.
He did not, however, stay dead. Three days later this same Jesus, to be sure with His body now glorified, one that was in one sense continuous with His old body, but in another very different, threw off the bonds of death, and emerged as the first fruit of the new creation. It was not that hope was raised, as too many unbelieving liberal wolves will proclaim on Resurrection Sunday. It was not some sort of spirit body as gnostics both ancient and modern have claimed. As Thomas discovered, it was an altogether human body, once dead, but now alive.
These historical truths also have theological meaning. The life He lived He lived vicariously for His elect. He obeyed so that we might have His righteousness. And He died for our sins, taking upon Himself the wrath of the Father for us. He was raised in vindication, to prove His own innocence, and to begin the new creation, to ascend on high to put everything under His feet. When that work is complete, this same Jesus, with this same glorified body, will return to consummate His kingdom. The theological meaning not only does not undo the historical reality, but requires the historical reality to even have meaning. This is the light of resurrection morning, a light so brilliant as to be unmistakable.
A Jesus who did not die, a Jesus who was not raised, such is a Jesus that cannot save. Such is a Jesus that is foreign to the inerrant Word of God. To negotiate with these truths is to negotiate with our own souls, with our own eternity. And such is neither right, nor safe. Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again. Here we stand. We can do no other.
