Is it important to you that 

Jesus was raised to life?

YES. And not just because it provides a happy ending to the Easter Story!

Jesus' horrific death on the cross had hundreds of witnesses. A Roman soldier checked He was dead before they buried his body. But on the third day He was not simply given breath again. He had a NEW body, unlike any other. He chose to keep the scars of His crucifixion as signs of His love, proving His identity to hundreds of eye-witnesses, but He could now walk through walls, and even shine with a blinding light (Acts 9:3-9, 1 Cor. 15:6-8). Jesus had conquered death.

Just a few weeks earlier, Jesus famously called Lazarus’ existing, dead body to life (John 11:1-44). We have probably also heard testimonies of Heidi Baker or others healing the sick and supernaturally raising the dead (YouTube). Here we see God's amazing, miraculous power at work through His body (Eph. 1:19-23) but these stories do not yet tell of the same kind of glorious, new body as Jesus’. Well, Jesus is God, I hear you say. Yes, but He is also still a man, and Paul tells us that His experience will be ours, too:

For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men.

But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive. But each in his own turn: Christ, the firstfruits; then, when he comes, those who belong to him. Then the end will come, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father after he has destroyed all dominion, authority and power. (1 Cor. 15:16-24)

It is because Jesus was raised, and because we believers are in Him, that we can hope for a physical resurrection when He returns and establishes His kingdom on earth. 

I was recently struck by how personal and real this hope can be, rather than just an ethereal “one-day” fancy. In 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18 Paul teaches on the resurrection of the dead in relation to our loved ones who are no longer alive with us. He tells us that because of Jesus’ promises we don’t need to be like those who don’t have any hope: Jesus will bring back our believing family and friends with Him!

I’ve been reading the biography of Geraldine Taylor, the daughter-in-law of the China Inland Mission’s founder. Whilst serving in rough conditions for years in rural China, she saw too many missionaries’ children die, including two of her unborn babies. Her only hope was her Lord Jesus’ trustworthiness. I was really touched by the tender, faith-filled comfort she offered another couple decades later:

My tears flow with yours. Oh, if only I could be with you today to try and tell you of our love and sympathy. […] ‘The gifts and calling of God are without repentance.’ He called you to be a father, a mother; He gave you a precious little daughter. This can never be gone back upon. You are parents; the little one is yours for ever. He is keeping her for you, far more perfectly and safely than you could have kept her. And He will give her back to you when Jesus comes. (Mrs. Howard Taylor, p. 124)

The resurrection of the dead, following the Author of our Faith, our Saviour, and our King, is also about family in Jesus’ kingdom. Jesus tells us that we belong to each other, too. Jesus has taught us to love and serve each other as He has loved us (John 13, 15). Paul writes: “there is one body and one Spirit, just as you have been called to one glorious hope for the future” (Eph. 4:4).

In the resurrection, we’re not alone forever with Jesus, but together we will form a kingdom of priests reigning on the earth with Him (Rev. 4:9-10). The corporate Bride He’s longing for is actually a city shining with myriads of different personalities and cultures (Rev. 21:9-10)! We’ll even recognize each other in our resurrected bodies, together enjoying eternal freedom from sorrow, sin, sickness, and satan, and we’ll LOVE each other, in the light of the glory of our Resurrected King.

Was Jesus Christ really fully God? 

How can He also be fully Man??

The incarnation: God eternal inside a normal, human body. God’s perfect spirit chose to be clothed in the flesh and blood he created. What a mind-blowing mystery! He spent time living as one of us only two thousand years ago, in Roman-occupied Palestine, in a little Jewish family. Jesus Christ wasn’t just the ultimate human, mixed in with some sinful weakness and selfish tendencies. He was God himself! In his human nature he had the capability to give in to the same temptations we face, but he chose to love, obey and honor God with every thought and action, and he chose to use his time amongst us humans to reveal who our heavenly Father really is.

I’ve heard teenagers debate whether Christians just invented this nice historical character to create an ideal of what we all aspire to be, or whether Christians ascribed strange divine qualities to an ordinary bloke. If you’re interested, have a look into the historical evidence, which far outnumbers even the sources documenting Cesar's life! I’ve heard Jews claim nowadays that Jesus was a good rabbi who taught the Law accurately, but who was a magician imbued with demonic powers! How can someone be good and evil at the same time? Please read through his teachings, and assess for yourself whether his character and conduct match up with his claims.

He claimed to be the Son of God, and even Yahweh Himself. He claimed to be the Jews’ Messiah, whom the Jewish prophets had declared would be born to a virgin, from a family descending from King David, who would bring peace and prosperity to Israel. He prophesied that he would be beaten, killed, and that he would then come back to life after three days. He also said that his followers would be hated and killed. How awkward! There’s no way that you would convincingly invite people into such circumstances, unless you really believed it, or you had evil mass-suicide desires!

Jesus was the kindest man who ever walked this planet. Just look at his compassion for mothers who lose their sons and how he gave value to despised prostitutes; look at his passion to always lift up the poor and downtrodden, and his generosity to keep healing the sick and delivering the demon-oppressed, even when he was so tired himself! You can see how human he was in how he, too, got hungry, thirsty, peopled-out, sad, frustrated.

In all this humanity, he lived in a totally supernatural way, and empowered others to do the same! I’m not talking about floating on clouds and issuing lightning bolts from his hands, but he prayed, stayed close to God, and worked miracles with the power of God’s Spirit in him! He did the most amazing physics-defying wonders, like walking on water, and multiplying food for thousands of people, and he invited his followers to join in! He was no ordinary man, and yet he showed us what life could be like with God.

Personally, the event in his life that so strikes me about his complete divinity and his complete humanity was his death on a Roman cross. The most humiliating and agonizing form of torture known to man - this is not something you’d agree to lightly! This man who lived such a stunning, perfect life surrendered to those who wanted to kill him for their own gain. Even when he was hanging there, bleeding and in excruciating pain, he still reached out to others in forgiveness - even the guilty thief who was crucified next to him.

The choice that Jesus made to die to take the blame and punishment for selfish people like you and me leaves me speechless. I get so easily offended when someone insults me or accuses me, and yet Jesus took all of this ridicule and injustice on himself. He absorbed into himself our heavenly Father’s anger against our sin, and he offered himself as a target for attack from demons instead of us. On this day, satan - the father of lies, and the one who has an evil hold on this world - thought he’d won.

When I look at this willing sacrifice, I can say that only God himself could love like that. And yet, if it was simply God making a sovereign, generous statement to wipe our debts to him, I would find it hard to relate to Jesus. If Jesus did not know by experience the deepest sorrows, temptations, and humiliations that we go through, I don’t know whether I would trust him as much to pour out my heart and reveal the darkest parts of my nature to him.

What happened after the cross gives me the utmost hope! Jesus' dead body was buried in a sealed tomb, with guards stationed outside. However, after three days of apparent silence, he got up and left that tomb! He had a completely new body, and went around visiting hundreds of people, so that they would believe that he is God, and that everything he told them was true! If he was just a man who had slept three nights, how could he walk through walls, and appear and disappear? You can’t do that with a normal human body, especially a bloody, crucified one! He wasn’t just a ghost: he ate breakfast, lunch, and dinner with his friends on numerous occasions!

As I see he’s also quite obviously God, I can also trust him to answer really impossible prayers that need divine intervention. Eyewitnesses saw him ascend into heaven before their very eyes - it sounds crazy, but this event drew hundreds and thousands of local people to lead transformed lives, believing in His divinity even unto their own martyred deaths. And millions have been doing the same every year since then.

He promised that he’s coming back to be our King, and that we’ll recognize him! He’s kept his resurrected human body, because he so loves humans and he wants to be with us forever! I’ve heard so many real-life stories of people seeing him in the flesh, even in the last few years - two of my good friends have! This man is amazing! This God is mind-blowingly loving, and all I can do now is offer my little life to be his. 

How will you respond?

Show me Your glory, God!
(and how is this communicable for us?)

Yes, how?? When I think of the Glory of the Lord, His Kavod, I think of fire descending on His mountain, or smoke filling His temple, and the cloud of His presence - we read awesome stories of when God revealed His glory to His people, His priests, and His prophets in Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, 1 Kings, 2 Chronicles, Isaiah, Ezekiel. I also remember reading about the Azuza Street revival (see picture), where God would manifest His glory as a cloud so thick the children played hide and seek in it, and with fire coming down from heaven and going back up from the roof of the building - the local Fire Service didn’t know what to do with themselves! This kind of glory is clearly not communicable - how could we imitate this?!

And yet, I read that Jesus says He gives us His own glory:

The glory that You have given Me I have given to them, that they may be one even as We are one.(John 17:22)

I think Jesus might not be talking about fire and smoke…

When John first mentions Jesus’ glory at the beginning of His gospel, he immediately identifies Jesus’ glory as the Father’s glory:

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.

For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. (John 1:14,17)

We see that John compares what Moses saw of God’s glory, with Jesus’ possession of God’s glory. Here’s what God showed Moses:

The LORD passed in front of him and proclaimed, "The LORD, the LORD God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and filled with gracious love and truth. (Exodus 34:6)

This sounds almost identical. John definitely wants us to know that Jesus is Yahweh, and so when we read Jesus telling the Father that He’s giving us the glory the Father gave Him, this is no small matter! This is not simply honor or recognition (which would be other translations of glory, and more obviously ‘communicable’). 

Jesus’ glory is full of grace and truth, and He gives us His glory so that we would be one as He and the Father are one. What has unity got to do with glory?

We hear often that we were made for God’s glory, and that we were made in His image and likeness: male and female. To paraphrase Genesis 2:22-24, God created woman out of man, and for this reason - because they began as one - they were made to be one. I would argue that this  reveals more than simply the sanctity of marriage. If we read our creation story alongside Jesus’ longings for us all to be one, we can see that God originally designed us for perfect unity with each other and with Him.  Therefore, Jesus gives us His own glory to bring us back into the Godhead’s own image: perfect unity and love. Our unity will display God’s glory. Our unity shows that we were made in the image of God.

This gives a different meaning to 2 Corinthians 3:18:

But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.

I do believe, as Paul highlights in this chapter, that the Holy Spirit’s ministry in us gives us a greater glory than the Old Covenant did, and we see amazing manifestations of His glory through our prayers! (you could say this is a communicable means of God’s glory) I also believe that beholding and reflecting Jesus’ glory will transform us into His image, as Jesus prayed for. Holy Spirit gives us the grace and truth needed for this unity that Jesus died for.

Father, I desire that they also, whom You have given Me, may be with Me where I am, to see My glory that You have given Me because You loved Me before the foundation of the world. (John 17:24)

However, I think that we will only see the bright fullness of this glory when we’re finally in full union with Christ forever. We see this prophesied towards the end of the book of Revelation - it does not get much more glorious than this!

And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be His people, and God Himself will be with them as their God.

“Come, I will show you the Bride, the wife of the Lamb.” And he carried me away in the Spirit to a great, high mountain, and showed me the holy city Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God, having the glory of God, its radiance like a most rare jewel, like a jasper, clear as crystal. (Revelation 21:2-3, 9-11)

We see that this is the fulfillment of Jesus’ prayer: His Bride united with Him forever, enjoying His glory. This shows God’s glory was always meant to be communicable.