Hello everyone and welcome back to Deeper Waters where we are diving into the ocean of truth. Lately, we’ve been covering the doctrine of God, but we’re going to take a break for today. Why? Because I’m going to be gone all this weekend so there won’t be another blog until Monday evening. As you should know, this weekend is Easter and so we are looking forward to celebrating the coming resurrection holiday, so why not write about what it means to me that the resurrection is coming? Before that however, I have my prayer requests. First off, I ask that you pray for my Christlikeness that I will give honor where honor is due and get my thought life under control. Second, I ask for prayers for my financial situation. Finally, I ask for prayers for a third related area in my life. For now, let’s get to the topic.
Dr. Habermas is most likely, and certainly in my mind, the leading defender of the resurrection today. A story that is well-known about him is the death of his first wife Debbie very suddenly to cancer. He tells of how his students would come to him and say “At times like this, aren’t you thankful for the resurrection?” He had to smile for two reasons. First, his students were using his own technique against him. Second, it worked.
The resurrection does make all the difference. As I write this, I have a grandmother who is very ill and I realize that because of the resurrection, any good-bye that takes place is only temporary. Ravi Zacharias has said that the line that brought about his conversion was the passage in the Bible where Jesus says “Because I live, you will live also.”
If Christ is not raised, we are still in our sins, true. We also have no hope for the future. It is most certainly that we should just eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we die. However, it could even be asked “Why eat, drink, and be merry?” Such actions are merely a placebo to deny the ultimate reality. We don’t do them to celebrate life but we do them to forget life. We need to forget that there is nothing where we are going, the nihilistic worldview that Solomon was taking on in Ecclesiastes.
Because of the resurrection though, we have hope. Everything will be made right. Any pain we have will be redeemed to us. Any time taken from us will be restored to us. We have spoken of eternity lately and we will indeed get all of that time back and more. We have temporary pain here. We will have eternal joy and pleasures there. We will be in the fellowship of the God who loves us and sent his Son to save us.
Because of the resurrection, everything we go through here is ultimately worth it. It is not just rising to live again. It is rising to truly live for the first time. The life we have now will be but a shadow of the real life that awaits us. We will have life with God, life the way he designed us to have it, and anything that is his design will be good.
Happy Easter everyone! He is risen! He is risen indeed!
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