A Biblical Theology of Resurrection
00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)
00:00:02.580 | - Well, Easter changes everything.
00:00:07.400 | We saw that yesterday in episode 822,
00:00:09.680 | but one of the most fascinating things about Easter
00:00:12.020 | is that the theme of resurrection
00:00:14.480 | is not something that takes the New Testament by surprise.
00:00:17.640 | And here to explain these connections on the phone
00:00:19.720 | is Dr. Don Carson, who was kind enough to join us again
00:00:21.960 | to talk biblical theology.
00:00:24.120 | Our time together is the fruit of our partnership
00:00:26.400 | with our friends over at the Gospel Coalition,
00:00:29.160 | and Dr. Carson is the co-founder and president
00:00:31.360 | of the Gospel Coalition, of course.
00:00:33.400 | He is also the editor of the new NIV Zondervan Study Bible,
00:00:37.120 | which focuses on biblical theological themes
00:00:39.320 | as they develop in the Bible from Genesis to Revelation.
00:00:43.120 | Dr. Carson, thank you for joining us again
00:00:45.460 | to talk biblical theology.
00:00:46.840 | As we move through various themes in the biblical storyline,
00:00:50.700 | it is, of course, fitting today that we close the week
00:00:53.360 | by talking about the resurrection
00:00:55.320 | as we celebrate Easter on Sunday.
00:00:57.440 | So take it from here and help us to appreciate
00:01:00.480 | the theology of Easter.
00:01:03.120 | - In this session, we want to consider the resurrection,
00:01:06.880 | first of all, the resurrection of Jesus,
00:01:08.800 | and then our resurrection on the last day,
00:01:11.920 | so that we are in agreement as to what terms mean.
00:01:16.800 | By resurrection, I do not mean something like
00:01:19.680 | living forever in a spirit existence or the like,
00:01:23.920 | but living again in bodily mode after the body has died,
00:01:28.920 | coming back from the dead in real bodies,
00:01:32.600 | but ultimately in transformed bodies.
00:01:35.720 | Well, let's back off just a wee bit.
00:01:37.760 | There are lots of passages in the Bible
00:01:39.560 | that talk about existence beyond death,
00:01:42.160 | but there are some passages that talk about resurrection,
00:01:45.800 | that is bodily existence beyond death.
00:01:49.200 | Many people think that there are very few such passages
00:01:53.800 | in the Old Testament, and certainly they're not as common
00:01:57.040 | in the Old Testament as in the New,
00:01:58.680 | but there are more of them than people think.
00:02:01.760 | For example, in Genesis 22, which is, after all,
00:02:05.040 | not very far into the Bible,
00:02:07.400 | we have the account of Abraham almost sacrificing his son,
00:02:12.400 | and then God himself provides the sacrifice in Aram.
00:02:18.280 | Now, that's all that is said.
00:02:20.900 | Nothing more is revealed about Abraham's motives,
00:02:25.200 | but a sensible and intelligent inference
00:02:28.960 | is drawn on that chapter by Hebrews 11, verses 17 to 19.
00:02:33.800 | The only way that Abraham could have believed
00:02:39.600 | that this instruction came from God to kill his own son,
00:02:43.200 | his firstborn son, the son in whom God himself had promised
00:02:47.320 | that the line would run,
00:02:48.880 | is that he believed that God had the ability
00:02:52.640 | to raise his son Isaac from the dead,
00:02:56.120 | and that has to be a bodily existence.
00:02:58.800 | It's not some sort of mystical or ethereal
00:03:01.480 | or non-corporeal new life.
00:03:04.480 | It has to be life from the dead,
00:03:07.040 | because Isaac would then have to pass on his genes
00:03:10.060 | to the next generation and the next generation and so on,
00:03:12.640 | or the promise would have been invalid.
00:03:14.820 | In other words, there was already some sort of notion
00:03:18.160 | of resurrection and its possibility
00:03:20.400 | under the mighty hand of God that was grasped by Abraham
00:03:24.400 | right at the beginning of the covenant promises
00:03:27.480 | to the Messianic people.
00:03:29.160 | Then there is a very famous passage in Job.
00:03:32.800 | I know that there are problems in translating it,
00:03:35.840 | but I think that the NIV has it right.
00:03:38.320 | Job chapter 19, verse 25 and following,
00:03:41.480 | where Job in the midst of his suffering still says,
00:03:44.560 | "I know that my Redeemer lives,
00:03:46.920 | and that in the end He will stand on the earth,
00:03:51.000 | that after my skin has been destroyed,
00:03:54.160 | yet in my flesh I will see God.
00:03:57.280 | I myself will see Him with my own eyes,
00:04:00.080 | I and not another.
00:04:02.080 | How my heart yearns within me."
00:04:04.480 | If you take that at face value, it's pretty dramatic.
00:04:07.480 | After his skin has been destroyed,
00:04:08.960 | he's rotted in the grave,
00:04:12.120 | yet in my flesh I will see God.
00:04:14.720 | Not just I will see God, perhaps in some
00:04:17.200 | spirit to spirit fashion,
00:04:19.040 | what is later called the intermediate state,
00:04:21.360 | but in my flesh I will see God,
00:04:22.960 | which presupposes that the flesh has come back to life.
00:04:26.200 | I myself will see Him with my own eyes,
00:04:29.400 | I and not another.
00:04:31.000 | That is a personal resurrection
00:04:32.960 | with a personal resurrection body.
00:04:35.720 | All of that, it seems to me, is presupposed.
00:04:38.880 | Then there are passages which use resurrection language
00:04:44.880 | but which in the first instance are not talking
00:04:48.240 | about physical resurrection,
00:04:50.440 | but about the restoration of the people of God
00:04:54.000 | after they've been swept away into captivity.
00:04:57.360 | The most famous one of these is Ezekiel 37,
00:05:01.120 | where the prophet has this vision of the valley of dry bones
00:05:06.120 | and from this we get the famous Negro spiritual,
00:05:11.040 | dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones.
00:05:13.480 | Now hear the word of the Lord.
00:05:15.160 | In the vision, the bones are connected
00:05:17.160 | but they're still not alive.
00:05:19.520 | The bones are connected and flesh covers them
00:05:21.720 | but they're still not alive
00:05:22.840 | until the spirit of God comes upon them
00:05:24.960 | and they stand up a mighty army
00:05:26.840 | in the valley of what was dried bones,
00:05:29.180 | but now it's full of life.
00:05:31.560 | Now in the context of Ezekiel 37,
00:05:34.200 | this is an imagery having to do with the restoration
00:05:37.400 | of the people to the land
00:05:38.440 | after they've been banished by God himself
00:05:41.680 | from the land in the exile.
00:05:43.440 | But the thing to observe is that
00:05:45.880 | although it's talking about the restoration,
00:05:49.040 | the imagery is of resurrection.
00:05:51.880 | In other words, those who say
00:05:53.060 | that the Old Testament saints
00:05:54.840 | don't know anything about resurrection,
00:05:56.840 | you have to wait for Jesus before you get that,
00:05:59.880 | overlook the fact that even though Ezekiel 37
00:06:02.680 | is not explicitly talking about resurrection per se
00:06:07.360 | in the immediate context,
00:06:09.040 | the imagery that is used to talk about
00:06:10.880 | the return from exile is resurrection imagery,
00:06:13.480 | which shows that the category is already there
00:06:16.020 | in Ezekiel's mind and in the minds of the people.
00:06:18.900 | And the same is also true in Isaiah 24 to 27
00:06:22.680 | and to some extent in chapter 56 as well.
00:06:25.120 | Isaiah 24 to 27,
00:06:27.000 | these chapters are sometimes called the Isaac apocalypse,
00:06:30.340 | where there's a lot of apocalyptic imagery
00:06:32.160 | of one sort or the other.
00:06:33.620 | And in that context in Isaiah 26,
00:06:37.080 | for example, we read verse 18,
00:06:39.240 | "We were with child, we writhed in labor,
00:06:42.040 | "but we gave birth to wind.
00:06:44.040 | "We have not brought salvation to the earth
00:06:46.440 | "and the people of the world have not come to life,
00:06:49.160 | "but your dead will live, Lord.
00:06:51.340 | "Their bodies will rise.
00:06:53.180 | "Let those who dwell in the dust wake up and shout for joy.
00:06:56.400 | "Your Jew is like the Jew of the morning.
00:06:58.320 | "The earth will give birth to her dead."
00:07:00.480 | Now, the exact flow of thought in those chapters
00:07:03.100 | is inevitably somewhat argued about,
00:07:05.160 | but even if you conclude that it's talking about
00:07:07.000 | return from exile or the like,
00:07:08.880 | it's again cast most definitively
00:07:11.920 | in terms of resurrection from the dead
00:07:15.040 | with the bodies rising from the grave and so forth.
00:07:17.780 | It's very strong language.
00:07:19.480 | And then there are certain miracles in the Old Testament,
00:07:23.260 | like the resurrection from the dead
00:07:25.980 | of the Shunammite widow's son,
00:07:27.880 | which clearly is a flat-out miracle.
00:07:32.880 | When you come to the New Testament,
00:07:35.760 | Jesus himself raises a small number,
00:07:39.640 | but certain specific individuals from the dead.
00:07:43.560 | The son of the widow of Nain, for example,
00:07:46.440 | he raises that son from the dead
00:07:49.240 | as the son is heading out to burial.
00:07:51.820 | And then there's the remarkable event in John chapter 11,
00:07:55.280 | where he raises Lazarus from the dead.
00:07:58.960 | And in that case, the man has been in the grave for four days
00:08:03.360 | so that putrefaction has set in.
00:08:06.180 | There's no way that you can confuse
00:08:09.480 | that resurrection from the dead
00:08:10.880 | with calling somebody back to life
00:08:14.400 | who's simply gone into heart fibrillation,
00:08:17.720 | is not really dead after all, and so forth.
00:08:20.340 | There's decay that has taken place.
00:08:22.960 | And that's the context in which Jesus says,
00:08:25.680 | I am the resurrection and the life.
00:08:28.740 | In other words, just before that promise in John chapter 11,
00:08:32.880 | Martha confesses her Orthodox faith.
00:08:36.520 | I believe that there is a resurrection at the end.
00:08:39.320 | I believe that my brother will rise on the last day.
00:08:42.480 | And Jesus asks her,
00:08:44.200 | yes, but I am the resurrection and the life.
00:08:46.800 | Do you believe that?
00:08:48.120 | In other words, Jesus is thrusting himself
00:08:51.160 | in the center of everything.
00:08:53.520 | It's not just that there is resurrection on the last day,
00:08:57.200 | but that there is no resurrection apart from him
00:08:59.840 | on the last day.
00:09:01.160 | He is the one who makes resurrection possible.
00:09:04.480 | And that's finally demonstrated
00:09:08.440 | in the spectacular display of his own resurrection.
00:09:11.080 | Moreover, his own resurrection is unique.
00:09:14.340 | You see, if it were not unique,
00:09:16.920 | you could say that Lazarus was resurrected before Jesus.
00:09:20.600 | And so he is the ultimate prototype of resurrection,
00:09:23.880 | or the Shunammite widow's son in the Old Testament
00:09:26.560 | is resurrected before Jesus.
00:09:28.460 | So he's got to be a prototype before Jesus.
00:09:32.680 | And in one sense, they're images of what will come,
00:09:35.760 | but they're not the prototype in the sense that Jesus is.
00:09:39.320 | Because when Jesus comes back from the dead,
00:09:42.280 | his resurrection,
00:09:43.680 | though it ties his resurrection body
00:09:47.720 | with his pre-death body,
00:09:49.960 | nevertheless, his resurrection is unique
00:09:52.840 | in all resurrections up to that point
00:09:54.720 | in that his body has been transformed.
00:09:57.540 | There's a connection between his old body,
00:10:01.280 | that is his pre-death body, and his resurrection body,
00:10:04.300 | in that the stigmata,
00:10:06.760 | that is the marks of the wounds are still there.
00:10:10.220 | That's one of the main points of John 20.
00:10:13.240 | It's not as if a twin was suddenly brought forth
00:10:15.720 | or somebody that looked a lot like Jesus,
00:10:18.760 | or that there was mass hallucination.
00:10:21.320 | In addition to the regular marks of crucifixion
00:10:23.560 | that Jesus had,
00:10:24.580 | he also had the highly unusual mark of a spear thrust
00:10:28.620 | up under his rib cage to pierce the pericardium.
00:10:31.680 | And thus the resurrected body of Jesus
00:10:35.980 | that the disciples see in experience after experience,
00:10:40.780 | at least 10 or 11 of them recorded in the New Testament,
00:10:45.460 | to one or two, to groups of seven,
00:10:48.480 | to groups of 10 or 11, and finally to 500.
00:10:53.100 | All of these depict continuity with the pre-death body.
00:10:58.100 | That is to say, this is the Jesus who went into the tomb,
00:11:02.100 | the tomb was empty, and the resurrected body of Jesus
00:11:05.420 | is at some level the same as the body that went in.
00:11:08.580 | This is Jesus, the historical man, Jesus.
00:11:12.940 | Yet at the same time, he is now in resurrection glory.
00:11:17.940 | He's in resurrection life.
00:11:20.380 | And he does things now that he never did before,
00:11:23.380 | appearing in a locked room, for example.
00:11:25.260 | We would say today materializing or dematerializing.
00:11:28.220 | And in some sense, he exists in another sphere.
00:11:33.940 | Exactly what the connection is at some sort of scientific
00:11:37.460 | or ontological level between his pre-death body
00:11:41.620 | and his post-resurrection body, we cannot possibly know.
00:11:44.980 | Where this is teased out at greatest length
00:11:47.820 | is in 1 Corinthians 15,
00:11:49.740 | where Paul draws some analogies,
00:11:52.060 | but he himself acknowledges their analogies.
00:11:54.500 | They're analogies, nevertheless,
00:11:55.880 | that are meant to tell us something.
00:11:57.500 | An acorn doesn't look like an oak tree,
00:11:59.700 | yet with the death of the acorn,
00:12:02.940 | as the shell rots away and the little life
00:12:06.020 | that's bound up inside begins to grow,
00:12:08.700 | ultimately it issues in a mighty tree.
00:12:12.940 | It's only an analogy, but it's a telling analogy.
00:12:17.100 | And he speaks of the different glories
00:12:20.540 | of different entities, of stars, of the moon,
00:12:23.420 | the sun, and so on.
00:12:24.760 | There are different orders of being.
00:12:26.660 | And so also he speaks of the resurrection body
00:12:29.140 | as being of a different order.
00:12:31.400 | And there are two or three other passages
00:12:34.660 | that are really important for us to understand.
00:12:37.380 | The passage in John 20 that I briefly mentioned,
00:12:40.220 | where there's a huge emphasis on the stigmata,
00:12:45.300 | the marks of the wounds on Jesus.
00:12:47.820 | The stigmata are the things that convince Thomas,
00:12:51.260 | who has doubts about the reality of the resurrection,
00:12:54.660 | they are the things that convince Thomas
00:12:56.300 | that the resurrected Jesus,
00:12:57.580 | the resurrection body of Jesus,
00:12:59.900 | has genuine continuity with the pre-death body of Jesus.
00:13:03.300 | This is the wounded, sacrificed, slaughtered Messiah,
00:13:08.300 | who now is alive and reigning as Lord.
00:13:11.380 | And in consequence, he falls before him and cries,
00:13:15.300 | "My Lord and my God."
00:13:17.060 | Indeed, there is a lot of emphasis
00:13:19.620 | on the demonstration of who Jesus really is,
00:13:24.180 | the promised one of God, the eternal son of God,
00:13:27.940 | the one who is Lord of all,
00:13:29.500 | precisely grounded in the historical witness
00:13:33.820 | of the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
00:13:36.540 | The cumulative evidence that this,
00:13:40.720 | New Testament of ours,
00:13:42.840 | which speaks so powerfully and frequently
00:13:45.800 | of the resurrection of Christ,
00:13:46.840 | is not the result of hallucination
00:13:48.880 | or some conspiracy by early Christians.
00:13:51.440 | The cumulative evidence is very, very strong indeed.
00:13:56.120 | These Christians were prepared to die
00:13:58.800 | for what they had seen.
00:14:00.120 | "We cannot help but speak of the things we have seen
00:14:02.720 | "and heard," they say.
00:14:04.120 | They take it as a mark of privilege
00:14:07.280 | to suffer for this Christ who suffered so much for them.
00:14:10.140 | This is not people who have talked themselves into it.
00:14:13.600 | All the records show how slow and low they were
00:14:16.880 | to believe that Jesus had risen from the dead.
00:14:19.040 | But if he has risen from the dead, as they came to see,
00:14:22.280 | as even Paul came to see in his vision
00:14:24.640 | of the resurrected Christ on the Damascus Road,
00:14:27.240 | if Jesus really has risen from the dead,
00:14:29.600 | then he is approved by God.
00:14:31.600 | He is vindicated by God.
00:14:34.280 | His death was not to pay for his own sin,
00:14:36.720 | or else he'd be damned.
00:14:38.480 | There's no way he'd be vindicated
00:14:40.200 | by being raised by God from the dead.
00:14:42.680 | No, no, he paid for the sins of others.
00:14:45.360 | And his sacrifice was so acceptable in God's own plan
00:14:50.120 | that the vindication is demonstrated,
00:14:52.880 | not least in the resurrection of Christ Jesus.
00:14:55.520 | This establishes him now as the reigning Lord already.
00:15:00.320 | And all of God's sovereignty is mediated
00:15:03.560 | through Christ Jesus, who is the mediator
00:15:07.560 | of God's authority in every domain in this age
00:15:11.080 | until he has crushed his last enemy.
00:15:13.240 | And the last enemy to be destroyed, we're told,
00:15:15.720 | in 1 Corinthians 15, is death itself.
00:15:19.000 | And all of this hinges on the resurrection of Christ Jesus.
00:15:22.520 | Another passage that is really quite important
00:15:24.440 | is 2 Corinthians 5, verses one to 10,
00:15:27.920 | where Paul makes it very clear, it seems to me,
00:15:30.280 | that his ultimate hope is not simply
00:15:32.800 | to die and be with Christ.
00:15:34.760 | That's a good thing.
00:15:36.640 | That's something he looks forward to
00:15:38.440 | in Philippians chapter one.
00:15:40.240 | But his ultimate hope is not to be,
00:15:42.440 | as he puts it in 2 Corinthians 5, unclothed,
00:15:45.080 | that is, without a body.
00:15:46.600 | His ultimate hope goes beyond what Christians
00:15:49.600 | have sometimes called the intermediate state.
00:15:52.400 | His ultimate hope is to be clothed again with a body,
00:15:56.640 | a resurrection body, a body like Christ's glorious body
00:16:00.360 | that will have the capacity to live and work and eat
00:16:04.560 | in this terrestrial, renewed earth,
00:16:08.840 | but also to be in the very presence of God.
00:16:11.000 | The ultimate hope of the Christian is not simply
00:16:14.440 | to be with Christ in some immaterial existence,
00:16:17.280 | but to have resurrection bodies
00:16:18.920 | in a renewed heaven and a renewed earth.
00:16:21.000 | And all of that then ultimately issues in hope.
00:16:26.200 | There's a wonderful passage in 1 Peter,
00:16:30.400 | Peter's first epistle, where we read these words.
00:16:35.240 | Chapter one, verse three.
00:16:37.200 | Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
00:16:40.760 | In his great mercy, he has given us new birth
00:16:43.960 | into a living hope through the resurrection
00:16:47.160 | of Jesus Christ from the dead
00:16:49.000 | and into an inheritance that can never perish,
00:16:51.320 | spoil, or fade.
00:16:53.040 | This inheritance is kept in heaven for you,
00:16:56.320 | who through faith are shielded by God's power
00:16:59.360 | until the coming of the salvation
00:17:00.880 | that is ready to be revealed in the last time.
00:17:03.160 | In all this, you greatly rejoice,
00:17:05.480 | though now for a little while,
00:17:06.680 | you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials.
00:17:10.240 | These have come so that the proven genuineness
00:17:12.480 | of your faith, of greater worth than gold,
00:17:15.120 | which perishes even though refined by fire,
00:17:17.640 | may result in praise, glory, and honor
00:17:20.840 | when Jesus Christ is revealed.
00:17:22.880 | Though you have not seen him, you love him,
00:17:24.800 | and even though you do not see him now,
00:17:26.280 | you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible
00:17:28.680 | and glorious joy, for you are receiving
00:17:31.640 | the end result of your faith, the salvation of your souls.
00:17:36.320 | In other words, we're receiving now already
00:17:38.720 | the salvation of our souls,
00:17:40.600 | but this all issues ultimately in a living hope
00:17:44.440 | through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead
00:17:47.920 | into an inheritance that for us too
00:17:49.960 | can never perish, spoil, or fade.
00:17:52.840 | The promise of a new heaven and a new earth,
00:17:55.000 | a home of righteousness with resurrection existence.
00:17:58.080 | So that although there is in scripture
00:18:00.880 | a resurrection to life, that is,
00:18:03.760 | a new heaven and a new earth,
00:18:05.200 | and a resurrection to death, to hell itself,
00:18:08.160 | yet for believers, the confidence, the joy,
00:18:11.760 | the anticipation, the hope is tied absolutely
00:18:16.760 | to their confidence that Jesus rose from the dead
00:18:19.660 | after having offered himself to pay for their sins.
00:18:24.000 | The cross and the resurrection thus tie together
00:18:26.800 | as the turning point of the ages
00:18:29.240 | on which all of history swings
00:18:32.080 | with the new age already dawning now
00:18:35.760 | and ready to be brought to consummation
00:18:38.540 | when the master himself returns
00:18:40.040 | and all of his glorified, resurrected existence
00:18:43.080 | on the last day.
00:18:44.560 | - That is a brilliant summary and a timely word for us.
00:18:47.600 | Dr. Carson, I thank you and I pray
00:18:49.860 | that you have a wonderful Easter weekend.
00:18:53.060 | - And a wonderful Easter to you too.
00:18:54.860 | Christ is risen, he is risen indeed.
00:18:57.740 | - Hallelujah, yes, thank you Dr. Carson.
00:19:01.020 | Special thanks to Don Carson and to our friends
00:19:04.180 | at the Gospel Coalition for this incredibly rich episode.
00:19:08.180 | John Piper returns with us on Monday.
00:19:10.640 | I'm your host, Tony Ranke, and I pray
00:19:12.220 | that you experience a very meaningful Good Friday
00:19:15.340 | and an incredibly worship-filled,
00:19:17.240 | enjoy-saturated Easter Sunday.
00:19:20.320 | We'll see you on Monday.
00:19:21.680 | (upbeat music)
00:19:24.260 | (upbeat music)
00:19:26.840 | [BLANK_AUDIO]