Often, as evangelicals, we struggle to verbalize the real meaning of the resurrection. We know it was important to the authors of the New Testament, but sometimes default to talk that diminishes it to simply being the “happy ending” of the gospel.
Below are a handful of quotes by N.T. Wright on the meaning, power, and importance of the resurrection (both Jesus’s and ours). All of these are taken from his excellent book, Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church.
“If the promised final future is simply that immortal souls leave behind their mortal bodies, then death still rules.”
“To preach the Resurrection is to announce the fact that the world is a different place, and that we have to live in that “different-ness.” The Resurrection is not just God doing a wacky miracle at one time… this was the turning point in world history.”
“Jesus’s resurrection is the beginning of God’s new project not to snatch people away from earth to heaven but to colonize earth with the life of heaven.”
“With Easter, God’s new creation is launched upon a surprised world, pointing ahead to the renewal, the redemption, the rebirth of the entire creation.”
“Instead of talking vaguely of heaven and then trying to fit the language of resurrection into that, we should talk with biblical precision about the resurrection and reorganize our language about heaven around that.”
“Every act of love, every deed done in Christ and by the Spirit, every work of true creativity – doing justice, making peace, healing families, resisting temptation, seeking and winning true freedom – is an earthly event in a long history of things that implement Jesus’s own resurrection and anticipate the final new creation and act as signposts of hope, pointing back to the first and on to the second.”
He is alive – and He is making all things new. Praise Him!
Part of my recent decision to plant a new church in Memphis included the destruction of a personal idol.
