He Is Risen!

He is Risen Indeed!

Gustave Doré

• Resurrection of Jesus (Theological Term of the Week)
• What the Resurrection Says to the World
• What the Resurrection Means for Believers

Seven Stanzas at Easter

Make no mistake: if He rose at all
it was as His body;
if the cells’ dissolution did not reverse, the molecules
reknit, the amino acids rekindle,
the Church will fall.

It was not as the flowers,
each soft Spring recurrent;
it was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled
eyes of the eleven apostles;
it was as His flesh: ours.

The same hinged thumbs and toes,
the same valved heart
that–pierced–died, withered, paused, and then
regathered out of enduring Might
new strength to enclose.

Let us not mock God with metaphor,
analogy, sidestepping, transcendence;
making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the
faded credulity of earlier ages:
let us walk through the door.

The stone is rolled back, not papier-mâché,
not a stone in a story,
but the vast rock of materiality that in the slow
grinding of time will eclipse for each of us
the wide light of day.

And if we will have an angel at the tomb,
make it a real angel,
weighty with Max Planck’s quanta, vivid with hair,
opaque in the dawn light, robed in real linen
spun on a definite loom.

Let us not seek to make it less monstrous,
for our own convenience, our own sense of beauty,
lest, awakened in one unthinkable hour, we are
embarrassed by the miracle,
and crushed by remonstrance.

—John Updike (1932-2009)

Cross Quotes, April 11

The Apostle Paul
Rembrandt van RijnNailing It to the Cross

And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him. (Colossians 2:13-15 ESV)

This is one of my favorite descriptions of the transaction that took place when Christ died for us. Here’s what Jerry Bridges and Bob Bevington say about it in their book, The Great Exchange:

So all the sins of those God made alive…are permanently and irreversibly forgiven. How can God do this? “By canceling the record of debt that stood against us with it’s legal demands” as the result of our sin. This required God to provide a qualified substitute on which to transfer our debt and its legandemands and then execute justice on him instead of us. This was the only way God could set it aside, forgive all our sin, and make spiritually dead sinners alive.

So according to his own plan and timetable, God accomplished all this by “nailing it to the cross.” What exactly was the “it” God nailed to the cross? A piece of paper? No! It was the body of Jesus Christ which had become sin for us (2 Cor. 5:21) and a curse for us (Gal. 3:13).

Other Cross Quotes

• A Soul at Its Post, a quote from John Chrysostom at Siris.
• Quoting Hebrews at Field Stone Cottage.
• Quoting Martyn Lloyd-Jones at Hiraeth.