The Resurrection of Christ

Coming up next on Renewing Your Mind... Don't laugh at this generation of kids who are doing everything in their power to intoxicate their senses and to find some means of escape from the grim reality of the world we show them every day. That's wisdom if there is no resurrection.

Let's eat, let's drink, let's be merry, let's go to Mardi Gras, let's party until we're drunk as we can be, until we die because tomorrow it's all over. Death is a reality for every human. The question is, what's going to happen to us after this life? Unfortunately, many people just ignore the inevitable, but for those who have placed their trust in Christ, what lies beyond the grave is nothing short of glorious. Today on Renewing Your Mind, Dr. R.C.

Sproul will show us that the Christian faith has the answer for this dying world. My favorite poet of all time is Edgar Allan Poe. And Poe's work, as you know, is somewhat pessimistic, indeed at times macabre. And recently I had the opportunity to read a series of critical essays that Poe had written. Poe didn't only write poetry, but he also wrote technical literature about his craft and about general theories of aesthetics, of beauty, and that sort of thing. But in this particular essay, Poe gave his ideas of what the ideal poem should be. Then he went on to illustrate his idea of poetry by just setting down on paper how he went about composing his most famous poem.

The Raven. Let me just refresh your memory, not by reading the whole poem, but just the first couple of verses and the last couple of verses, and I'll spare the other 90-some. You remember how it starts, Once upon a midnight dreary, You hear the sonorous language, While I pondered weak and weary Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore. While I nodded, nearly napping, Suddenly there came a tapping, As if someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door. "'Tis a visitor," I muttered, tapping at my chamber door, Only this, nothing more.

Ah, distinctly I remember It was in the bleak December, And each separate dying ember Brought its ghost upon the floor. Eagerly I wished the morrow, Vainly had I sought to borrow From my books surcease of sorrow, Sorrow for the lost Lenore, For the rare and radiant maiden Whom the angels name Lenore, Nameless here forevermore. And now as he's alone thinking about the loss of Lenore, and he hears this tapping, this rapping at the door, you know what happens. He goes over and he sees that it is this ungodly fiendish bird, and the bird comes in and has a one-word vocabulary. All the questions that the hero puts to this speaking bird, he gets the same monotonous piercing reply, nevermore, until there's a crescendo of anguish that we reach then in the next of the last verse, where the man screams out in his prostration, Prophet said I, thing of evil, Prophet stilleth bird or devil, Whether tempter sent or whether tempest tossed, ye here is sure. Desolate yet all undaunted on this desert land Enchanted on this home by horror haunted, Tell me truly I implore.

Is there balm in Gilead? Tell me, tell me I implore, quoth the raven, nevermore. Prophet said I, thing of evil, Prophet stilleth bird or devil, By that heaven that bends above us, By the God we both adore. Tell this soul with sorrow ladeneth within the distant Eden, It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore, Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore, quoth the raven, nevermore.

Do you hear what he's asking? Will I see her again? On the other side, will I be reunited? The raven says, No. And be that word our sign of parting, Bird or fiend, I shrieked up, starting, Get thee back into the tempest and the night's plutonium shore, Leave no black plume as a token of the lie that thy soul has spoken, Leave my loneliness unbroken, quit the bust above my door, Take thy beak from out of my heart, and take thy form from off my door, quoth the raven, nevermore.

And the raven never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting on the pallid bust of palis just above my chamber door, And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming, And the lamplight o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor, And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor shall be lifted, shall be lifted, nevermore. It's an aesthetic experience, but it has a rational message. It's the message of total despair, a man who looks into the pit of death and comes to the conclusion that there is nothing on the other side.

And he doesn't try to dress it up with cosmetics, but his conclusion is one of total despair. I have to say to you from my own philosophical investigation, ladies and gentlemen, there are only two basic world views that I think have any significance to them. One is full orb Judeo-Christianity, or on the other hand, flat out nihilism.

I have intellectual contempt for those who want to play both ends against the middle, who don't have the guts to see that we're playing a game whose stakes are ultimate here. Paul the Apostle understood that. When he had to minister to the folks in the church that he had begun at Corinth, we understand that Paul, he has to address a problem that arises in one of his churches, a church that had been beset by skepticism that was part of the culture of the day, that people there in Corinth were raising the question of whether or not it was simply a matter of credulity to place one's faith and hope in life after death.

We read in verse 12 of the 15th chapter of 1 Corinthians this line of reasoning that I'd like you to follow carefully. He said, if it is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? He said if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised.

Now, what you're going to see here is something that's not all of that commonplace in the New Testament. What you're going to see is a very close, tightly expressed form of logical reasoning using an ancient method of reasoning that involves what's called the if-then conditional structure of reasoning. This is one made popular by the skeptic Zeno of Greek philosophy where he took his opponent's argument and reduced them to absurdity. He took his people's arguments to their logical conclusion and showed that if you were logical, if you were consistent, if you believed A, then the consequence of your thinking would lead you into abject nonsense.

So what he does is that he goes through this process in a series of conditional reasoning statements, and he begins very simply by saying, well, let's consider this. If there's no resurrection at all, if we have a universal negative here, universal negatives do not allow for particular affirmatives. If there are no resurrections, then there can't be one resurrection. If there is no resurrection from the dead, then manifestly Christ is not raised.

So let's follow the thinking. If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is useless and so is your faith. I like the way Paul speaks here. He said, hey, don't give me this patronizing stuff about religion being good for the soul. So if religion is based upon a false premise, if there's no corresponding reality to the hope that lies within us, then let's face it, our preaching is an exercise in futility. Nothing could be more irrelevant than what we are saying from the pulpits of this country, and the faith that we express is useless. It's useless if Christ isn't raised.

I talk about this every chance I get because we're living in a time in the history of the Christian church where we have seen all kinds of attempts to give us an abridged version of Christianity. And so nobody believes in the supernatural anymore. We don't believe in the miraculous. We don't believe in virgin births and atoning deaths and resurrections and ascensions and angels and all of that stuff.

Rudolf Bultmann, the German scholar, says you can't use modern chemotherapy. You can't use electricity. You can't use the conveniences of our culture and still believe in angels and virgin births. So that and the church is left with a major problem on their hands. What do we do with these billions and billions of dollars of investments that we've made in these buildings and the influence that we do have in the culture and not to mention a whole couple of generations of men and women who have been ordained into the clergy who now have no other place to work? What do we do? Do we close our doors and say, sorry, we were mistaken?

That's what's happening in Europe. Or do we try to rescue from this antiquated religion something that still has contemporary value, the ethic, for example, of Jesus? And so we will strip the supernatural elements away from the Christian faith and preserve the natural elements of prudence and insight from this Jewish rabbi and try to carry on in that way. Paul the apostle had no time for that. He thought that was infantile.

It was sophomoric when it comes right down to it. So the kind of religion established by people who want to have their cake and eat it too. He said, let's face it, you know, if Jesus is dead, there's no reason for me to attach any permanent significance to Him. There is no resurrection. Our faith is useless. Paul had no time for a Christianity without resurrection because he understood that the heart and soul of the Christian faith, what made the Christian faith the Christian faith was the announcement not that you're supposed to love one another, but the announcement He is risen.

That's what got the attention of people in the first century. This unbelievable claim that a man had died and come back from death into life. If Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless, so is your faith. More than that, we are found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that He raised Christ from the dead. There's a religious organization in this country called Jehovah Witnesses. What Paul is advocating here is that the rest of Christianity, once it abandons its confidence in the resurrection of Christ, should rename its organization Jehovah's False Witnesses and admit to the world that we have been lying for centuries because not only were we wrong about the central fact of resurrection, but we were bearing false witness against God the Father because we're saying that it's God the Father who raised God the Son from the dead. For if the dead are not raised, and Christ has not been raised, and if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. And those who also have fallen asleep in Christ are lost.

I think for a moment here you might guess that Apostle Paul was a physician. He talks about those who have fallen asleep. He resorts to euphemisms here, just like my dentist. When my dentist puts me in the dentist chair and he pulls out that needle and says, now this might cause you a little discomfort.

I know that it's going to hurt because he's given to those euphemisms. Those who have fallen asleep, that is those of you who have had loved ones who have died, are dead. And Paul is saying you have no reason to expect that you will ever see them again. You know, when my father died when I was 17 years old, a psychiatrist could have a field day with me because I was haunted for 20 years by a recurring nightmare. And that nightmare was exactly the same.

It was as vivid and as intense every time that it came. Every time that I had this nightmare, I dreamed that my father was alive again. But in this dream when I saw him, he was in the same hopeless, pitiable, emaciated condition that he was before he died. And even though I was overjoyed to see him in my dream with this vivacity and intensity of imagery in the dream, I went through once again the experience of utter hopelessness knowing in the dream that he was going to die again.

I think that what my unconscious was saying to me for 20 years is, R.C. Sproul, the thing you want more than anything else is that one more time to be able to see him, talk with him. Somebody asked me a question not too long ago. I said, R.C., if you could go to heaven and walk into heaven and have an appointment with St. Peter at the gate and see any three people that you want to see, you could see Jeremiah, you could see the Apostle Paul, you could see Augustine, Aquinas, Edwards, Luther, who would you want to see? And I said, well, first I want to see my dad. Then we can talk about Luther and the other guys.

I want to see my father. And what Paul is saying here, I mean, I'm not alone in that, am I? Paul is saying if Christ is not raised, forget about seeing your departed loved ones.

They're gone. And if only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men. I know in our culture we're told that the only meaningful dimension of religion is what happens here and now in this world and where there's nothing worse than these pie in the sky people who are always talking about heaven.

If I can't have my pie in the sky, ladies and gentlemen, I don't want to eat here. Because what the Apostle Paul is saying is that if all we have is a religious experience and a religious hope that is confined and restricted to this world, then we are of all of the people in this world the most to be pitied. I say to people who aren't Christians, don't be hostile towards us. Don't be angry.

Pity us. Because here we are throwing our lives away to a delusion. Paul goes on to say, if Christ is not raised, then let us eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die. Let's be unrestrained, hedonist. Don't laugh at this generation of kids who are doing everything in their power to intoxicate their senses and to find some means of escape from the grim reality of the world we show them every day. That's not stupid.

That's wisdom if there is no resurrection. Let's eat. Let's drink. Let's be merry.

Let's go to Mardi Gras. Let's party until we're drunk as we can be, until we die, because tomorrow it's all over. One of the greatest arguments for life after death that was ever conceived was conceived by the German philosopher Immanuel Kant in an intricate philosophical form of practical reasoning where Kant says, bottom line, that you just simply have to believe in life after death because if you don't, there is no ultimate basis for justice, and if there's no ultimate basis for justice, there's no ultimate basis for ethics, and if there's no ultimate basis for ethics, then all of life becomes a preference and society becomes inevitably impossible. Because ultimately, it's the preference of the one with the most power who will control your destiny. And so Kant says, as a practical necessity, we simply have to believe in God, and we simply have to believe in life after death because without that, life is meaningless. Dostoyevsky said it this way, if there is no God, all things are permissible, and if all things are permissible, then there's no such thing as right or wrong.

And life is a cosmic joke. I want you to understand that when Dostoyevsky speaks that way and when Immanuel Kant speaks that way, what they're doing is this, they're saying, hey, practical purposes, you better believe in Christ because if you don't, the options are so grim that life becomes intolerable. But a sober philosopher will look at that argument and say, hey, wait a minute, as Nietzsche did, that's the problem, we are convinced that life is meaningless. And we don't live like Alice in Wonderland where we can just simply project our desires and say that reality is as we would like it to be, and we're going to believe in a resurrection because without believing in a resurrection, life would be intolerable. Ladies and gentlemen, Paul does show us the grimness to the alternative to the resurrection of Christ here, but he doesn't rest his case there. He doesn't say to us, believe that Christ rose from the dead because if you don't believe it, life is intolerable. That's not what he argues.

Listen to what he says. He says at the beginning, he said, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you by which you received and which you've taken your stand. He said, for what are those things I received I passed on to you as of primary importance that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that He was buried, that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures. To a Jew, that phrase according to the Scriptures meant something because if they could show that this is something that the ancient books predicted, for most of those people it settled the matter because they had such confidence in the transcendent accuracy of holy writ. Paul could have ended the argument right there for the Jew that this was according to the Scripture. Then he moves from the biblical to the empirical realm, and he says that he appeared to Peter, and then to the twelve, and after that he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are still living.

I know their names and address. Go check it out. Most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. And then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all, as one born out of due time, he appeared unto me.

I'm not writing to you about abstract speculation. I'm talking to you about a resurrection that five hundred people at more than one time witnessed, and ladies and gentlemen, I saw Him. This is the universal testimony of the New Testament writers. As the other apostles say, we declare to you not cunningly devised myths and fables, but we declare to you what we have seen with our eyes and what we have heard with our ears. What every one of the disciples saw, handled, heard, and died for was the victory of one man over death, what the New Testament declares was not an isolated incident, but that this was the down payment for the human race, that this is the firstborn of many, brethren, that this represented a cosmic victory over the ultimate enemy of our humanity. So that the conclusion that the apostle reaches in the fifteenth chapter is fantastic.

He says, therefore, and you know what that word therefore indicates, that a conclusion is coming. Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, for inasmuch as you know that your labor in Him is not in vain. It's the resurrection of Christ that means that no amount of suffering, no amount of grief, no amount of sorrow, no amount of loneliness, no amount of apparent hopelessness can ever be ultimate because Christ is risen, so my suffering is not in vain. What a wonderful promise. It's a promise that we find in Scripture that no affliction that we face in this life is worthy to be compared with the glory that God has prepared for us in heaven. Thank you for listening to Renewing Your Mind today as we wrap up Dr. R.C. Sproul's series, Surprised by Suffering.

This is not an easy subject. No one likes to suffer, but we need to be prepared for those times when we're buffeted by the storms of life, by anchoring ourselves to the promises of God found in His Word. Dr. Sproul helps us do that in this series, and we're making it available to you, six messages on a single MP3 CD. Just request Surprised by Suffering when you contact us today with a donation of any amount. You can do that online at renewingyourmind.org, or you can simply call us with your gift at 800-435-4343. Today is the last day we're making this series available to you for a donation of any amount, so I hope you'll contact us right away. Request Surprised by Suffering by Dr. R.C.

Sproul. Again, our number is 800-435-4343, and our web address, renewingyourmind.org. You'll also find a biblical perspective on topics like this from the trusted teachers and theologians who write for Table Talk magazine. Each issue also has daily guided Bible studies, and subscribers have access to a growing library of back issues online. You can learn more and subscribe at tabletalkmagazine.com. I hope you'll join us next week as we feature one of Dr. Sproul's most popular series, Foundations, an overview of systematic theology. The Bible is a big book, 66 books in fact, that relate to each other in perfect harmony. So join us beginning Monday right here for Renewing Your Mind. .