AP

Luke 24:1-8   On the first day of the week, very early in the morning, the women took the spices they had prepared and went to the tomb.  They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus.  While they were wondering about this, suddenly two men in clothes that gleamed like lightning stood beside them. In their fright the women bowed down with their faces to the ground, but the men said to them,  “Why do you look for the living among the dead?  He is not here; he has risen!  Remember how he told you, while he was still with you in Galilee:  ‘The Son of Man must be delivered over to the hands of sinners, be crucified and on the third day be raised again.’”  Then they remembered his words.

At the  beginning of his Gospel, Luke mentions how he “carefully investigated everything from the beginning” (1:3), and it is a great blessing that, as a result (especially under the Holy Spirit’s inspiration!), we have such a trustworthy account of the bodily resurrection of Jesus.

The Apostle Paul, in his preaching (Acts 17:31) and in his letters (1 Corinthians 15, Philippians 3, 1 Thessalonians 4, etc), points to the importance and centrality of the Resurrection to the Gospel Message, and we see in Luke’s account the significant details of how the heavy ‘sealed’ stone had somehow been ‘rolled away’ from the tomb, how the women ‘did not find the body of the Lord Jesus’ inside, and how the ‘two men in clothes that gleamed like lightning stood beside them’ … … and said, ‘Why do you look for the living among the dead?  He is not here; he has risen! Remember how he told you, …’, reminding them of Jesus’ use of their Old Testament Scriptures to anticipate his rising from the dead!

I remember reading many years ago a very helpful ‘harmony’ of the four Gospel accounts of the Resurrection in the NICNT Commentary on Luke by Norval Geldenhuys (now superseded by Joel Green’s), and Frank Morison’s “Who Moved the Stone?”, and how convinced I became of the far-reaching relevance of Paul’s statement at the Areopagus:  “In the past God overlooked such ignorance [re the obvious evidence of the existence of the One True God], but now he commands all people everywhere to repent.  For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead.”

Let us be sure we know the One who has satisfied God’s justice by bearing the full impact of God’s judgement in our place, and that we see the significance, not only of Jesus’ death on the cross, but also of the empty tomb since, as Paul says, he was “delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification” (Romans 4:25).

So, it seems to me, the Resurrection of Jesus is not just a theoretical ‘academic’ question for idle reflection and debate – it is a real ‘watershed’, life-and-death issue, that urgently needs a response.  What’s yours?  What will Easter mean to you in six weeks time?

– Bruce Christian