The Certain Hope of Resurrection By Gwilym Tudur, Seion Congregational Church
U
ndoubtedly, 2021 has so far proven to be a difficult and challenging year for humanity. Whilst the rapid administration of the Covid-19 vaccine is certainly promising news, this dreadful virus continues to wreak havoc throughout the globe, afflicting pain, suffering, and death wherever it spreads. As was the case in 2020, this year has also been filled to its brim with tragedy, sadness, and darkness. The virus itself – as well as the extended periods of national lockdown caused in its wake – have taken their toll on our physical, mental, and spiritual wellbeing. Although we’re told to remain positive about the future, it is unclear how human optimism is nothing more than whistling in the dark. After all, our nebulous positivity is as incapable of stopping a future pandemic as it is of fixing a broken humanity and of saving a fallen world. Nevertheless, the poignant tone of the past few months has stirred within us a profound longing for something deeper, surer, and clearer than mere optimism. Our painful circumstances have provoked us to yearn intensely for a certain hope which can never falter or waver. Indeed, in an erratic year like 2021, we thirst for some genuine assurance to embolden us for the future. The startling message of Easter is that such a hope exists. As Coronavirus continues to besiege humanity, the Bible reminds us that everlasting hope is found – not ultimately in the chambers of our parliaments, the laboratories of our universities, nor the hospitals of our cities – but in the crucified and risen Son of God, Jesus Christ. In him we find a sure hope which forgives our past, strengthens us in the present, and empowers us for the future.
36
The Apostle Paul, in his first letter to the Corinthian Christians authored at Ephesus between AD 53 to 55, defines the nature of this glorious hope. He explains that Christian hope is not a groundless sentiment, but an absolute certainty established on the bodily resurrection of Jesus on the third day. The Christian faith itself and the hope it produces, the Apostle asserts, either stands or falls on the historical resurrection of Christ. Paul declares that if Jesus had not actually risen from death to life, our Christian preaching and faith are all but useless and vain (1 Corinthians 15:14). After all, for the Apostle, the resurrection was irrefutable proof that Christ’s sin-bearing death had been both effective and salvific (Romans 4:25). Throughout the New Testament, resurrection is not a vague notion that Christ metaphorically ‘rose’ in believers’ hearts; nor the abstract idea that Jesus figuratively ‘resurrected’ with the coming of the church; rather, it is the belief that – on one day in real, tangible history – the crucified Son of God miraculously began to breathe and walked out of his tomb alive. For Paul, the reality of Jesus’ resurrection is the sole anchor of our assurance. If the risen Christ is the foundation of our hope, what is its object? Or, to phrase it in a different way, what does the Christian hope for? Paul, in his first letter to the Corinthians, reveals that our hope is that we will also, one day, resurrect like Jesus to be with him. He makes clear that since ‘Christ has indeed been raised from the dead’, he is the ‘firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep’ (1 Cor. 15:20). ‘Firstfruits’ were an early sample of a farmer’s crop which prefigured the quality of the season’s harvest. Paul’s point is
INSiGHT | April 2021
