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Apostles Creed 16: I Believe in the Holy Ghost

Christ Church on October 16, 2017

What we now know as the Apostles Creed descended from an earlier form of the creed, known as the Old Roman Symbol. The beginning of the creed dates from as early as the second century. We do not have any direct evidence that it was penned by any of the apostles, but it is an admirable summary of the apostolic teaching.

Introduction

The fact that the Holy Spirit is mentioned by name late in the Creed does not make Him an afterthought. He is not present here as a postscript. When we begin the Creed with the words I believe, this is only possible because the Holy Spirit has been at work. He is the one who quickens us into new life, and who is therefore the one who consequently enables us to believe any aspect of the gospel.

The Text

I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ, his only begotten Son, our Lord. He was conceived by the Holy Ghost, and born of the virgin, Mary. He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried. He descended into Hades. On the third day He rose again from the dead, ascended into Heaven, and sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty; from thence He will come to judge the living and the dead. I believe in the Holy Ghost, the holy catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Amen.

Summary of the Text

“In whom ye also trusted, after that ye heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation: in whom also after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that holy Spirit of promise” (Eph. 1:13). We see here in our text that the Spirit and the Word accompany one another. The word of truth, the gospel, the message of salvation, is the thing anointed, and the Spirit is the one who anoints it with Himself. He anoints the message by anointing the believing ears that hear the message. This is how we are sealed. The Holy Spirit is called the Spirit of promise. He is the one who was promised through the prophets, and the one who fulfills the promise, as well as the present comforter who renews the promise.

Not A Blind Force

Because the work of the Spirit is to testify to Jesus (Rev. 19:10), and the work of Jesus is to bring us to the Father (John 14:6), it is sometimes easy for us to start taking the Spirit’s “behind the scenes” identity for granted. But we must understand Him, and this begins with understanding that He is a Him. He is not an impersonal force, like electricity or something.

Throughout the New Testament, we consistently find the Holy Spirit referred to by the masculine personal pronoun, despite the fact that the word spirit is grammatically neuter. As a Person, the Holy Spirit can be grieved (Eph. 4:30). It is possible to lie to Him, as Ananias and Sapphira did (Acts 5:3).

The Holy Spirit speaks commands and can be obeyed (Acts 10:19-21). The presence of the Spirit is a comforting presence (John 14:26). The Holy Spirit has a will (1 Cor. 12:11). There are many other such passages. Included in the Trinity, the Spirit is not an impersonal addition to the other two persons.

In God to God

Remember that there is only one God, and this God exists in three eternal persons. These persons are the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. We need to consider this triune God in two different ways. Note that we are considering Him in two ways; we are not considering two Gods. Theologians distinguish God as He is within Himself (the ontological Trinity) and God as He works in our midst (the economic Trinity). The following illustration is an illustration of His economic working.

“For through him [Christ] we both have access by one Spirit unto the Father.” (Eph. 2:18). The Father is the city we are driving to, the Son is the road we travel, and the Holy Spirit is the car. The Father is the harbor we are sailing toward, the Son is the ocean, and the Holy Spirit is the wind behind us in our sails. The triune God brings us to Himself along Himself by Himself.

The Earnest of Our Inheritance

Our text says that we were sealed by the Holy Spirit. This is said a number of times. “Who hath also sealed us, and given the earnest of the Spirit in our hearts” (2 Cor. 1:22). The word for earnest is arrabon, meaning down payment or earnest money. It means pledge, deposit, or guarantee. God gives us Himself as an earnest payment on our final inheritance, our final salvation. Someone might say that this does not prevent someone so sealed from going to Hell. Well, all right, but that means that if a sealed believer goes to Hell, the Spirit goes there with Him.

What good is a guarantee that guarantees nothing? God is not like a dishonest merchant who gives out lifetime guarantees, where the guarantee is only for the lifetime of the product. “It is guaranteed to work until it doesn’t.” “Now he that hath wrought us for the selfsame thing is God, who also hath given unto us the earnest of the Spirit” (2 Cor. 5:5). The verse after our text says the same thing. “Which is the earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, unto the praise of his glory” (Eph. 1:14).

The Spirit Glorifies Christ

We believe in the Holy Spirit, and He is the one who enables us to believe everything that we should, in gladness rejoicing.

“And be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess; but be filled with the Spirit; Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord; Giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Eph. 5:18–20).

What produces the same effect in the parallel book of Colossians? “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom; teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord” (Col. 3:16). Put these two passages together. The Spirit is not the “fluid” that fills us. Rather, He is the agent who fills us with something else, the word of Christ. “Let the Word of Christ dwell in you richly by means of the Holy Spirit . . .” We believe in the Holy Spirit, most certainly, but we believe from within Him.

Apostles Creed 15: From Thence He Will Come to Judge the Living and the Dead

Christ Church on October 9, 2017

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What we now know as the Apostles Creed descended from an earlier form of the creed, known as the Old Roman Symbol. The beginning of the creed dates from as early as the second century. We do not have any direct evidence that it was penned by any of the apostles, but it is an admirable summary of the apostolic teaching.

Introduction

We believe that there was a time when the world was not. God spoke, and all of it came into being out of nothing. We believe that there will be a time when the world (as it is now) will cease to be. That will come about in the same way—God will say the word, and it will be done. But it will not go back to nothing. There will be a transformation, a glorification, a completion. And those who are in Christ will dwell with Him forever.

The Text

I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ, his only begotten Son, our Lord. He was conceived by the Holy Ghost, and born of the virgin, Mary. He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried. He descended into Hades. On the third day He rose again from the dead, ascended into Heaven, and sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty; from thence He will come to judge the living and the dead. I believe in the Holy Ghost, the holy catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Amen.

Summary of the Text

“Because he hath appointed a day, in the which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained; whereof he hath given assurance unto all men, in that he hath raised him from the dead” (Acts 17:31 ).

Not only is it appointed to each man once to die (Heb. 9:27 ), a final day, a last day, is also similarly appointed for the entire world. The world will have a death bed. The world will end on that fixed day, and God the Father Almighty knows when that day will be. Not only will the world end, but just as it is with individual men (“and after this the judgment”), so also it will be with the planet. Jesus will judge the world in righteousness. The world is appointed to end, and Jesus is ordained to judge it.

If any are disposed to challenge this, God has given assurance to all men that this will in fact happen. This assurance (the word in our text is pistis, commonly rendered as faith) was given through the vehicle of Christ’s resurrection. Modern apologetics too often spends its energy trying to prove the resurrection. In Scripture, the resurrection was not the datum to be proved, it was rather the proof of something else. That something else is this phrase in the Creed. Jesus will come again, from the right hand of the Almighty, and He will do so in order to judge the living and the dead.

Partial and Full Preterism

One quick point before turning to the main theme. You have been taught that many passages traditionally thought to be about the end of the world were actually prophecies about the end of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. What you have been taught about this is called partial preterism. Some of the prophecies in the New Testament were fulfilled in the first century (e.g. Matt. 24:29 ). But there is another school of thought which holds that all of the New Testament prophecies were about the end of Jerusalem, and that we have no prophecies about the end of the world. This view is called full preterism, and because it denies the Second Coming of Christ, it is heretical.

There are many doctrinal views and variations concerning the Second Coming (as I am sure you know), and the Christian church universal has made only one statement in all her history about eschatology. That solitary statement, made here in the Creed, is that full preterism is wrong.

The Fault Line

The Bible teaches that there are two humanities, two races, two ways of being human. One exists in Adam, Adam as he fell into sin. The other is a reestablished humanity, a renewed humanity, created in Christ Jesus, the last Adam. The first humanity was corrupted and turned aside from the way. God could have written the whole thing off as a loss, but in His good pleasure He determined to re-create a new and glorified humanity out of the raw material provided to Him by us—raw material that was hopelessly diseased. Christ was born into this old race (without sin), and lived a perfect and sinless life. He was executed by our rebel leaders in such a way as to pay the debt for our sins, and He was resurrected into new life in such a way as to enable us to participate in Him—to join with Him in that life by faith. If we look away from Adam, and look to the new Adam in faith, we are translated from one race to the other.

Now Scripture speaks of these two ways of being human under many different figures. Here are just a few of them. They are wheat and tares (Matt. 13:30 ). They are sheep and goats (Matt. 25:33 ). They are sons of the devil and sons of God (John 8:44 ; 1:12-13 ). They are fruitful branches and fruitless branches (John 15:1-2 ). They are land that bears a harvest and land that grows thistles (Heb. 6:7-8 ). They are maidens with oil and maidens without (Matt. 25:1-13 ). They are guests in wedding clothes and guests in sweat pants (Matt. 22:11-14 ). This basic division is not the same thing as the division between the visible church and the world.

The One Thing Needful

There is another division among men that is irrelevant. Jesus will come to judge the living and the dead both. That is not the fundamental division. Whether you are alive the moment He returns or have been dead for a thousand years will not matter in the slightest. Nor will your position in Christ or out of Christ affect whether your body will be raised. There is a resurrection of both the just and the unjust. Every last man, woman, and child will stand before God in the body.

“And have hope toward God, which they themselves also allow, that there shall be a resurrection of the dead, both of the just and unjust” (Acts 24:15 ).

“Marvel not at this: for the hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice, And shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation” (John 5:28–29 ).

The Bema Seat

We will all appear before the throne of Christ. This judgment seat (bema) means that our lives will be evaluated, whether we are justified or not.

“For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ; that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad. Knowing therefore the terror of the Lord, we persuade men; but we are made manifest unto God; and I trust also are made manifest in your consciences” (2 Cor. 5:10–11 ; cf. Rom. 14:10-12 ).

The Criterion of Ultimate Judgment

It is singular, criterion, not plural. How you will fare in the judgment is not based on criteria. How will we fare? What work must we do to prepare ourselves for that day? There is one work, and only one work that will suffice, and it is to look upon the one who actually did the work.

“Jesus answered and said unto them, This is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom he hath sent” (John 6:29 ).

Apostles Creed 14: And Sits at the Right Hand of God the Father Almighty

Christ Church on October 1, 2017

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What we now know as the Apostles Creed descended from an earlier form of the creed, known as the Old Roman Symbol. The beginning of the creed dates from as early as the second century. We do not have any direct evidence that it was penned by any of the apostles, but it is an admirable summary of the apostolic teaching.

Introduction
In the creation of Adam as pictured on the Sistine Chapel ceiling, God the Father has a right hand. But the God of the Bible is Spirit, and has no right hand—for He has no body at all. At the same time, with few exceptions (e.g. Acts 7:55), the Scriptures repeatedly tell us that Jesus is seated at the right hand of God. What does this image mean? What are we being instructed to believe?

The Text
I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ, his only begotten Son, our Lord. He was conceived by the Holy Ghost, and born of the virgin, Mary. He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried. He descended into Hades. On the third day He rose again from the dead, ascended into Heaven, and sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty; from thence He will come to judge the living and the dead. I believe in the Holy Ghost, the holy catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Amen.

Summary of the Text
“The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou at my right hand, Until I make thine enemies thy footstool” (Psalm 110:1).

At the culmination of the Ascension, Jesus came before the Ancient of Days in the throne room of God (Dan. 7:13-14). Upon that entry, He was given an absolute and universal dominion over all things. This is where God invited Him to sit at His right hand until the end of human history. This enthronement of Christ is indicative of His faithful completion of all that the Father had given Him to do. The last day of resurrection excepted, the remainder of the great work of redemption was to be done by a Spirit-empowered Church.

“Then cometh the end, when he shall have delivered up the kingdom to God, even the Father; when he shall have put down all rule and all authority and power. For he must reign, till he hath put all enemies under his feet. The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death. For he hath put all things under his feet. But when he saith, all things are put under him, it is manifest that he is excepted, which did put all things under him” (1 Cor. 15:24–27).

This session of Christ, His seating at the right Hand of the Father, is a doctrine repeated over and over in the New Testament, and it is the basis for all our labors. The fact that Christ is seated is an indication of His completed work. As our prophet, priest, and king, He has accomplished the work the Father assigned to Him.

Prophet
“Thou wilt shew me the path of life: In thy presence is fulness of joy; At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore” (Ps. 16:11).

Seated as He is by the Father, Jesus teaches and instructs us through His Holy Spirit. We know that this psalm speaks of Christ because the previous verse (v. 10) is quoted in Acts and applied to Jesus (Acts 13:35). Jesus taught His disciples that His Spirit would come to instruct them, and that instruction is part of the prophetic office (John 14:26; Matt. 10:19-20; 1 John 2:27).

“Therefore being by the right hand of God exalted, and having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost, he hath shed forth this, which ye now see and hear” (Acts 2:33).

Now using the language of the psalm, Jesus is the one who shows us the path of life. He teaches us. He is the resurrection and the life (John 11:25). For those who believe in Him, out of their bellies living water would flow (John 7:38-39), referring to the Spirit. The Way is established because the one who lived it perfectly, and who also taught it perfectly, has now been seated at God’s right hand.

Priest
“Now of the things which we have spoken this is the sum: We have such an high priest, who is set on the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens” (Heb. 8:1). “But this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins for ever, sat down on the right hand of God” (Heb. 10:12).

Here we are taught that Jesus completed His priestly work. He died on the cross, once for all, and after He ascended into Heaven, at some point He applied the blood of His sacrifice to the heavenly altar (Heb. 1:3; 9:12), also once for all. And then—because our salvation is complete—He sat down. From that position, as a seated priest, He continues to pray for us. “Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us” (Rom. 8:34).

Notice the gospel logic here. Christ died, rose, and was seated at God’s right hand. He prays for us there. So who is he that condemns?

King
“Who is gone into heaven, and is on the right hand of God; angels and authorities and powers being made subject unto him” (1 Pet. 3:22).

We saw earlier that the appearance of Christ before the Ancient of Days resulted in Him being given universal dominion. This position is one of authority and power.

“Jesus saith unto him, Thou hast said: nevertheless I say unto you, Hereafter shall ye see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven” (Matt. 26:64; cf. Mk 14 62).

The Great Commission instructs us to bring the nations to obedience. Jesus is Lord. Jesus is the King—the King of kings. We must do as He says.

Prophet, Priest, King
It is hard to cover all the references to this doctrine in just one sermon. There are a number of other passages we don’t have time to address (Mk. 16:19; Acts 2:34; Eph. 1:20; Col. 3:1; Heb. 1:3; 1:13; 12:2). There are many aspects to this, and a multitude of possible applications. But at the end of the day, the charge is this. We are not up and doing because it is all up to us. We stand because Christ is seated.

Apostles Creed 13: Ascended Into Heaven

Christ Church on September 24, 2017

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What we now know as the Apostles Creed descended from an earlier form of the creed, known as the Old Roman Symbol. The beginning of the creed dates from as early as the second century. We do not have any direct evidence that it was penned by any of the apostles, but it is an admirable summary of the apostolic teaching.

Introduction

The intersection of heaven and earth, the boundary between the two, is not the same kind of boundary that we might find between two countries. If you were not on a road, crossing between countries is not necessarily something you would even notice. But crossing between earth and heaven necessitates a qualitative difference in experience.

The Text

“I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ, his only begotten Son, our Lord. He was conceived by the Holy Ghost, and born of the virgin, Mary. He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried. He descended into Hades. On the third day He rose again from the dead, ascended into Heaven, and sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty; from thence He will come to judge the living and the dead. I believe in the Holy Ghost, the holy catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Amen.”

Summary of the Text

“And when he had spoken these things, while they beheld, he was taken up; and a cloud received him out of their sight. And while they looked stedfastly toward heaven as he went up, behold, two men stood by them in white apparel; Which also said, Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? this same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven” (Acts 1:9–11).

After the resurrection, Jesus continued to appear to His disciples, teaching them and reminding them of things, doing so for forty days. After almost a month and a half of this, He gave them their final instructions, and then was taken up out of their sight. They watched as He ascended, and they watched continually until He disappeared into a cloud—indicating a significant height. The disciples were gazing steadfastly at Him, until they were interrupted by two men in white apparel. These two men were obviously angels, and asked them why they were staring up into heaven. This same Jesus, they said, was going to come back again, and He was going to come back again in the same way He departed. This means that the Second Coming of Christ will involve His return in the body.

Ascended

When Jesus ascended, it says that the disciples were able to watch Him ascend. They did so until He disappeared into a cloud. Now let us—as the apostle says elsewhere—be adults in our thinking (1 Cor. 14:20). We do not believe that Jesus just kept going, at approximately 30 mph, until He came to occupy His sky palace behind the moon. Neither did he continue at that same speed on His way to highest heaven—30 mph after two thousand years would place Him about 500 million miles away, which would mean He is well past Mars, but still in the solar system. We are Christians, which means we are committed to faith in the miraculous. But this does not mean that we committed to child-like absurdities.

The Scripture teach that heaven and earth have undergone a “divorce,” and an essential part of Christ’s work was to bring them back together into union again. “And, having made peace through the blood of his cross, by him to reconcile all things unto himself; by him, I say, whether they be things in earth, or things in heaven” (Col. 1:20). Because of man’s sin, heaven and earth were thrown out of joint. And through Christ we are being introduced into a completed nature that is being transformed, and reunited again.

Facing the Difficulty

When we reject the materialist cosmology, which we do, with its endless concourse of blind atoms, this does not mean that to be pious Christians we must adopt a view of the cosmos that is a triple-decker stage set (Heaven, earth, Hell), made out of painted plywood. The language used for us is metaphorical, and the enacted language of the Ascension is metaphorical.

“All the accounts suggest that the appearances of the Risen Body came to an end; some describe an abrupt end about six weeks after the death. And they describe this abrupt end in a way which presents greater difficulties to the modern mind than any other part of Scripture. For here, surely, we get the implication of all those primitive crudities to which I have said that Christians are not committed: the vertical ascent like a balloon, the local Heaven, the decorated chair to the right of the Father’s throne.”

“The records represent Christ as passing after death (as no man had passed before) neither into a purely, that is, negatively, ‘spiritual’ mode of existence nor into a ‘natural’ life such as we know, but into a life which has its own, new Nature. It represents Him as withdrawing six weeks later, into some different mode of existence. It says—He says—that He goes ‘to prepare a place for us’. This presumably means that He is about to create that whole new Nature which will provide the environment or conditions for His glorified humanity and, in Him, for ours.”

As Lewis argues elsewhere, we cannot talk about the arrival of the Lord in this world (or His departure from it) without using metaphorical language. We can impoverish our metaphorical language, but we can’t make it less metaphorical. If we say the Lord “entered” this world instead of saying He “came down,” we are substituting a man coming into a room for a parachutist. But both images are metaphors, describing the intersection of spiritual/physical with an image of physical/physical. But that intersection is not actually physical/physical. At the risk of being misunderstood, it is spiritual|physical/physical|spiritual. In short, we are in over our heads

Into Heaven

The Scripture uses the term heaven to refer to different realities. We have the heavens to refer to what we call sky. Birds are creatures of heaven (Gen. 6:7). Jesus says the same thing (Matt. 6:26). Heaven is where rain comes from (Jas. 5:18).

A second use of heaven refers to what is commonly called outer space. After describing the sun going dark, and the moon not giving its light, Jesus says that the powers of the heavens will be shaken (Matt. 24:29). Believers are to resist the temptation to worship these celestial bodies (Deut. 4:19). The stars are called the host of heaven.

But there is more. A third heaven contains realities beyond what we can see—called the highest heaven (Deut. 10:14), or the heaven of heavens (Ps. 148:4). This third heaven is where God’s presence is manifested, even though He cannot be contained by the heaven of heavens (1 Kings 8:27). And yet, God’s presence is somehow localized in this Heaven (Heb. 8:1; Acts 7:55). The presence of God is in this Heaven. “For Christ is not entered into the holy places made with hands, which are the figures of the true; but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us” (Heb. 9:24).

The Third Heaven

Considering all these things, we should locate the “third heaven” that Paul equates with Paradise (2 Cor. 12:2, 4), with the highest Heaven, where the presence of God is manifested. An alternative to this would be to equate it with the third sphere of the ancient cosmology (Venus), a view I find much less compelling.
“Seeing then that we have a great high priest, that is passed into the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our profession” (Heb. 4:14).

Apostles Creed 12: On the Third Day He Rose Again from the Dead

Christ Church on September 17, 2017

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What we now know as the Apostles Creed descended from an earlier form of the creed, known as the Old Roman Symbol. The beginning of the creed dates from as early as the second century. We do not have any direct evidence that it was penned by any of the apostles, but it is an admirable summary of the apostolic teaching.

Introduction

Since the first century, the Christian church has commemorated the resurrection of Jesus from the dead by meeting on the first day of the week, the Lord’s Day (Rev. 1:10Open in Logos Bible Software (if available)). The Sabbath was ordained, as the Old Testament makes abundantly clear, for as long as the old creation lasted. Therefore, nothing would be adequate to shift the day from the seventh to the first short of a new heaven and new earth. And in the resurrection from the dead, this is precisely what we find.

The Text

Summary of the Text

“Then certain philosophers of the Epicureans, and of the Stoicks, encountered him. And some said, What will this babbler say? other some, He seemeth to be a setter forth of strange gods: because he preached unto them Jesus, and the resurrection” (Acts 17:18Open in Logos Bible Software (if available)).

As we will see, the apostolic proclamation of the gospel centered in an important way on the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. This is apparent in multiple places, and here on Mars Hill it comes out in a curious way. The Greek word for resurrection is anastasis, and the philosophers there thought that Paul was preaching strange gods. Note the plural. They thought this because he was preaching about Jesus and about Anastasis. The resurrection featured so strongly in his preaching that they thought Resurrection was one of a pair of gods.

When the disciples replaced Judas, they wanted someone who had been with them since the baptism of John down to the ascension. That apostle’s job was to be witness, together with them, of the resurrection (Acts 1:22Open in Logos Bible Software (if available)). The enemies of the gospel were grieved that the early Christians were preaching the resurrection of the dead through Jesus (Acts 4:2Open in Logos Bible Software (if available)). The orthodox Jews believed in a resurrection of the dead, contra the Sadducees, but the Christians were preaching that this resurrection had surfaced in a strange and unexpected place, through the resurrection of Jesus. This is why Paul was able to divide the Sanhedrin on this question (Acts 23:6Open in Logos Bible Software (if available), 8Open in Logos Bible Software (if available)). There would be a resurrection of both the just and the unjust and the Jews knew it (Acts 24:15Open in Logos Bible Software (if available)). But there was something they did not know.

A Brief Word about the Third Day

As we saw in the previous message, Jesus had predicted that He was going to spend three days and three nights in the heart of the earth (Matt. 12:40Open in Logos Bible Software (if available)), just as Jonah had spent that time in the fish. This raises a question for the curious—how on earth can you get three days and three nights to fit in between Friday afternoon, and Sunday morning? The brief answer is that you cannot, and despite all the Good Friday services we hold, Jesus did not really die on Friday. The thing that makes some people think He did is that the gospel of Luke tells us that He was crucified on the day of preparation, as the Sabbath drew on (Luke 23:54Open in Logos Bible Software (if available)). But the Jews had more Sabbaths than just the weekly Sabbath. The Scriptures refer to high holy days that are not the weekly Sabbath as Sabbaths (Lev. 16:29-31Open in Logos Bible Software (if available), 23:24-32Open in Logos Bible Software (if available), 39Open in Logos Bible Software (if available)), and Jesus was crucified just before the Passover. So there were two Sabbaths that week. After that first Sabbath, the women purchased spices for use on His body (Mark 16:1Open in Logos Bible Software (if available)). The weekly Sabbath was the second Sabbath that week, and Luke 23:56Open in Logos Bible Software (if available) tells us the women, after they had prepared the spices, rested on the Sabbath (Luke 23:56Open in Logos Bible Software (if available)). How could they buy spices after the Sabbath, and also rest on the Sabbath after they had prepared those spices—unless there were two Sabbaths that week? So, without belaboring the point, I think we should assume that the first day of Passover that year was Thursday. Jesus died Wednesday afternoon, and was laid in the grave around sundown Wednesday night. Thursday night was one day, Friday night the second, and Saturday night the third. For the Jews, the first day of the week would start at sundown our Saturday night, and that is when Jesus rose. So when the women came on our Sunday morning, the grave was already empty.

Some Mocked

“And when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked: and others said, We will hear thee again of this matter.” (Acts 17:32Open in Logos Bible Software (if available)).

One of the things that the unbelieving heart loves to do is take certain obvious things for granted, in order to suppress and ignore them, and to do this in order to ridicule the coming glories as incredible. One time I was with Christopher Hitchens on Joy Behar’s show, and they were making merry over the fact that I believe the Bible, meaning that I believed in talking animals—like the serpent in the garden, or Balaam’s donkey. “How can you believe in talking animals?” My response was, “But we’re animals, and we talk.” And nobody knew quite what to do. In short, everybody believes in talking animals.

And what about life from the dead? Everyone believes in that too. The evolutionist believes that inanimate matter one day jumped the chasm and became animate—life from death. And it did this all by itself. And Christians believe that God formed Adam from the dust of the ground. When He breathed the breath of life into him, that inanimate matter became a living soul (Gen. 2:7Open in Logos Bible Software (if available)). Everyone believes that life came from death. What our faith in the resurrection means is that we believe it will happen again. But why on earth would anyone declare a miracle an impossibility the second time? “Sure, you walked on water once, but a second time is plainly impossible.”

Inside Out History

Having no doctrine of creation, a common pagan assumption about history involved it in endless recurring cycles. The Jews had a doctrine of creation, and so they had a linear view of history. It was a story with a beginning, middle, and end. The resurrection from the dead would occur on the last day. Jesus said the general resurrection would happen on the last day (John 6:39-40Open in Logos Bible Software (if available), 44Open in Logos Bible Software (if available)). Martha expected to see her brother Lazarus at the last day (John 11:24Open in Logos Bible Software (if available)). Unbelievers would be judged by the words of Christ on the last day (John 12:48Open in Logos Bible Software (if available)). And this is all true enough, as far as it went.

But the startling thing that God did was this. By doing this, He transformed the entire nature of human history. He punched a hole in the fabric of history, right in the middle of it. That hole was the tomb of Christ. He reached through that hole, grabbed the last days, and pulled them through the tomb. The resurrection of the last days has begun, and it began in the middle of ordinary time. Christ rose in the middle of history, which means that all our reckoning has to be adjusted accordingly.

Resurrection on the Move

Everything that was entailed in the resurrection of the last day has been accomplished in Christ. He rose from the dead bodily. His resurrection was the down payment on what will be for the rest of us. “For our conversation is in heaven; from whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ: Who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body, according to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto himself” (Phil. 3:20–21Open in Logos Bible Software (if available)).

The last day will still see wonderful things—our bodies will be transformed then, just as the Jews expected. But because Christ’s body was transformed in the middle of history, what was pulled after this? Christ’s resurrection pulled our regeneration (our spiritual resurrection from spiritual death), and our regeneration pulls our bodily resurrection after it. “And if Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin; but the Spirit is life because of righteousness” (Rom. 8:10Open in Logos Bible Software (if available)).

But of course it is the hand of God that is doing all the pulling.