Todd Bolen, “Garden Tomb“
By Spencer D Gear
The apostle Paul was awaiting execution in a Roman prison when he wrote his second and final letter to Timothy in about AD 64-68 (intro in ESV). What do you think would be the last words from one of the greatest church leaders of all time – just before he was killed as a martyr for the faith? Listen carefully to 2 Tim. 4:1-4:
I solemnly urge you in the presence of God and Christ Jesus, who will someday judge the living and the dead when he comes to set up his Kingdom: 2 Preach the word of God. Be prepared, whether the time is favorable or not. Patiently correct, rebuke, and encourage your people with good teaching.
3 For a time is coming when people will no longer listen to sound and wholesome teaching. They will follow their own desires and will look for teachers who will tell them whatever their itching ears want to hear. 4 They will reject the truth and chase after myths (NLT).
A. What happened in the years immediately after the death of the apostles?
Was Paul’s warning to Timothy fulfilled? Was sound doctrine compromised? Were there listeners with “itching ears” who “turn[ed] their ears away from the truth and turn[ed] aside to myths”? Yes, there were and here we will describe some of the teachings.
We need to understand that these church leaders were defending the faith against one of the most destructive heresies concerning Christ that developed towards the end of the first century. A similar kind of heresy is with us today. Back in the first and second centuries, this false teaching was called Docetism (a form of Gnosticism).
Docetism is based on the Greek verb, dokew, which means, “I seem.” This heresy taught that:
Jesus only seemed to be human; he was not really human;
His human body was a ghost;
Christ’s suffering and death were only appearances of suffering & death;
They denied his humanity, so there was no bodily resurrection of Christ. But they affirmed Christ’s deity.
We see possibly an early stage of Docetism being addressed in I John 4:2, when John wrote, “Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God.” In 2 John 7, we read, “Many deceivers, who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh, have gone out into the world. Any such person is the deceiver and the antichrist.”
This is why early church theologians and writers after the death of the apostles had to preach against this heresy. I’ll mention a few examples of this correction, particularly as it applies to the resurrection of Christ.
1. Ignatius of Antioch (ca. 35-107) [2]
He taught: “For I know and believe that [Jesus] was in the flesh even after the resurrection. And when He came to Peter and those who were with him, He said to them, ‘Take, handle me and see that I am not a spirit without body’” (written about the year AD 110) [Ignatius n.d., 6.3].
2. Justin Martyr (ca. 100-165)
Justin wrote:
“Why did He rise in the flesh in which He suffered, unless to show the resurrection of the flesh? And wishing to confirm this, when His disciples did not know whether to believe He had truly risen in the body, and were looking upon Him and doubting, He said to them, ‘Ye have not yet faith, see that it is I;’ and He let them handle Him, and showed them the prints of the nails in His hands. And when they were by every kind of proof persuaded that it was Himself, and in the body, they asked Him to eat with them, that they might thus still more accurately ascertain that He had in verity risen bodily” (Martyr, J., n.d., ch. 9).
This letter was written about AD 110. Why did he have to teach that Jesus rose from the dead in a body of flesh? Because there was false doctrine around in the early second century. He went straight to the Bible to get the proof. We have to do the same with new challenges to Christ’s bodily resurrection.
3. Tertullian (ca. 160-225)
Tertullian wrote a book titled, “On the Resurrection of the Flesh,” in which he asked and responded:
How then did Christ rise again? In the flesh, or not? No doubt, since you are told that He ‘died according to the Scriptures,’ and ‘that He was buried according to the Scriptures,’ no otherwise than in the flesh, you will also allow that it was in the flesh that He was raised from the dead.
For the very same body which fell in death, and which lay in the sepulchre, did also rise again (Tertullian n.d., ch. 48).
4. Irenaeus (ca. 130-200)
This image courtesy of Wikipedia)
This church father wrote a book titled, Against Heresies, in which he stated:
“In the same manner, therefore, as Christ did rise in the substance of flesh, and pointed out to His disciples the mark of the nails and the opening in His side (now these are the tokens of that flesh which rose from the dead)” (Irenaeus n.d., 5.7.1).
5. Origen (ca. 185-254)
In Contra Celsus, Origen refuted Celsus’s charge that the resurrection appearances of Jesus were those of a ghost. He asked:
“How is it possible that a phantom which, as he describes it, flew past to deceive the beholders, could produce such effects after it had passed away, and could so turn the hearts of men as to lead them to regulate their actions according to the will of God” (Origen n.d., 7.35).
Docetism was one of the major destructive heresies of the church in the first-to-third centuries and these defenders and teachers of the faith had to teach against the false doctrine of a spiritual or phantom resurrection of Christ. Paul warned that “destructive heresies” would come and that people would have “itching ears” to receive and promote such false teaching.
B. What do we have today?
I hope you don’t get angry with me for mentioning names of people who teach false doctrine. I am following the example of the apostle Paul who, in Galatians 2:11ff, condemned the apostle Peter — and named him. Peter had been eating with the Gentiles, but when certain Jews came from James, Peter drew back and separated from the Gentiles. Paul named Peter as a hypocrite and we have had it in writing for 2000 years.
Paul said in 2 Tim. 4:14, “Alexander the metalworker did me a great deal of harm. The Lord will repay him for what he has done.” We have had this also on record for 2,000 years.
When people are preaching false doctrine in the church or anywhere, when people are harming the church and God’s people, we need to name them, correct them, and proclaim the accurate biblical message.
In regard to the bodily resurrection of Christ, what false teaching do we have today?
1. New Zealand Presbyterian minister, Sir Lloyd Geering
(Sir Lloyd Geering, image courtesy Wikipedia)
He defended what “Gregor Smith had said in [a book called] Secular Christianity … that the Christian is free to say that the bones of Jesus lie somewhere in Palestine, and until the Christian feels free to say that, he hasn’t understood what the Resurrection is about” (in Kohn 2001).
Geering continues, “The Resurrection was not a resuscitation, it was not a return to this life of a physical body. It was in fact something quite different. It was in fact the rise of Easter faith in the disciples, more or less as Bultmann had been explaining for some time” (in Kohn 2001).
In other words, the resurrection of Jesus was not a risen body in the flesh, but it was a spiritual experience for Christ’s disciples.
You possibly won’t read Lloyd Geering and some of these other false teachers today, but do you know the people who do read them? Those in the mass media who want to create doubt or a controversial perspective, readily seek comments from these doubters. When it comes to Easter and Christmas times, they won’t call on you and me, but these false teachings and their heretical teachers will hit the headlines.
2. Edward Schillebeeckx
A Dutch Roman Catholic, he wrote, “Jesus’ resurrection is not a return to life as in the story of Lazarus… it is certainly not a miracle of intervention in natural laws to raise a corpse to heavenly life” (from Schillebeeckx, God Among Us, p. 134, cited in Mann 1993).
3. The German Protestant Lutheran, Rudolph Bultmann
Bultmann wrote that “the resurrection itself is not an event of past history” (from Kerygma and Myth, p.39, cited in Mann 1993).
4. Protestant theologian Karl Barth
“Christians do not believe in the empty tomb but in the living Christ. Is the empty tomb just a legend? What matter? It cannot but demand assent, even as legend.” (from Church Dogmatics III, 2, p.454).
5. Former Episcopalian bishop of Newark, NJ, John Shelby Spong:
“The probable fate of the crucified Jesus was to be thrown with other victims into a common, unmarked grave. The general consensus of New Testament scholars is that whatever the Easter experience was, it dawned first in the minds of the disciples who had fled to Galilee for safety, driving us to the conclusion that the burial story in the gospels is both legendary and was developed directly from the words of II Isaiah” (Spong 2004).
6. John Dominic Crossan, a Roman Catholic, of the Jesus Seminar
Crossan speaks of “the apparitions of the risen Jesus.” What’s an apparition? A phantom, a ghost. Jesus’ resurrected body was not real flesh. He says that “the resurrection is a matter of Christian faith” (1995, p. 189). So, for him, the resurrection of Christ is really a spiritual resurrection among believers – whatever that means.
So, what happened to the body of Jesus? Crossan wrote: “Jesus’ burial by his friends was totally fictional and unhistorical. He was buried, if buried at all, by his enemies, and the necessarily shallow grave would have been easy prey for scavenging animals” (Crossan 1994, p. 160).
Let’s come closer to my home in Queensland – in my hometown of Bundaberg, Qld., Australia.
7. Rev. David Kidd, Bundaberg Uniting Church
At Easter time 1999, David Kidd wrote an article in The Bugle, a local freebie newspaper that was titled, “The Resurrection of Jesus” (Kidd 1999, p. 19). I lived in Bundaberg at the time. In it, he stated: “The resurrection of Jesus.[3] It’s impossible. Even our brain dies after a few minutes of death. It’s just not possible.’”[4]
C. What does the Bible state?
It is very easy to show from the Scriptures that Christ rose from the dead in a physical body. Let’s look at the evidence (based on Geisler 1999, pp. 667-668).
1. People touched him with their hands.
Jesus’ challenge to Thomas in John 20:27 was: “Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.” How did Thomas respond, “My Lord and My God” (20:28).
Jesus said to Mary as she grasped him, “Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet returned to the Father.” Matthew 28:9 tells us that the women “clasped his feet and worshiped him.”
When Jesus appeared to his disciples, what did Jesus say? Luke 24:39, “Look at my hands and my feet. It is I myself! Touch me and see; a [spirit ] {5} does not have flesh and bones, as you see I have.”
Do we need any further evidence that Jesus had real human flesh after his resurrection?
2. Jesus’ resurrection body had real flesh and bones.
The verse that we have just looked at gives some of the most powerful evidence of his bodily resurrection: “Touch me and see; a [spirit] does not have flesh and bones, as you see I have” (Lk. 24:39) and to prove that he really did have a real body of flesh and bones, what did he do? According to Luke 24:41-42, Jesus “asked them, ‘Do you have anything here to eat?’ They gave him a piece of broiled fish.” Folks, spirits or spiritual bodies do not eat fish.
Third piece of evidence in support of the bodily resurrection of Christ:
3. Jesus ate real tucker (Aussie for “food”).
As we’ve just seen, they gave him “broiled fish” to eat. He ate real food on at least 3 occasions, eating both bread and fish, (Luke 24:30, 41-43; John 21:12-13). Acts 10:41 states that Jesus met with witnesses “who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead.”
That sounds clear to me. Jesus ate food after his resurrection. People in real bodies eat real food.
A fourth proof that Jesus was raised in his physical body:
4. Take a look at the wounds in his body.
This is proof beyond reasonable doubt. He still had the wounds in his body from when he was killed. John 20:27, “Then he said to Thomas, ‘Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.’”
When Jesus ascended, after his resurrection, the Bible records, “This same Jesus [ie this divine-human Jesus], who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven” (Acts 1:11).
There’s a fifth confirmation of his bodily resurrection:
5. Jesus could be seen and heard.
Yes, Jesus’ body could be touched and handled. But there is more!
Matthew 28:17 says that “when they saw [horaw] him, they worshiped him; but some doubted.” On the road to Emmaus, of the disciples who were eating together, Luke 24:31 states, “Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him, and he disappeared from their sight.” The Greek term “to recognize” [epiginoskw] means “to know, to understand, or to recognize” These are the normal Greek words “for ‘seeing’ (horaw, theorew) and ‘recognizing’ (epiginoskw) physical objects” (Geisler 1999, pp 667-668).
Because Jesus could be seen and heard as one sees and recognises physical objects, we have further proof that Jesus rose bodily.
6. The Greek word, soma, always means physical body.
When used of an individual human being, the word body (soma) always means a physical body in the New Testament. There are no exceptions to this usage in the New Testament. Paul uses soma of the resurrection body of Christ [and of the resurrected bodies of people – yet to come] (I Cor. 15:42-44), thus indicating his belief that it was a physical body” (Geisler 1999, p. 668).
In that magnificent passage in I Cor. 15 about the resurrection of Christ and the resurrection of people in the last days, why is Paul insisting that the soma must be a physical body? It is because the physical body is central in Paul’s teaching on salvation (Gundry in Geisler 1999, p. 668). We’ll get to that in a moment.
There’s a 7th piece of evidence in support of bodily resurrection:
7. Jesus’ body came out from among the dead
There’s a prepositional phrase that is used in the NT to describe resurrection “from (ek) the dead” (cf. Mark 9:9; Luke 24:46; John 2:22; Acts 3:15; Rom. 4:24; I Cor. 15:12). That sounds like a ho-hum kind of phrase in English, “from the dead.” Not so in the Greek.
This Greek preposition, ek, means Jesus was resurrected ‘out from among’ the dead bodies, that is, from the grave where corpses are buried (Acts 13:29-30). These same words are used to describe Lazarus’s being raised ‘from the dead’ (John 12:1). In this case there is no doubt that he came out of the grave in the same body in which he was buried. Thus, resurrection was of a physical corpse out of a tomb or graveyard (Geisler 1999, p. 668).
This confirms the physical nature of the resurrection body.
8. He appeared to over 500 people at the one time.
Paul to the Corinthians wrote that Christ
appeared to Peter, and then to the Twelve. After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all he appeared to me [Paul] also, as to one abnormally born (I Cor. 15:5-8).
You could not believe the discussion and controversy one little verb has caused among Bible teachers and scholars. Christ “appeared” to whom? Here, Paul says, Peter, the twelve disciples, over 500 other Christians, James, all the apostles, and to Paul “as to one abnormally born.”
The main controversy has been over whether this was some supernatural revelation called an “appearance” or was it actually “seeing” his physical being? These are the objective facts: Christ became flesh, he died in the flesh, he was raised in the flesh and he appeared to these hundreds of people in the flesh.
The resurrection of Jesus from the dead was not a form of “spiritual” existence. Just as he was truly dead and buried, so he was truly raised from the dead bodily and seen by a large number of witnesses on a variety of occasions (Fee 1987, p. 728).
N T Wright’s extensive research on the resurrection of Jesus concluded:
Let us be quite clear at this point: we shall see that when the early Christians said ‘resurrection’ they meant it in the sense it bore both in paganism (which denied it) and in Judaism (an influential part of which affirmed it). ’Resurrection’ did not mean that someone possessed ‘a heavenly and exalted status’; when predicated of Jesus, it did not mean his ‘perceived presence’ in the ongoing church. Nor, if we are thinking historically, could it have meant ‘the passage of the human Jesus into the power of God’. It meant bodily resurrection; and that is what the early Christians affirmed. There is nothing in the early Christian view of the promised future which corresponds to the pagan views we have studied; nothing at all which corresponds to the denials of the Sadducees; virtually no hint of the ‘disembodied bliss’ view of some Jewish sources; no Sheol, no ‘isles of the blessed’, no ‘shining like stars’, but a constant affirmation of newly embodied life. As Christopher Evans put it a generation ago, ‘there emerged in Christianity a precise, confident and articulate faith in which resurrection has moved from the circumference to the centre (Wright 2003:209; Evans 1970:20)
Therefore, it should not be surprising for this account to be recorded at the beginning of the Book of Acts: “After his suffering, he presented himself to them and gave many convincing proofs that he was alive. He appeared to them over a period of forty days and spoke about the kingdom of God” (Acts 1:3).
D. We need to look briefly at a few objections to bodily resurrection
One of the objections sometimes raised is that Christ’s body after the resurrection had some unusual supernatural features and that this means it was not a real physical body. One objection is that
1. Christ would just appear and disappear
Take a verse like Luke 24:34, “It is true! The Lord has risen and has appeared to Simon.” Then go to Acts 9:17, “Then Ananias went to the house and entered it. Placing his hands on Saul, he said, ‘Brother Saul, the Lord—Jesus, who appeared to you on the road as you were coming here—has sent me so that you may see again and be filled with the Holy Spirit.’”
In these two examples the word “appeared” is used. One of Jesus and the other of Jesus appearing to Paul, many years after Christ’s ascension. Both of these are in the passive voice (Greek) , so it means that Christ “let himself be seen. . . Jesus took the initiative to make himself visible at his resurrection appearances” (Geisler 1999, p. 659). “Appeared” means that “he could be seen by human eyes, the appearances were not just visions” (Rienecker in Geisler 1999, p. 659).
The NT speaks of sudden appearances by Jesus, like to the two disciples on the Road to Emmaus. It is stated: “Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him, and he disappeared from their sight” (Luke 24:31). This could have been a miraculous act of power, a sign that he was both human and divine. We must get this one correct, as Norman Geisler puts it:
The text nowhere states that Jesus became nonphysical when the disciples could no longer see him. Just because he was out of their sight does not mean he was out of his physical body. God has the power to miraculously transport persons in their pre-resurrection physical bodies from one place to another (1999, p. 659).
Remember when Philip the evangelist was with the Ethiopian eunuch, “the Spirit of the Lord suddenly took Philip away, and the eunuch did not see him again, but went on his way rejoicing” (Acts 8:39). Here was Philip, a real human being, whisked away by the Spirit of God.
So for both Jesus and Philip, the text does not say that either one became non-physical beings.
A second objection:
2. Jesus didn’t die but swooned in the grave
H. J. Schonfield made this popular in his book, The Passover Plot (1965). But this view is as old as Celsus in the 2nd century. The view was that Mary Magdalene nursed Jesus back to health. “Forty days later his wounds got the better of him, and he died and was buried secretly” (Green 1990, p. 186).
This is fairy story stuff. There is not one bit of evidence to support it and it doesn’t understand “the brutal Roman method of execution” (Green 1990, p. 186). I found Mel Gibson’s movie, “The Passion of the Christ,” terribly brutal but it did give a realistic picture of how final Roman execution really was.
3. The disciples stole the body
If the Jews and Romans wanted to silence the facts about the bodily resurrection of Jesus, all they would have had to do was to produce the body of Jesus. They didn’t.
Get this. It does not make sense to claim that the disciples stole the body of Jesus, went forth proclaiming the death and resurrection of Jesus, and then
They were willing to be imprisoned for this faith, torn limb from limb, thrown to the lions, or turned into human torches in the Emperor Nero’s gardens for this conviction that Jesus was alive. Would they have endured all that for a claim they knew was [a fake] (Green 1990, p. 190)
Why did some of the Bible teachers after the death of the apostles teach Docetism, that Jesus did not have a physical body and could not have risen with a physical body? They could be the same reasons for such teaching today:
They don’t believe the authoritative Bible is the infallible Word of God. OR
They don’t believe in the supernatural. They are naturalists who believe that “the ‘natural’ universe, the universe of matter and energy, is all that there really is. This rules out God, so naturalism is atheistic” (MacDonald 1984, p. 750). This is like David Kidd, formerly of the Bundaberg Uniting Church, who said that the resurrection of Christ is “impossible. Even our brain dies after a few minutes of death. It’s just not possible” (Kidd 1999, p. 19). That’s naturalism.
Naturalism is the belief that everything in nature originates from natural causes. There cannot be any supernatural or spiritual explanations. They are either excluded for relegated to some discounted position.
Even though deniers of Christ’s bodily resurrection may be in the church, according to Rom. 1:18, they still “suppress the truth in unrighteousness.” They are rebels against God and don’t want to understand the resurrection of Jesus as God told us. They are engaged in ungodly activities and can’t see the light of the Gospel. In reality, they are atheistic concerning the supernatural God of the Bible.
Paul warned that these false teachers would attract people “to suit their own passions” (2 Tim. 4:4 ESV).
Satan, the enemy of our souls, loves to dress up false doctrine to make it look like the real thing.
E. Why is the bodily resurrection of Jesus important?
We must understand how serious it is to deny the resurrection. Paul told the Corinthians: “If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith” (I Cor. 15:13-14).
The updated World Christian Encyclopedia … by Oxford University Press, says that by midcentury there will be 3 billion Christians, constituting 34.3% of the world’s population, up from the current 33%.
Christians now number 2 billion and are divided into 33,820 denominations and churches, in 238 countries, and use 7,100 languages, the encyclopedia says (Zenit 2001).
If there is no bodily resurrection, we might as well announce it to the world and tell all Christians they are living a lie and ought to go practise some other religion.
British evangelist, Michael Green, summarises the main issues about the bodily resurrection of Christ:
The supreme miracle of Christianity is the resurrection. . . [In the New Testament] assurance of the resurrection shines out from every page. It is the crux of Christianity, the heart of the matter. If it is true, then there is a future for mankind; and death and suffering have to be viewed in a totally new light. If it is not true, Christianity collapses into mythology. In that case we are, as Saul of Tarsus conceded, of all men most to be pitied (Green 1990, p. 184).
The bodily resurrection is absolutely essential for these reasons:
1. Belief in the resurrection of Christ is necessary for salvation
Rom. 10:9 states: “If you confess with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” Salvation means that you are saved from God’s wrath because of the resurrection of Christ. You are saved from hell.
Your new birth (regeneration) is guaranteed by the resurrection. First Peter 1:3 states that “In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.”
The spiritual power within every Christian happens because of the resurrection. Paul assured the Ephesians of Christ’s “incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is like the working of his mighty strength, which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms” (Eph. 1:19-20). You can’t have spiritual power in your life without the resurrected Christ.
In one passage, Paul links your justification through faith to the resurrection – he associates directly your being declared righteous, your being not guilty before God, with Christ’s resurrection. Rom. 4:25 states that Jesus “was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification.”
Your salvation, your being born again, your justification, your having spiritual power in the Christian life depends on your faith in the raising of Jesus from the dead. Not any old resurrection will do. Jesus’ body after the resurrection was not a spirit or phantom. It was a real, physical body. If you don’t believe in the resurrection of Christ, on the basis of this verse, you can’t be saved.
Secondly:
2. Christ’s resurrection proves that Jesus is God
From very early in his ministry, Jesus’ predicted his resurrection. The Jews asked him for a sign. According to John 2:19-21, “Jesus answered them, ‘Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days’ . . . But the temple he had spoken of was his body.” Did you get that? Jesus predicted that he, being God, would have his body destroyed and three days later, He would raise this body.
Jesus continued to predict his resurrection: “For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth” (Matt. 12:40). See also Mark 8:31; 14:59; Matt. 27:63.
The third reason Christ’s bodily resurrection is core Christianity is:
3. Life after death is guaranteed!
Remember what Jesus taught his disciples in John 14:19, “Before long, the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live.” If you truly have saving faith in Christ, his resurrection makes life after death a certainty.
Fourthly:
4. Christ’s bodily resurrection guarantees that believers will receive perfect resurrection bodies as well.
After you die and Christ comes again, the New Testament connects Christ’s resurrection with our final bodily resurrection. I Cor. 6:14, “By his power God raised the Lord from the dead, and he will raise us also.”
In the most extensive discussion on the connection between Christ’s resurrection and our resurrection, Paul states that Christ is “the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep” (I Cor. 15:20). What are “firstfruits”? It’s an agricultural metaphor indicating the first taste of the ripening crop, showing that the full harvest is coming. This shows what believers’ resurrection bodies, the full harvest, will be like.
Do you see how critically important it is to have a biblical understanding of the nature of Christ’s resurrection – his bodily resurrection.
In spite of so many in the liberal church establishment denying the bodily resurrection of Christ or dismissing it totally, there are those who stand firm on the bodily resurrection.
F. Those supporting the bodily resurrection
Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at the University of St Andrews, Scotland, and former Anglican Bishop of Durham, Dr. N. T. Wright, wrote:
I simply cannot explain why Christianity began without it [i.e. without the resurrection of Christ]…. If Jesus had died and stayed dead, [his disciples] would either have given up the movement or they would have found another messiah. Something extraordinary happened which convinced them that Jesus was the Messiah (Jennings 2000, p. 51).
N. T. Wright has since written these 817 pages to support the bodily resurrection and refute those throughout church history, including current scholars who deny the literal resurrection of Jesus. Wright concludes: “The proposal that Jesus was bodily raised from the dead possesses unrivalled power to explain the historical data at the heart of early Christianity” (Wright 2003, p. 718).
G. What’s the remedy for this church and every church today when the bodily resurrection of Christ is denied?
It is the same for us as Paul’s last words to Timothy: “Preach the Word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage—with great patience and careful instruction” (2 Tim. 4:2). I have great concern that the churches in Australia today are becoming suckers to rampant false teaching. Why?
We don’t take seriously Paul’s command to “preach the Word.” Preaching about the Word, preaching my own ideas, is NOT preaching the Word. I do not know how to preach the Word other than to systematically preach through the Bible, or to focus on certain biblical topics as I am doing today.
When should we do this? When it’s appropriate and when it seems inappropriate. Paul’s words were: “Be prepared in season and out of season.”
This preaching of the Word must include correction, rebuking and encouragement. My task today has been to correct false doctrine, based on the Scriptures. I don’t believe we take seriously the command: “Preach the Word.”
It is not too late to make a change. False doctrine will increase and the need for correction, rebuking and encouragement will be urgently needed. Paul says that we must do this “with great patience and careful instruction.” But I’m not sure that we care about false teaching.
Will this church take seriously this command from Paul, so that we will not become a victim of false teachings? All of us must be vigilant. We cannot know what is false without knowing the truth of the Word. We must preach the Word.
H. Appendix:
1. Theologian and apologist, Norman Geisler, wrote: “Those who try to get around the resurrection walk against the gale-force winds of the full evidence. The facts are that Jesus of Nazareth really died . . . and actually came back from the dead in the same physical body” (1999, p. 656).
2. Wayne Grudem wrote, concerning Jesus’ resurrection body, that “the texts . . . show that Jesus clearly had a physical body with ‘flesh and bones’ (Luke 24:39), which could eat and drink, break bread, prepare breakfast and be touched. . . These texts are not capable of an alternative explanation that denies Jesus’ physical body. . . Jesus was clearly teaching them that his resurrection body was a physical body” (1994, p. 612).
See my other articles on the resurrection of Jesus Christ:
Junk you hear at Easter about Jesus’ resurrection
Jesus’ resurrection appearances only to believers
Easter and the end of death
Can we prove and defend Jesus’ resurrection?
Can Jesus Christ’s resurrection be investigated as history?
What is the connection between Christ’s atonement and his resurrection?
Christ’s resurrection: Latter-day wishful thinking
The Resurrection of Jesus Christ: The Comeback to Beat Them All
Was Jesus’ Resurrection a Bodily Resurrection?
I. Notes
1a. The original read, “Men,” but the ESV translates as “people.”2
2. Earle E. Cairns considers that his “seven letters must have been written about 110” (1981, p. 74).
3. “The Resurrection of Jesus” was the title of the article and the first sentence began with, “It’s impossible. Even our brain dies . . . ,” so I am left to conclude that the article’s title was the introduction to the first sentence.
4. The original article had closing inverted commas here, but there were no introductory inverted commas.
5. The NIV reads, “ghost,” but the ESV translates as “spirit.” The Greek is pneuma = spirit.
J. References:
Cairns, E. E. 1981, Christianity through the Centuries, Zondervan Publishing House, Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Crossan, J. D. 1994, Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography, HarperSanFrancisco, San Francisco.
Crossan, J. D. 1995, Who Killed Jesus? HarperSanFrancisco, San Francisco.
Evans, C F 1970. Resurrection and the New Testament. SCM Press, London.
Fee, G. D. 1987, The First Epistle to the Corinthians (gen. ed. F. F. Bruce, The New International Commentary on the New Testament), William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Geisler, N. L. 1999, ‘Resurrection, Evidence for’, in Norman L. Geisler 1999, Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics, Baker Books, Grand Rapid, Michigan.
Green, M. 1990, Evangelism through the local Church, Hodder & Stoughton, London.
Grudem, W. 1994, Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine, Inter-Varsity Press, Leicester, England.
Ignatius n.d., ‘The Epistle to the Smyrnaeans’, Early Church Writings, available from:
http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/srawley/smyrnaeans.html [Accessed 19 July 2005].
Irenaeus n.d., ‘Against Heresies’, Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 1, available from:
http://www.ccel.org/fathers2/ANF-01/anf01-63.htm#P8967_2580595 [Accessed 19 July 2005].
Jennings P. 2000, ‘Peter Jennings Reporting’, ABC television (USA), aired on Monday, June 26 2000. This quote is from Christian Research Institute 2000, “Point-by-point Response to ‘Peter Jennings Reporting: The Search for Jesus,’ available from: http://www.equip.org/free/DJ036.pdf [Accessed 31 May 2005].
Kidd, D. 1999, Bundaberg Uniting Church, “The Resurrection of Jesus,” The Bugle (Bundaberg), March 19, 1999, p. 19.
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Copyright © 2007 Spencer D. Gear. This document last updated at Date:11 July 2018
A patient’s death brings him or her the end of pain and suffering.![clip_image002[1]](https://i0.wp.com/spencer.gear.dyndns.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/clip_image0021.gif?ssl=1 "clip_image002[1]"){kind=small}
Patients have an opportunity to die with dignity, without fear that they will lose their physical or mental capacities.![clip_image002[2]](https://i0.wp.com/spencer.gear.dyndns.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/clip_image0022.gif?ssl=1 "clip_image002[2]"){kind=small}
The overall healthcare financial burden on the family is reduced.![clip_image002[3]](https://i0.wp.com/spencer.gear.dyndns.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/clip_image0023.gif?ssl=1 "clip_image002[3]"){kind=small}
Patients can arrange for final goodbyes with loved ones.![clip_image002[4]](https://i0.wp.com/spencer.gear.dyndns.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/clip_image0024.gif?ssl=1 "clip_image002[4]"){kind=small}
If planned for in advance, organs can be harvested and donated.![clip_image002[5]](https://i0.wp.com/spencer.gear.dyndns.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/clip_image0025.gif?ssl=1 "clip_image002[5]"){kind=small}
With physician assistance, patients have a better chance of experiencing a painless and less traumatic death (death with dignity).![clip_image002[6]](https://i0.wp.com/spencer.gear.dyndns.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/clip_image0026.gif?ssl=1 "clip_image002[6]"){kind=small}
Patients can end pain and suffering when there is no hope for relief.![clip_image002[7]](https://i0.wp.com/spencer.gear.dyndns.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/clip_image0027.gif?ssl=1 "clip_image002[7]"){kind=small}
Some say assisted death with dignity is against the Hippocratic Oath, however, the statement “first do no harm” can also apply to helping a patient find the ultimate relief from pain through death.![clip_image002[8]](https://i0.wp.com/spencer.gear.dyndns.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/clip_image0028.gif?ssl=1 "clip_image002[8]"){kind=small}
Medical advances have enabled life beyond what nature might have allowed, but that is not always in the best interest of the suffering patient with no hope of recovery.![clip_image002[9]](https://i0.wp.com/spencer.gear.dyndns.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/clip_image0029.gif?ssl=1 "clip_image002[9]"){kind=small}
A living will, considered a guiding document for a patient’s healthcare wishes, can provide clear evidence of a patient’s decisions regarding end-of-life care (Torrey 2018).
Intentionally killing or assisting in the killing of innocent human beings.![clip_image004[1]](https://i0.wp.com/spencer.gear.dyndns.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/clip_image0041.gif?ssl=1 "clip_image004[1]"){kind=small}
Repudiation of the doctor-patient relationship that is meant to promote life.![clip_image004[2]](https://i0.wp.com/spencer.gear.dyndns.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/clip_image0042.gif?ssl=1 "clip_image004[2]"){kind=small}
It flies in the face of the medical advances made in the treatment of pain and is at odds with compassionate methods of care.![clip_image004[3]](https://i0.wp.com/spencer.gear.dyndns.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/clip_image0043.gif?ssl=1 "clip_image004[3]"){kind=small}
It does not fully consider the historical examples that show euthanasia cannot be legislatively controlled (e.g. Holland, Belgium).![clip_image004[4]](https://i0.wp.com/spencer.gear.dyndns.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/clip_image0044.gif?ssl=1 "clip_image004[4]"){kind=small}
It rests on presuppositions that do not respect human life.![clip_image004[5]](https://i0.wp.com/spencer.gear.dyndns.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/clip_image0045.gif?ssl=1 "clip_image004[5]"){kind=small}
It plays God. Only God has the right to give and take life.![clip_image004[6]](https://i0.wp.com/spencer.gear.dyndns.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/clip_image0046.gif?ssl=1 "clip_image004[6]"){kind=small}
Human beings are not animals, but unique beings made in the image of God.![clip_image004[7]](https://i0.wp.com/spencer.gear.dyndns.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/clip_image0047.gif?ssl=1 "clip_image004[7]"){kind=small}
Ethically, it rests on self-defeating assertions, i.e. it can introduce dishonesty and deception into the doctor-patient relationship. Is the doctor one who kills or one who facilitates life?![clip_image004[8]](https://i0.wp.com/spencer.gear.dyndns.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/clip_image0048.gif?ssl=1 "clip_image004[8]"){kind=small}
It is not in the patient’s or society’s best interests.![clip_image004[9]](https://i0.wp.com/spencer.gear.dyndns.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/clip_image0049.gif?ssl=1 "clip_image004[9]"){kind=small}
It eliminates the sufferer rather than treating the suffering.
Effective palliative care is available in the home and the hospital.
Opinion polls are an unreliable indicator of support for euthanasia.
(Photo Joh Bjelke-Petersen, courtesy 
As I update this article on Saturday, 16 June 2018, I share that on Thursday night last week after I came home from a Bible study, in the semi-darkness I tripped and fell on my side on the concrete floor of the garage. I was so stunned I didn’t know what to do. My medialert did not trigger an SOS as it should do. I eventually pulled myself up and closed the garage door and then it was off to bed.
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Comments Off on Can Christians become absolutely sinless?
April 9th, 2018 
John 5:24 is in harmony with Matthew 24:9-14 (ESV),