Scripture reading: Matt 28:1-10

 

Introduction

  • The events of Easter day are well known to us. Less well known is how Good Friday and Easter fit into God’s broader plans for renovating the cosmos. Easter was the first step of a multi-step process in God’s plan to refashion a universe gone rogue. God’s plan is nothing less that the “renewal of all things” (Matt 19:28).

Step 1: Jesus reversed the effects of sin, death and the dark powers

  • Past tense. He did this through his death and resurrection.
  1. He atoned for our sins leading to our forgiveness, reconciliation, justification (1 Peter 3:18).
  2. He destroyed death (2 Tim 1:10).
  3. He defeated the dark powers (Col 2:15).

Step 2: Jesus regenerates our spirits by his Spirit

  • Present tense. He does this when we put our trust in him.
  • “re-generate” – generate again, create again. Because of sin, our spirits became corrupt, lost and rebellious. We need them to be remade.
  • God does a spiritual “heart transplant” on us (Ezek 36:26-27). God puts his own Spirit in us, re-creating ours in the process.
  • How? God fuses his own Spirit with our spirit (1 Cor 6:17): “Everyone who joins himself to the Lord becomes one spirit with him.”
  • Jesus described this process as being “born again” (John 3:3,5-6). When we are “born again” our innermost selves become part of the new creation God is establishing (2 Cor 5:17; Eph 4:29; 1 John 3:9; Rom 6:4).

Step 3: Jesus will re-create our bodies at his second coming

  • Future tense. He will do this when he returns. Right now, it is only our spirits that are re-created. When we die our body will return to the ground and our spirit will temporarily go to be with Lord in the “intermediate heaven” (Phil 1:20-24).
  • When will we get our new bodies? When Jesus returns to the earth. All those who have died in Christ and all those still alive will receive resurrected bodies at his return (2 Cor 5:1-5; Heb 12:23; Phil 1:20-24; 2 Peter 1:13-14; 1 Thess 4:14-17).
  • What will our new bodies be like? Phil 3:20-21: “But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, 21 who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself.” Note: “like his [Jesus’] glorious body.”
  • Our Lord’s body had certain trans-physical properties. Presumably, ours will have those same capabilities (1 Jn 3:2).
  • We do know they will be radiant with God’s glory, goodness, light and power. They will be immortal. They will be perfected, free of all pain, with no diseases: nothing that is not part of the New Creation (1 Cor 15:20, 23,34-49,50-55; 2 Cor 5:1-10; cf. John 5:29; 11:23-26).

Step 4: Jesus will refashion the earth at his second coming

  • Many Christians in the west have a view of the afterlife that is shaped more by Plato than by the biblical authors. They think of heaven as a non-physical realm.
  • But, the salvation the bible describes is not salvation from this world but the salvation of this world. We won’t go to an ethereal, non-corporeal heavenly realm to live with God forever in the clouds. God loves his whole creation and will redeem all of it.
  • So, after Jesus comes again, God will merge heaven—the place where he and angels live—with earth where humans and animals live. He will fuse the two, so that the dwelling place of God will be with humans in a new “Heaven-plus-earth” reality.
  • This is the fulfillment of the Kingdom of God Jesus preached about. King Jesus will rule over the world, and we co-reign with him as his image bearers and confidants and royal emissaries (Rev 21:1-4).
  • This is the finalized state of the New Creation that God began at Easter with the resurrection of Jesus from the dead (Acts 26:23; 1 Cor 15:20-23). The whole creation will be permeated by the same glory and incorruptibility of our Lord’s resurrected body.
  • So, Easter was the first day of the New Order that Jesus began but is yet to complete. But he will finish the job. In Rev 21:5, Jesus says: “Behold, I am making all things new.” He’s doing that now with a New Covenant, made with a new humanity, the new Israel, who form the new temple of God. And he will bring it to completion when the new Jerusalem comes down to form a new heaven and new earth, where God, humans, angels and animals all live in love, joy and perfect freedom (Rev 21:1-4).
  • This is known in the NT as the “restoring of all things” (Acts 3:21) and the “heading up of all things” in Christ in both heaven and earth (Eph1:10).
  • In this refashioned cosmos, there will be no more tears, mourning, crying or pain but sheer joy, unbounded love, untold beauty and immeasurable peace (Rev 21:1-22:5). We will see God’s “face” and enjoy unbroken communion with the Father and Son in the Spirit forever (Rev 22:4), and “the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea” (Habakkuk 2:14).
  • This, and nothing less than this, is the biblical teaching on salvation. And it is what God started with the events of Good Friday and Easter!