The testimony of the apostles is not an escapist message in which Christians are redeemed by leaving bodily life behind.
During the Easter season, Christians celebrate and proclaim the resurrection of Jesus from the dead and his appearances to the disciples thereafter. These forty days between Easter Sunday and the feast of the Ascension commemorate this time in which Christ, risen from the dead, remained with his disciples, commissioned them to the ministry of preaching, and parted from them with his final words of comfort (e.g., Matt. 28:20). Fifty days following Easter, the church recalls the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, beginning in Jerusalem, and the first great sermon given by Peter proclaiming the resurrection and the promise of redemption in Christ (Acts 2).
Christ’s own resurrection is the reason for the Eastertide observance, but it’s also the hope to which Christians await during this time. Peter tells his readers that, “According to his great mercy, [God] has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead” (1 Peter 1:3). This inheritance is “imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept for you in heaven” (1 Peter 1:4). Likewise, Paul tells his readers in Corinth that, being raised from the dead, Christ is “the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep” (1 Cor. 15:20). The bottom line for the apostolic gospel is that the resurrection of Christ is a redemption to be shared with those who have faith in Jesus. It is the foundation of Christian hope in a world seemingly touched in every way by the reality of death.
Yet the hope of resurrection has often been met with a certain amount of hostility and skepticism through the ages. Though it can be overstated, a certain disdain for physical, bodily life animated many of the original Greco-Roman hearers of the gospel. Many scholars have sought to downplay the extent to which some early Christians became entangled with negative philosophical ideas about fleshly embodiment. Indeed, the development of the central teachings of Nicaea and Chalcedon concerning the true divinity and humanity of Christ rest upon the dignity of humanity. It is God’s will not only to redeem the creation, but to unite himself to humanity in the one person of Jesus Christ, the second person of the Trinity. Our exalted Lord will forever reign over the new creation as true God and true man.
Nevertheless, early Christianity developed practices like monastic renunciation of marriage and bodily sustenance. Monastic life – and priestly celibacy – encouraged Christians to seek spiritual advancement and insight beyond the ordinary satisfactions of family, food, and sometimes community. Isolation from society in austere patterns of living – like desert wandering or remote living arrangements – signaled that true spirituality is achieved outside the normal patterns of human social life.
Similarly, many of the mystical doctrines developed in the early church emphasized an upward pattern of spiritual ascent into communion with God at the expense of earthly attachment. With inherited philosophical ideas which set earthly life in opposition to the higher world of the gods, doctrines of creaturely participation in the divine or the deification of the human as the final goal of salvation find in created life something incomplete. While life under the power of sin and the lordship of the devil is indeed much worse than mere incompleteness, the testimony of the apostles is not an escapist message in which Christians are redeemed by leaving bodily life behind. Nor is the perfection of bodily life its transformation into something completely unrecognizable on this side of the new creation.
With Christ as the “firstfruits” of those who have died, he is recognizable to the apostles after Easter precisely because the one raised is the same one who was crucified. It is true, Christ’s word must lift the veil from their eyes so that they can see him for who he truly is (Luke 24:30-31; John 20:16, 19-20, 27-29). But the problem with the apostles after Easter is not their physical sight, but their lack of faith – which comes only through the word of Christ. Likewise, the resurrected state of the redeemed will be a transformation and perfection of the body – not into something unrecognizable, but the redemption of the body – now for the first time animated by true life. During the Easter season, it is this hope that the church proclaims and in this hope that Christians rest.
Despite the skepticism up and down the ages of those who consider themselves spiritually advanced, the resurrection is the gospel. Offense at the resurrection comes in different forms at different times, whether it be Greco-Roman fears of bodily mortality or modern reason’s skepticism of life after death. All are united in a quest to escape the body God has created and which he has redeemed in Jesus Christ. Such false ways of salvation rest upon an ambition stretching back to Adam and Eve: to be like God rather than the creatures God made them to be. Yet for the believer, the resurrection is a blessed hope of Christ’s appearing in his body at the last day (Titus 2:13) – which also means the completion, redemption, and restoration of his saints in a creation made new forever.
