Christian Living

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Larry Lilly's Letter Monday April 2, 2007

As Easter Sunday is rolling in like a freight train, at my age everything rolls in like a freight train, I got to thinking about the current 'vain' ideas of the resurrection and how modern 'Christians' make a mockery of the capstone of the Christian Faith.

The scripture makes is plain that if Christ be not risen, then our faith is vain, empty without meaning and as a result we are of all men most miserable.

The mockery of Christ's resurrection is seen on every hand. The modernist who walks in the garments of religion, yet smugly asserts that he/she is a believer is a direct mockery of the assertion of the New Testament teaching concerning the resurrection. Most, if not all of the Christian doctrine is ludicrous if Christ is not raised from the dead. His teachings about life and the living of it are in direct opposition to the 'ways' of the world system. Each teaching of Christ is suspect sans the resurrection. You might as well throw the entire book of Romans away if a pseudo resurrection is the meaning.

Most cultures have some form of a spiritual survival of death, this is expressed in myriads of teachings, from the transmigration of souls, to reincarnation, to the Sadducees concept of surviving death through the lingering of our memory in someone else’s mind. The list goes on, but you get the idea. The faith of the scriptures holds tenaciously to the reality of the bodily resurrection of Christ and that is why it is passed off as myth or delusion. Yet, in light of the clear teaching of the Bible, we have no reason to exist as a group of believers if Christ is just a grand idea rather than the Son of God, who not only loved us and gave Himself for us on Calvary, but He is also raised bodily from the dead.

We who truly believe the gospel, clearly defined in 1Corinthians 15 as the death, burial and resurrection are faced with the ultimate test of faith. Do I hold to a naturally absurd teaching, for the permanent resurrection is absurd on the face of the claim, or do I believe in the biblical teaching of God’s power to raise Christ from the dead by the same power of the Holy Spirit that enables me as a simple believer to live a life of victory by The Power of or behind His resurrection? All biblical formulas of faith insist on the confessing of belief in the resurrection of Christ out from among the dead.

If Christ be not raised from the dead, he then is just another social deviate who was crucified by a cruel but normal system protecting the status quo.

That the celebration of Christ's victory over the grave has been turned into a circus is mute testimony to the ignorance of the modern professing church. Yet the perversion of the truth of His resurrection must never be abandoned, no matter the outright or subtle mockery of a lost world, even though it be dressed in religious garments.

Larry Lilly Copyright © 2007 use with credit.

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