Easter changes everything — we saw that yesterday. But one of the most fascinating things about Easter is that the theme of resurrection is not something that takes the New Testament by surprise. In fact, if you study the Old Testament carefully, you will see all sorts of allusions that all point to Christ’s eventual defeat of the grave on Easter Sunday, and here to explain those connections on the phone is Dr. Don Carson, who is kind enough to join us again.
He joins us by way of our partnership with our friends over at The Gospel Coalition. Dr. Carson is the co-founder and president of The Gospel Coalition, and he is the editor of the new NIV Zondervan Study Bible which focuses on biblical theological themes as they develop in the Bible from Genesis to Revelation.
Dr. Carson, thanks for joining us again to talk biblical theology. As we move through various major themes in the biblical storyline, it’s fitting that today we talk about the resurrection as we celebrate Easter on Sunday.
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Another passage that is really quite important is 2 Corinthians 5:1–10 where Paul makes it very clear, it seems to me, that his ultimate hope is not simply to die and be with Christ. Paul’s ultimate hope is not to die and be with Christ, as wonderful as that would be. That is something he looks forward to in Philippians 1. But his ultimate hope is not to be, as he puts it in 2 Corinthians 5, unclothed, that is, without a body. His ultimate hope goes beyond what Christians have sometimes called the “intermediate state.” His ultimate hope is to be clothed again with a body, a resurrection body, a body like Christ’s glorious body, that will have the capacity to live and work and eat in this terrestrial, renewed earth, but also to be in the very presence of God. The ultimate hope of the Christian is not simply to be with Christ in some immaterial existence, but to have resurrection bodies in a renewed heaven and a renewed earth.
And all of that then ultimately issues in hope. There is a wonderful passage in 1 Peter:
Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil, or fade. This inheritance is kept in heaven for you who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of his salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. In all this you greatly rejoice, though now, for a little while, you may have had to suffer grief and all kinds of trials. These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith, of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire may result in praise, glory, and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. Though you have not seen him, you love him. And even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy. For you are receiving the end result of your faith, the salvation of your souls. (1 Peter 1:3–9)
In other words, we are receiving now already the salvation of our souls. But this all issues ultimately in a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead into an inheritance that, for us too, can never perish, spoil, or fade — the promise of a new heaven and a new earth, the home of righteousness, with resurrection existence. So that, although there is in Scripture a resurrection to life — that is, a new heaven and a new earth, and a resurrection to death, to hell itself — yet for believers the confidence, the joy, the anticipation, the hope is tied absolutely to their confidence that Jesus rose from the dead after having offered himself to pay for their sins. And the cross and the resurrection tie together as the turning point of the ages on which all of history swings with the new age already dawning now and ready to be brought to consummation when the master himself returns in all of his glorified, resurrected existence on the last day.
That is a brilliant summary and a timely word for us, Dr. Carson, thank you and have a wonderful Easter weekend.
And a wonderful Easter to you, too. Christ is risen. He is risen, indeed.
Alleluia! Thank you Dr. Carson.
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