Hebrews Chapter Six, The Hope Of The Resurrection

 

Though God has “put eternity in [our] hearts,” (Ecclesiastes 3:11) we ignore the pang that humanity wasn’t meant to wallow in the mire we find comfort in. Like a modern Sodom, we heap up things in our country to substitute for God, or to fill the void only spiritual life in Jesus Christ can truly fill. 

Our confused culture chases the false religion of psychology, gender politics and pronouns, legalizing abortion, homosexuality and so much more because we have willfully forgotten our place and purpose. If such things truly brought genuine happiness, I ask you: where is it? Strife, hatred, enmity, contempt and conflict abound in America. But where is peace? Where is hope, or faith, self-control, or obedience to the One who made us? The rich man in Christ’s parable traded Heaven for the world, and realized too late what a terrible trade it was. “And I will say to my soul, “Soul, you have many goods laid up for many years; take your ease; eat, drink, and be merry.”’ But God said to him, ‘Fool! This night your soul will be required of you; then whose will those things be which you have provided?” Luke 12:19, 20. If life’s summation is merely the accruement of things we can’t take with us and therefore become meaningless, does that not mean life itself is likewise meaningless?

 

The hope of the resurrection answers to a deep need within the heart of all humanity. Humanity fears death, Hebrews 2:15. It is an unnatural phenomenon that has haunted man since our inception. Funerals and grave markers remind us of our final purpose in this life: to die. “Better to go to the house of mourning than to go to the house of feasting, for that is the end of all men; and the living will take it to heart,” Ecclesiastes 7:2. It is not shocking that Solomon’s ultimate conclusion about life under the sun (i.e., apart from God) amounted to the pointless pursuit of momentary distraction until we die. But again, he wrote that God put eternity in our hearts; mankind aspires to eternal life. That is the foundation of religion. Seeking to achieve existential meaning to counteract the gloom of pure material/atheistic depression. Yet religion and atheistic ambition both attest to the reality that the human heart hopes in something greater, because we constantly pursue it, even if we don’t know what “it” is.

 

“It” is the resurrection of the dead, when just men made perfect stand beside angels and serve the Almighty God in eternity, freed from the mortal constraints sin visits us with: sickness, weakness, aging and finally death.

 

Paul’s resurrection chapter in 1 Corinthians chapter 15 creates a solid defense that conjoins the Christian faith with the reality of Christ’s resurrection. Our hope for eternal life lies in the evidence of the fact that Jesus rose from the dead. Paul easily defeats any argument within the pale of Christendom in two simple verses: “Now if Christ is preached that He has been raised from the dead, how do some among you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ is not risen,” 1 Corinthians 15:12, 13. Christ’s spirit was reunited with His body and resurrected; prior to that He descended to Sheol, to Abraham’s Bosom, to declare His victory to the saints waiting for the fullness of the time. Then He led captivity captive, rose from the dead, and finally ascended bodily to the right hand of the Father. The resurrection of the dead is intrinsically linked with the final portion of the verse: eternal judgment. Resurrection is only truly that if the spirit of man survives death and is reunited with his sleeping (dead) body to become a spiritual man as our Lord did.

 

Certain cults such as the Jehovah’s Witnesses that teach that the soul dies with the body, being just a life essence or breath. Different variations of this doctrine exist, categorized beneath the erroneous banner of “Soul Sleep”.   The Bible teaches that the soul survives death, remains conscious, and goes to a place of waiting. For the just it was Abraham’s Bosom or Paradise until Christ emptied Paradise and brought them into Heaven. For the wicked it is Hell where the rich man spiritually burned with torment, waiting for the final judgment. Paul relates a mystery about the resurrection: “We shall not all sleep (die), but we shall all be changed,” 1 Corinthians 15:51. The dead will be restored to their bodies, now eternal, spiritual bodies fully capable of housing the spirit that resides within, while the living will shed “corruption…flesh and blood” and instantly receive a superior spiritual body.

 

This resurrection is the great hope of the Christian faith. As our Lord triumphed over our greatest enemy, death, He will lead us in victory over death and death’s master: sin. We see the saints slain during the Tribulation period of Revelation beneath the altar, asking God when He will avenge them upon the world that killed them for bearing the testimony of Jesus, Revelation 6:9-11. Though dead, they live still as Jesus explained to the Sadducees, because God is a God of the living. These saints, having suffered martyrdom for their witness, will be a part of what John referred to as the first resurrection, Revelation 20:5, 6. We learn through Scripture that when a saint dies we go to be with Christ, and while in conscious bliss, being with our Lord, we also patiently wait to be clothed in the body God has prepared for us, 1 Corinthians 15:44, 2 Corinthians 5:4. Paul cautions the Corinthians (and us) that the resurrection is a cardinal doctrine in the Christian faith. Christ dead simply makes Him a martyr. Christ alive again by the power of God reveals in Him salvific power, which He grants to all who believe in Him. If our hope is in a dead Savior, we are still condemned sinners and only judgment awaits us, 1 Corinthians 15:17, 18. Whether dead or alive, we patiently wait on the Lord in hope of this promise: “Death is swallowed up in victory,” 1 Corinthians 15:54.

 

It is this hope that Christ our Lord offers a dying world—in fact, a world already dead in sins and trespasses. The Jewish Christians being written to needed to be reminded of the resurrection, and how keeping its reality in mind provides a foundational truth, a bedrock to our faith that our Savior is living, and He promised life to those who trust in Him, that we may be where He is also, John 14:2, 3. Man was made for God, and the resurrection will make us fit for perfect service. Gone will be the sinful will that contests Him as flesh and Spirit vie against one another so we cannot do what we will. Those who choose to be with Him shall be. What remains is for those who choose to reject salvation, and the doctrine of the resurrection.