By Chris WittsSunday 31 Mar 2024Morning Devotions with Chris WittsFaithReading Time: 1 minute
Transcript:
It’s amazing what lengths people will go to trying to attain immortality. And we’re thinking about immortality that is going on forever, living beyond death. Because Jesus, we believe, came alive. The grave couldn’t keep him, so he arose from the dead as we commemorate on Easter Sunday. In Detroit in America, you can pay up to 35,000 American dollars to have your body frozen, and this is true upon death. When you die, the workers will drain your blood. They’ll top you up with antifreeze and lower you into a vat of liquid nitrogen at 196 °C. And they promise that you’ll be revived one day when the scientists work out how to prolong human life.
So in the past 70 years, technology and science have added just years onto our life expectancy. But no scientist has ever found the secret of immortality, and the idea that human beings can orchestrate their own resurrection by paying $35,000 US is really quite stupid, misguided and futile. It really does make one wonder. Well, the Christian faith today, especially, we believe holds at its core the promise of eternal life.
And that’s not something that’s engineered by humankind or by freezing a body somewhere. But it’s all modelled by Jesus Christ, and he’s the only human being to have been crucified on the cross. We thought about that on Good Friday. He was buried in the tomb and restored to life. Three days later. In fact, the Bible tells us, and I’m looking at 1 Corinthians 15 here. At the moment, the Bible tells us of hundreds of eyewitnesses actually, who saw Jesus after his resurrection, and Paul said he appeared to Peter, then to all 12 apostles, and he appeared to more than 500. Yes, 500 of his followers at once, most of whom are still alive, Paul says, although some have died. So Jesus was seen after he had died and rose from the dead.
Jesus’ model of immortality
So in the Christian faith, the resurrection of Jesus Christ is really the foundation of our faith, and it really makes sense. It helps us to understand the meaning of life that is and is yet to come. How sad it is to realise that if you die at, say, 85 or 90 that you have no future. That must be very pessimistic indeed. So if the resurrection of Jesus Christ did not occur, we’d have to say that the rest of Jesus’ words are meaningless.
You can have a look at 1 Corinthians 15. That chapter I was just looking at from Verse 13 to 19, and you can read about the resurrection. If Jesus is dead, if that has happened, we are still dead in our sins. No salvation has actually occurred. In other words, our faith is futile.
There’s no point preaching because, uh, we bring nothing more than some sort of hollow hope to the world. And we are to be pitied more than any other people. In fact, that’s what the Bible says, Paul said. ‘If our hope in Christ is good for this life only and no more, then we deserve more pity. More pity than anyone else in the world.’ They’re strong words. 1 Corinthians 15, Verse 19.
It was an unknown soldier who said, “If death ends everything, then evil must be good, right or wrong must be right. And beauty must be ugliness.”
The Christian faith does make sense, and it really makes sense when we view the empty tomb through an open tomb, when the act of resurrection becomes a celebration. And that’s really what Easter is all about. All about the celebration of Jesus bursting forth from the dead. Jesus predicted, of course, that he would rise from death. He said to the Pharisees, destroy this temple and I’ll raise it again in three days.
He said, ‘I am the resurrection in the life, he who believes in me will live even though he dies.’ So this Easter, consider Jesus.
Let’s Pray
Well, Lord, when you appear to people after your resurrection, what joy filled their hearts and I can imagine, Lord, those moments of recognition when they said, my Lord and my God and today Dear Lord, that same joy is ours when at Easter and any time we recognise you as our Lord. Thank you for that in the name of Jesus. Amen.