Hope and Death
The resurrection is the single most significant event in the history of humanity. It is the only worthy place to put our hope for nothing else can outlast death. Without resurrection we are faced with the reality that our lives are ultimately rendered meaningless and empty. All human hopes, no matter how high-minded or worthy, are no match for the all-consuming power of death. It has the capacity to crush every self-referential construct of security and utopian fantasy like a battleship in a marina full of fibreglass yachts.
But death has met its match in the unbreakable bond of love between the Father and the Son. Even though Jesus fully identified with our humanity in all its limitations and weakness, he was able to live the life that none of us is capable of. A life of true connection to God the Father characterised by joyful obedience, open-hearted faith and unreserved love. All these elements constitute authentic humanity and ‘life.’ It is the exact opposite to the fallen state of sinful humanity and ‘death.’
This bond of love between the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit is the exact opposite to the bond-breaking power of death. If life is all about connection, then death is all about disconnection. At a purely physical level death breaks the bond between body and spirit, husband and wife, parent and child, and an individual and their community. But physical mortality is only one form of death and we all experience its bond-breaking devastation long before the demise of our mortal bodies.
‘Death’ can end marriages, families, friendships, partnerships, and fellowships even while we’re alive. Ultimately death, in all its forms, makes a mockery of all our human ambitions, and crushes our hopes to dust. No one in history has successfully stood against it. That is until it was tested on the unbreakable bond of eternal life that exists between the Father and the Son. This connection and life that Jesus always knew and enjoyed gave him a unique capacity to resist the all-consuming power of death. Jesus was immune to the power of death for there was no foothold or handle for death to gain leverage over him.
The power of life in Christ is simply bigger and wider than the power of death. Where death had been able to exploit the breach created by sin in every human being who ever lived before, it was halted by the perfect connection and eternal life in the Son. Thus, Jesus could join the battle with death on our behalf and destroy it. Death was given a taste of its own medicine, and now death is dead at the hands of the first authentic human being who has ever lived. Jesus, as a representative of the human race, has finally made it through, and now we all share the spoils of the battle won.
In the words of T.F. Torrance, “He stood in our place, taking our cause upon him, also as Believer as the Obedient one who was himself justified before God as his beloved Son in whom he was well pleased. He offered to God a perfect confidence and trust, a perfect faith and response which we are unable to offer, and appropriated all God’s blessings which we are unable to appropriate. Through union with him we share in his faith, in his obedience, in his trust and appropriation of the Father’s blessing: we share in his justification before God. Therefore, when we say we are justified by faith, this does not mean that it is our faith that justifies us, but we in faith flee from our own acts even of repentance, confession, trust and response, and take refuge in the obedience and faithfulness of Christ” [1]
Now, our place in the family of God is secured and assured. Jesus has done what none of us could do. All we can do is “take refuge in the obedience and faithfulness of Christ.” This is a pretty good definition of faith. Our faith does not make this true — rather, this truth enables us to believe. Genuine faith can only exist in the light of the faithfulness of Christ.
In faith
David Kowalick
[1] T. F. Torrance – Theology in Reconstruction (London 1965) pp 159-160
