Life at PazNaz

We believe… Jesus is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again to judge the living and the dead.
…The resurrection of the body.
…And the life everlasting.

The Hebrew Expectations

- The Goodness of Creation: The Old Testament, beginning with the Genesis creation story repeatedly affirms the goodness of creation. All that God creates he pronounces as “good.” Unlike some later worldviews, material reality is not viewed in negative terms by the Hebrew people.

- Human Connectedness to Creation: The Hebrew view of the person is that humans are deeply connected to the “stuff of earth.” In the creation narrative humans are literally created from the earth, so in one sense, humans are simply part of the created world and part of the organic universe.

- Human Uniqueness in the Creation: In another sense, however, humans are unique in the creation because every human being is more than the sum of their parts. There is an essence, spirit, or soul that emerges within a person that makes them uniquely able to relate to and image God.

- Death and Sheol: Death is an enemy and invader to the way God wants things to be. Although all creatures die, the uniqueness of humankind is such that death is not necessarily the end of their story. The dead go to a place of rest – Sheol – where they await the redemption of all things that God will enact through his people and most importantly through the Messiah.

- The Resurrection of the Dead: When God redeems and restores all things, that redemption will include the resurrection of the dead at which time the spiritual essence of a person will be united with a resurrected and eternal body. At that time “the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea” (Isaiah 11:9; Hab. 2:14).

The Difference Jesus Makes (1 Cor. 15:12-23)

- The Present Kingdom of God: Jesus came and shockingly did not proclaim the future coming of the Kingdom of God or the Kingdom of Heaven; he proclaimed that it had indeed, through him, come. It is important for us to realize that most of the early believers would not think of heaven as “in the sky” so much as invisibly present or even adjacent. Through the signs that Jesus performed he peeled back the covering, so to speak, to reveal the present reality of God’s kingdom.

- He Died: The shock for the disciples was not that Jesus was the Messiah but that he died. Certainly their expectation was that he would build the kingdom and establish it by conquering all of the kingdom’s enemies, instead he was crucified.

- He Rose Again: Without question the definitive moment for the disciples was the resurrection of Jesus. Their Jewish hopes had been fulfilled but in a way that was far different than they imagined. Jesus rose again as the “first fruits” of the present and coming eternal kingdom of God.

Early Church Expectations (1 Cor. 15:35-58)

- Christ is the Assurance of the Resurrection: The early church was sort of caught between a materialistic view of the body (that this life is all there is) and the Greek view which carried with it the immortality of the soul and the denigration of the body. Paul and the early church leaders, like their Hebrew forebears in the faith, believed in the goodness of the body but not the body as an end in itself. However, although they believed that a person is not just a material but a spiritual being, they believed that our assurance (and our model) for eternal life was demonstrated and guaranteed in the resurrection of Jesus.

- No Fear of Death: Because the hope of the early believers was in the resurrection of the dead it eliminated death as a final enemy. Death had lost its “sting.” This had several consequences. First, the principalities and powers no longer had authority over them. The threat Caesar carries in his hand is the threat of death, but because the early believers no longer feared death they could become martyrs (witnesses) to and for the kingdom of God. Second, they also became well known for the care of the sick. In ancient cultures the sick – especially those with deadly and communicable diseases – were removed from the culture. The church, however, is commanded to gather around and lay hands upon the sick. Their lack of fear regarding death gave them the ability to embrace the sick and give them care in ways that also witnessed to the present kingdom.

- Present with the Lord: Because the early church expected the immediate return of Christ they quickly began to ask the question, “What happens to those who die before the return of Christ?” The consistent answer is, “To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord.” The church believed deeply in immediate life after death in the presence of the Lord. Although this was not believed to be the final destiny for which the Christian is bound, it is a state in which the dead are held firmly within the conscious love of God and the conscious presence of Jesus Christ while they await the day of redemption (Rev. 6:9-11). The dead in Christ form the great “cloud of witnesses” and the “communion of the saints.”

- The Resurrection of the Body: The ultimate hope is that there will be a new (or renewed) creation and that the dead will be raised in ways that are congruent with life in the body but in ways that are completely different than our current embodied life. To paraphrase a line from C.S. Lewis, what we know of the life to come is only shadows and rumblings. We know as much about the life to come as the baby in its mother’s womb knows about the life it is about to experience. Their hope was the “life after life after death.”

- Judgment: (Revelation 18-19) Judgment resides in the hands of Christ. When the kingdom finally comes, all that is not the kingdom will be destroyed but all that was established in and for the kingdom will be eternal.

- Worship and Work: Participation in worship through prayer, the Lord’s Supper, and fellowship became ways of tapping into and receiving strength from the real but not quite present kingdom. The work that we do for the kingdom of God is establishing more and more of that which is eternal.

Message Resource Suggestion:

N.T. Wright, Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church (HarperOne, 2008)