God's Solution: Resurrection, Part 1

"Truly, truly I say to you, 

unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, 

it remains alone; 

but if it dies, it bears much fruit.”

–John 12:24 NASB

We find ourselves at odds with the universe. Our world has become a world of sorrow and impermanence, suffering and death. The happiest people we know are not immune. And when we consider ourselves—honestly surveying our successes and failures—we see that we are infected too. Conflict, injustice, and grief loom over the happy memories we cling to.

Everything we love dies. People we look up to disappoint us. Friends and family betray. Seemingly innocent people commit crimes. Too many times we have no mercy or compassion for others who are struggling. Then in our struggle we cannot find mercy. Cold and uncaring, death infects us all. Cruel and callous, greed and power destroy our societies. 

We suffer and we watch others suffering. Life is not without enjoyment and love. But these—precious as they are—are never uncorrupted. It’s not that our lives are unbearable, not at all. But we can envision a hypothetical life with joy and not sorrow. And we wonder why the sorrows have to be.

Jesus did something about this, something that is working now and will keep working until all is made right again.

He came among us, God taking on humanity without giving up divinity. A savior—the Savior—was born in Bethlehem. He was different and yet also the same. He loved perfectly and lived flawlessly. But he ate and drank, slept and woke, lived and died, just like us.

But there was something about his death. Unlike you and I, he could have avoided it. He was faithful though, to die for our benefit, to experience what we experience, and to raise the meaning of death to a new level. God tells us that we died with Jesus and that we will rise with him also.

Death is God’s solution to evil. Resurrection is God’s solution to death. So says Douglas Campbell in his majestic survey of theology, Pauline Dogmatics (Eerdmans, 2020). 

Death is built into our structure as human beings and into the structure of the universe itself. And in the Adam “myth” we find an explanation for how this came about. Please note that I say “myth” in the technical sense—not meaning something like “a childish fable” but rather “a symbolic story explaining great mysteries of life.”

Before death came, says the Adam myth, we lived in unbroken communion with God. We also had access to the gift of life, through a tree whose fruit kept us immortal. But we were corrupted, marred by the irresistible choice of freedom from God. We did not understand that freedom from God is freedom from life, slavery to death.

Only a devilish God would allow evil to be immortal.

By the sweat of your face 

You shall eat bread, 

Until you return to the ground, 

Because from it you were taken; 

For you are dust, 

And to dust you shall return.

–Genesis 3:19 NASB

People think God sentenced humanity to death as a punishment. Not true. Death is the cure for evil.

God does not use suffering to punish or to give evil what it deserves. He intends to live with us forever and that was God’s intention from the beginning. We can only know what God makes known to us about all of this and many of the questions that occur to us are impenetrable from our limited perspective. But it seems the world is the way it is so evil will not be given eternal life.

God is the Tree of Life from the Adam myth. When we have access to God, we have life. When we abandon God, we abandon life. The cross of Christ is the Tree of Life brought back and through the death of the Son of God our death is given new meaning.

If Jesus had remained dead, it is difficult to see how there could be hope. If that had been the case, then God would have lost and evil won. Such a thing is impossible given who God is and how insubstantial evil turns out to be.

Death became our destiny. Then God participated in our destiny so that we can participate in his. Jesus became a Second Adam—the Last Adam. Adam in the myth is representative of all who come from Adam, being born into humanity of which Adam is the head. Similarly, but with more finality, Jesus is the representative of all who are born to Renewed Life. Adam is no longer our representative.

With potent faith in his Father, Jesus submitted to inferior men and permitted them to kill him. Evil must die, but in Jesus there was no evil. Therefore, God’s Spirit raised him. And in so doing, God enacted the next part of his plan: resurrection.

Evil will not live forever. Wars will become extinct. Poverty will die a permanent death. Love will replace greed and power and lust. Everything tainted by evil must cease to exist in order for this to occur. And God’s New Creation will be unmarred, lovely in every way for God and for us.