It was not the kind of news one expected to hear during Holy Week. Perhaps that is why the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) chose to release the results of its survey at a time Christians focused attention on the events leading up to Jesus’ vicarious death on a Roman cross and His resurrection on Easter morning.
In the midst of Holy Week, the BBC announced that its most recent survey found almost 25 percent of self-described Christians in Great Britain did not believe in the resurrection of Jesus. The report said 31 percent of Christians did not believe in any form of life after death.
The report further found that half of all the people surveyed did not believe in the resurrection of Jesus at all and nearly half (46 percent) of British people did not believe in any form of life after death.
‘Constantly questioned’
Responding to these results, Lorraine Cavanagh, acting general secretary of Modern Church — a liberal Christian group in Great Britain — contended that Christians today should pick and choose what they want to believe.
“I think (people answering the survey) are being asked to believe in the way they might have been asked to believe when they were at Sunday School,” she said. “You’re talking about adults here. And an adult faith requires that it be constantly questioned, constantly reinterpreted. …
“Science, but also intellectual and philosophical thought has progressed. It has a trickle-down effect on just about everybody’s lives. So to ask an adult to believe in the resurrection the way they did when they were at Sunday School simply won’t do and that’s true of much of the key elements of the Christian faith,” she declared.
For Cavanagh human intellect and scientific study are ultimate authorities and, according to her, both judge the Bible to be unreliable and untrue.
It was encouraging to read an immediate challenge to the BBC survey findings by Gavin Ashenden, former chaplain to the Queen of England. Ashenden argued that the survey confused British culture with Christianity.
“Those people who neither believe in the Resurrection nor go anywhere near a church cannot be ‘Christians,’” he said. “As with so many things the key is in the definition of terms. Discovering the evidence for the Resurrection having taken place to be wholly compelling is one of the things that makes you a Christian; ergo, if you haven’t, you are not (a Christian).”
Ashenden could easily have added the words of the apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:17, “If Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless; you are still in your sins.” We believers, of all people, are most to be pitied (v. 19).
Thankfully the clear message of the Bible is: “But now Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who are asleep” (v. 20).
Belief in the Resurrection is a distinctive of the Christian faith. Jesus believed in and taught resurrection. In John 5:25–29 Jesus affirmed the resurrection of the righteous and the wicked outlined in Daniel 12:2. But he adds a new twist. In verse 27, Jesus says God gave “Him authority to execute judgment because He is the Son of Man.”
Jesus’ teachings
More specifically, Jesus taught His own resurrection. Four times in the days before His triumphal entry into Jerusalem Jesus told the 12 disciples He would be arrested, crucified and would rise again on the third day (Matt. 16:21, 17:9, 17:22–23, 20:18–19).
Like the Pharisees, the disciples believed in Daniel’s prophecy of a general resurrection at the end of time. What they had trouble hearing was a resurrection of a single person. That was not consistent with what they had been taught.
That was part of the reason the disciples first called “nonsense” the announcement by the women that Jesus had been raised from the grave. Luke 24:11 says plainly the disciples “would not believe them.”
The apostle Peter was one of those who on Easter morn could not believe in Jesus’ resurrection. But a few weeks later Peter stood before the throngs of Jerusalem and loudly preached of Jesus, “This Man, delivered up by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God, you nailed to a cross by the hands of godless men and put Him to death. And God raised Him up again” (Acts 2:22–23).
The apostle Paul looked at the Resurrection and said Jesus “was declared with power to be the Son of God by the resurrection from the dead” (Rom. 1:4).
So important was Jesus’ resurrection to the apostle Paul he added in Romans 10:9, “If you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you shall be saved.”
Paul and Ashenden evidently have something in common. They both seem to say the believing in the Resurrection is part of being a Christian.
On the cross Jesus offered the one sacrifice for sins for all time (Heb. 10:12). In the resurrection of Jesus God demonstrated the triumph of His Kingdom. The sting of death and the power of sin were broken by the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
And there is more.
The apostle Paul adds that Christ is “the first fruits of those who are asleep” (1 Cor. 15:20). Paul says in verse 23 “But each in his own order: Christ the first fruit, after that those who are Christ’s at His coming.”
Earlier in his first letter to the Corinthian church Paul wrote, “Now God has not only raised the Lord but will also raise us up through His power” (1 Cor. 6:14). That teaching is repeated throughout the apostle’s writings.
Resurrection is and has been an essential part of the Christian faith whether one is an innocent Sunday School child or a crusty adult of some undetermined age.
Our hope is not in intellectual insights of the modern mind or the latest scientific discoveries no matter what the so-called Modern Church teaches.
Hope for eternity is not in ourselves. It is always and only in our resurrected Lord.
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