The empty grave: what's in it for you?

The story of the empty tomb appears in the Bible in each of the four Gospels. We do not know exactly when God the Father brought Jesus back to life in Jerusalem about 2000 years ago. But we know that this event will affect and change the life of every person who has ever lived.

Jesus, a carpenter from Nazareth, was arrested, convicted and crucified. When he died, he confided in his Heavenly Father and the Holy Spirit. Then his tortured body was placed in a grave made of solid rock, which was sealed with a heavy stone in front of the entrance.

Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor, gave the order to guard the tomb. Jesus prophesied that the tomb would not hold him and Pilate feared that the dead man's followers would try to steal the body. However, this seemed unlikely because they were demoralized, full of fear, and therefore hid. They had seen the brutal end of their leader - whipped almost to death, nailed to a cross, and after six hours of agony stabbed in the side with a spear. They had taken the battered body off the cross and quickly wrapped it in linen. It was supposed to be a temporary funeral only as a Sabbath was approaching. Some planned to return after the Sabbath to prepare the body of Jesus for a proper burial.

The body of Jesus was in the cold, dark grave. After three days, the shroud covered the impending decomposition of the dead flesh. What emerged from him was what had never existed before - a resurrected and glorified human being. Jesus was resurrected from his Heavenly Father and in the power of the Holy Spirit. Not in a way that restored his human existence, as he had done with Lazarus, the daughter of Jairus and the son of a widow in Nain, who were being called back to their old body and earthly life. No, Jesus did not return to his old body simply by being resuscitated. The statement that God the Father, his buried Son, raised Jesus into a new life on the third day is radically different. In the history of mankind there are neither conclusive analogies nor plausible internal-worldly explanations for this. Jesus folded the shroud and went out of the tomb to continue his work. Nothing would ever be the same again.

Incomprehensible truth

When Jesus lived with us on earth as a human being, he was one of us, a person of flesh and blood, exposed to hunger, thirst, fatigue, and the limited dimensions of a mortal existence. “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.” (Joh 1,14).

He lived in communion with God's Holy Spirit as one of us. Theologians call the incarnation of Jesus "incarnation". He was also one with God as the Eternal Word or Son of God. This is a fact that is difficult and possibly impossible to fully grasp, given the limitations of our human minds. How could Jesus be both God and man? As contemporary theologian James Innell Packer put it: “Here are two mysteries for the price of one - the multitude of persons within the oneness of God and the union of Godhead and humanity in the person of Jesus. Nothing in fiction is as fantastic as this Truth of the Incarnation »(Knowing God). It's a concept that contradicts everything we know about ordinary reality.

Science shows that just because something seems to defy explanation doesn't mean it isn't true. Scientists at the forefront of physics have come to terms with phenomena that turn conventional logic upside down. At the quantum level, the rules that regulate our daily lives break down and new rules apply, even if they contradict logic in such a way that they seem absurd. Light can act both as a wave and as a particle. A particle can be in two places at the same time. Some subatomic quarks have to spin twice before "going around once" while others only need to spin half a revolution. The more we learn about the quantum world, the less likely it seems. However, experiment after experiment shows that quantum theory is correct.

We have the tools to explore the physical world and are often surprised by its inner details. We have no tools to investigate divine and spiritual realities—we must accept them as God reveals them to us. These things were told to us by Jesus himself and by those he commissioned to preach and write. The evidence we have from Scripture, history, and our own experience supports the belief that Jesus is one with God and with humanity. “I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.” (Joh 17,22-23).

When Jesus was raised, the two natures reached a new dimension of living together, which led to a new kind of creation - a glorified human being who was no longer subject to death and decay.

Escape from the grave

Many years, perhaps even 60 years after this event, Jesus appeared to John, the last of his original disciples who had been present at his crucifixion. John was now an old man and lived on the island of Patmos. Jesus said to him, “Do not be afraid! I am the First and the Last, the Living One; and I was dead, and behold, I am alive for ever and ever! Amen! And I have the keys of Hades and of Death.” (Offb 1,17-18).

Look again very carefully at what Jesus says. He was dead. He is alive now and that he will stay alive forever. He also has a key that opens the way for other people to escape from the grave. Even death is no longer like it was before the resurrection of Jesus.

We see an astonishing promise in another verse that has become a cliché: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” (Joh 3,16)Jesus, who rose to eternal life, has paved the way for us to live forever as well.

When Jesus was raised from death, both of his natures reached a new dimension that led to a new kind of creation - a glorified human being who was no longer subject to death and decay.

There's more

Before Jesus died, he prayed the following prayer: “Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world.” (Joh 17,24)Jesus, who shared our mortal existence for approximately 33 years, says he wants us to be with him forever in his immortal surroundings.

Paul wrote a similar message to the Romans: “Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, since we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory. For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.” (Röm 8,17-18).

Jesus was the first person to transcend mortal existence. God never intended for him to be the only one. We have always been in God's thoughts. "For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers." (Röm 8,29).

Although we cannot yet fully comprehend the implications, our eternal future is in safe hands. “Beloved, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been revealed. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.” (1. Joh 3,2)What belongs to him belongs to us too, his way of life. God's way of life.
Through his life, death and resurrection, Jesus showed us what it means to be human. He is the first man to achieve all the perfection that God had in mind for man from the beginning. But he's not the last.

The fact is, we cannot get there alone: ​​“Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.’” (Joh 14,6).

Just as God transformed Jesus' mortal body into his glorified body, Jesus will transform our bodies: "He will transform our lowly bodies to be like his glorious body, according to the power that enables him to subject all things to himself." (Phil 3,21).

As we carefully read the scriptures, an exciting preview of the future of mankind begins to unfold.

“But someone testifies in one place, saying, ‘What is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him? For a little while you made him lower than the angels, and crowned him with glory and honor; you put everything under his feet.’ Having put everything under his feet, he left nothing unsubject to him.” (Hebr 2,6-8).

The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews quoted the Psalm 8,5-7, which had been written centuries before. But he continued: “Now we do not yet see that everything is subject to him. But he who was for a little while lower than the angels, Jesus, we see crowned with glory and honor through his suffering death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for all.” (Hebr 2,8-9).

The women and men to whom Jesus Christ appeared at Easter not only testified to his bodily resurrection, but also to the discovery of his empty tomb. From this they recognized that their crucified Lord really, personally and bodily rose into his new life.

But what good is the empty tomb afterwards if Jesus himself doesn't need it anymore? As those baptized into him, we were buried with him so that we could develop with him in his new life. But how much of the past burdens us again and again; how much that is detrimental to life still restricts us! All our worries, burdens and fears, for which Christ has already died, we are allowed to bury in his grave - there has been enough space in it since the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

The fate of Jesus is our fate. His future is our future. The resurrection of Jesus shows God's willingness to bind himself irrevocably to us all in an eternal love relationship and to rise up into the life and fellowship of our Triune God. That was his plan from the start and Jesus came to save us for it. He did it!

by John Halford and Joseph Tkach