The Challenge of The Resurrection

Acts 1:1-3

“In my former book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus began to do and to teach until the day he was taken up to heaven, after giving instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles he had chosen. After his suffering, he presented himself to them and gave many convincing proofs that he was alive. He appeared to them over a period of forty days and spoke about the kingdom of God.”

The resurrection of Jesus challenges me, but not in the way that most people would assume. I am not cautious about believing its miraculous elements. I believe the one true story of the world is the blended beauty of the realms we call the natural and the supernatural. I have no doubts about its historical accuracy. Jesus is the most historically provable person in existence, and I believe the intellectual case for the resurrection is profound. Its implications don’t bother me. The resurrection is the proof of Jesus‘s claims and his Lordship, and I am stirred to follow him faithfully and completely.

What challenges me about the resurrection is what Jesus chose to do with it during the 40 days before his ascension. Jesus could have done anything, and what he prioritizes reveals how much I still have to learn from him.

The resurrected Son of God, the Trinitarian Word of the Godhead, the one who was and is and is to come, rose from the dead and did the most peculiar thing: he found his friends.

The actual king of the world didn’t confront Caesar, he found Mary in her grief.

The way and the truth and the life didn’t reveal himself to the philosophers of the age, he found Thomas and his doubt.

The essence of all righteousness didn’t address the religious leaders of Israel, he found Peter in his shame.

And here, at the opening of the book of Acts, we see what was most important to Jesus. For 40 days Jesus found his friends. He showed them that he was alive, and he taught them what his life was all about: the kingdom of God.

When we read the book of Acts, it becomes abundantly clear that a shift of indescribable proportions has taken place in the life of the disciples. The men and women that emerge in Acts chapter 2 possess something that didn’t exist in the days before. Very soon, we will see that most poignantly the shift comes from the infilling reality and power of the Holy Spirit. But in that truth, we often minimize the other substance they were given. For 40 days Jesus didn’t just find his friends, he taught them what they didn’t know about his true mission and the mission he was now inviting them into.

This is what Jesus did for 40 days in his resurrection before his ascension–he invited his friends to learn the ways of the kingdom of God and to partner with him in its restoration. And that is still what he is doing 2000 years later as the resurrected Lord of human history and the head of his church.

As followers of Jesus in a secular age, we often reduce the mission of Jesus to a flawed understanding of a transaction we call salvation. The truth is that Jesus came to restore a kingdom, and salvation is not a transaction from one eternal status to another, but the invitation of belonging to the true kingdom and its king. And to belong to anything is to participate in its ways.

Jesus is still alive.

Jesus is still finding his friends.

And Jesus is still teaching them the ways of the kingdom of God.