Because He Lives
Jesus and Jiu-Jitsu // Devotional #72
In jiu-jitsu, it can feel like there are a thousand variables that can shift a match at a moment’s notice. From grips and position to moves and countermoves, it isn’t just one variable that can change the match, but an ever-changing list of possibilities. For many, it’s the relentless pursuit of knowledge and technique that pulls them deeper into the rabbit hole of their training, all in hopes of learning what to do and when to do it.
But when it comes to our faith, there’s only one truth that changes everything: the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. This is the one truth on which all our hope rests and the one truth that validates our faith.
Paul says this explicitly in 1 Corinthians 15:16-19:
16 For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised. 17 And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. 18 Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. 19 If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied. (ESV)
Don’t miss this: if Christ is still in the tomb, our faith is futile, and we are without hope. Without the resurrection, Jesus was a historically significant man who sparked a soft rebellion against the Roman Empire, inspired a consequential religion, and invited people to live in a way that makes no sense if this life is all there is. Without the resurrection, Jesus is just another religious figure devoid of power and truth. And without the resurrection, the way of Jesus becomes another dead end.
To Paul, the resurrection wasn’t an afterthought or a foregone conclusion. The resurrection was (and is) the evidence that God’s Word is true and that His promises will come to pass. Either Jesus died and changed nothing, or Jesus died and rose again, changing everything.
In fact, before this, Paul drills down on both the evidence of the resurrection and the Scriptural basis for the resurrection when he writes in 1 Corinthians 15:3-8:
3 For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, 5 and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. 6 Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. 7 Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. 8 Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. (ESV)
To those reading or hearing Paul’s letter in the 1st century, the resurrection wasn’t a religious allegory or a symbol. The resurrection either happened or it didn’t. And it either happened exactly as God had promised, or it didn’t.
This is Paul’s point to the Corinthian church, which was riddled with immorality and division: if the resurrection isn’t true, then it doesn’t matter how you live. Paul tells them, “…If the dead are not raised, ‘Let us eat and drink for tomorrow we die.’” (1 Cor. 15:32b)
But if the resurrection is true, it demands that we live in light of that reality-altering truth. It doesn’t make that demand like a toddler banging a spoon on a high chair, but as a law of reality that requires compliance, because to live as if it’s not true would be like living as if gravity weren’t keeping you earthbound. We will either live in step with reality or in a reality of our own choosing, either toward a salvation ready to be revealed in the last times or into a world devoid of hope.
Yet I fear this is where most of us live, forgetting that Christ has indeed been raised from the dead and living as if we have hope only in this life. We wake with minds filled with the here and now, chasing a ghost we can never catch, living in light of what we can achieve and accumulate before we’re gathered back to the dust from which it all came. When we forget the resurrection, we live lives absent the true hope given in Christ.
When the resurrection of Christ is our hope, we live in light of a promise that cannot be shaken by the dim lights of a fallen world. This is the hope Peter reminds us of in 1 Peter 1:3-5, that we have been…“born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.” (ESV)
Because He lives, we can live as if tomorrow isn’t all there is. Because He lives, our hope is fixed on eternity. Because He lives, we can face tomorrow knowing that sin, darkness, and even death itself will meet their end in Him.
And because He lives, we can ask ourselves today the same question Francis Schaeffer posed all those years ago: “How should we then live?”
Take time to consider these questions:
What often keeps us from remembering not only that Christ died for our sins but also that He was raised?
What does your life tend to look like when you live as if the resurrection weren’t true?
Read 1 Peter 1:3-5 again. What is the basis of our hope, and what kind of security can we have in that hope?
As you end your time, ask the Lord to help you remember daily that Christ has been raised, so you might live in the new life He’s given you. Confess the ways you’ve forgotten to live in light of the resurrection, and pray to be reminded of the imperishable hope found only in Jesus.
