Some Reflections on Easter
From
April 9, 2019
The Easter season is a great time to focus in on our ideas of God – and on our relationship with Him. Following are some thoughts I wrote for our April Newsletter, the ECHO, about the Lord’s resurrection as it is described in the Gospels.
About the Lord’s Resurrection
There is as you may know an ongoing controversy in the church as to just exactly what body the Lord glorified at His resurrection. Was it the material body, or the inner, spiritual body? The Gospels say He rose with His whole body, unlike any other man, but what exactly does this mean?
In one sense it doesn’t matter! The fact is, His dead material body disappeared and He revealed Himself in a living spiritual body on Easter morning. How that happened is not nearly as important as the fact that it did happen, that the disciples knew Him, and that He was able to reassure them and enlighten them more than ever as a result of this continuing presence.
It is exactly the same today. We do not see the Lord with our natural eyes any more than the disciples did when He appeared and disappeared, passing through closed doors, moving from place to place without the limitations of time. We see Him just as the disciples did, with our spiritual eyes, that is, the eyes of our understanding when after years of “following” Him and reflecting on His life and works we finally come to appreciate His Divine Humanity, His omniscience, His omnipotence, His omnipresence, and most of all His infinite love and wisdom. We really, truly see Him when we finally realize how His foresight, patience, providence and forgiveness actually work in our lives and in the lives of those around us, so that we can fully co-operate with Him and enjoy the blessings of heaven.
For the disciples this was not possible until He allowed His natural, material body to be crucified and His spiritual body to be revealed especially in the love and understanding they felt in His post-resurrection presence. Remember, it was in the breaking of bread that they finally knew Him (Luke 24:31), even though he had spent the whole day “expounding to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself.” Surely the teaching was necessary, but the breaking of bread stirred their affections and THAT was what finally triggered their recognition.
Again, it is the same for us today. We can spend years with the Lord in His Word, reading, reflecting, observing and analyzing, but it is only when we “get” the love within the wisdom, and see how the Lord is preparing us for eternal life, that we can come at last to “see” Him for who and what He really is, the infinite God in Human form encouraging, uplifting and showing us the way to a beautiful spiritual life “created” in His image and likeness.
The process isn’t easy, but the plan is perfect. We simply have to work through our worldly challenges and disappointments knowing that there is more – much more and much better – yet to be revealed in the clouds of heaven with great glory and power.
May this Easter season be a special blessing to you all as you consider the miracle of His resurrection and how He can inspire you just as He inspired the disciples in the closing chapters of each of the four Gospels.
