What is the Bible?

How many of us have seen Star Wars? Episodes 1, 2 & 3 come before Star Wars, the Empire Strikes Back and the Return of the Jedi. However, we were introduced to the story not at the beginning but where the real action started. In the 1970s we were introduced to Luke Skywalker, C3PO, Darth Vader and Obi Wan in Star Wars. Devotees of Star Wars are prepared to go back and watch the others [even though they’re inferior films in almost all respects other than special effects!] because we want to understand what led up to it so that we might better appreciate what comes afterwards.

How would we summarise the Star Wars films? Resist the temptation to say ‘pants!’ We’d probably say something like, ‘the cosmic battle between the Rebel Alliance and the Empire, the heroic struggle of a united humanity against the evil Dark Side under the leadership of Darth Vader’. However we do it, we’re unlikely to start at the beginning and then painstakingly take us through each episode. We’d tell us a little about the main plot line and fill in some of the details required to understand the main characters. We need to be able to do the same with the Bible.

The Bible remains the best selling book of all time. Over ¾ of a million copies are removed from the shelves of bookshops each year to be placed on our bookshelves and from then on to rarely be disturbed. It would be fair to say that few have had the opportunity to grasp the meaning of the world’s most significant book. I wonder whether we’d be able to help them?

The following three points are intended to help us say something useful.

1. The Bible has one dominant author

The Bible contains 66 books, which for our convenience have been bound together in one volume. Those 39 books of the OT and 27 books of the NT have many different authors. They were written by different people, at different times and bear the marks and personalities and eras that produced them. However, behind the many human authors lies one dominant author, God himself. He ensured that by His Spirit everything that they wrote was exactly what he wanted them to write. As the Apostle Paul wrote in 2 Timothy 3:16, ‘all scripture is God breathed’. We don’t know how God’s Spirit did it but he’s the ultimate author of what we have in front of us today. Therefore it doesn’t seem an unreasonable idea to attempt to look for authorial coherence and amidst the variety of literary style look for something other than the spine that holds the book together.

2. The Bible has one central character

The Bible contains information about many things. There’s some history, politics, rudimentary science, anthropology and so on. However, there’s one central character that lurks behind every page, Jesus Christ the Son of God. Now we’d expect that to be true of the New Testament because the various authors are attempting to explain the significance of his life, death and resurrection. However, it may surprise some of us to learn that he is also the central character in books written before he existed in human history. This was certainly his take on the OT. In John 5: 39 he said, ‘these are the scriptures that testify about me’. And in Luke 24:27 we’re told, ‘Beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the scriptures concerning himself’. In Luke 24:44 Jesus said, ‘These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled’. Jesus understood his relationship to the Old Testament to be fulfilling what was promised.

3. The Bible has one main theme

It sounds simplistic doesn’t it to suggest that in the midst of all the complexity of this marvellous book there could be an overarching united theme. But I think the Bible itself demands that we understand it this way. The attempt to locate a unifying theme doesn’t negate the existence of different themes. We’re not trying to force the Bible into a straightjacket but letting the Bible inform us of it’s shape. We’re not flattening the depth and magnitude of the Bible with simplistic interpretation because the Kingdom of God is just a name for a deep concept. It was the dominant theme in Jesus’ teaching. Look at Jesus’ words in Mark’s gospel, ‘Jesus came into Galilee, proclaiming the gospel of God, and saying, "The time is fulfilled, and the Kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe the gospel’. Jesus expected his hearers to understand the gospel in terms of the Kingdom of God.

Did Jesus really rise from the dead?

Urban myths have a habit of forming a conviction all of their own in the minds of those that believe them. Debate had raged in our house about the alleged threat to personal safety from the swan.  Rosslyn is convinced that swans are sleek white messengers of death who have the capacity to break your legs with a flap of their wings. I remained unconvinced owing to the fact that I have yet to hear of a single incident where this bird has caused someone to end up in fracture clinic. Our disagreement was solved on Radio 4 when the late John Peel visited a swannery. He spoke to an expert and diminished the small amount of respect my wife once had for me. Apparently swans can break your legs!

The question that we’re thinking about this evening concerns an issue that many have simply dismissed as another urban myth. Some say that it’s a 1st century legend that’s just got out of hand like Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. It’s easy to see why because we’re thinking about a man who was killed and who came back to life in such a condition that he would never die again. As far as I’m aware that’s never happened anywhere else in any other time. Surely it’s another urban myth?

However, that’s one conclusion we can’t hold because it takes no account of the evidence. 

As we approach this issue we know two things for certain

1. Jesus died on the cross

Jesus hung there for 3 hours having endured unspeakable torture from his captors. The Roman soldiers thought it unnecessary to break his legs and hasten death by asphyxiation because in their opinion they were certain he’d already passed away. The flow of separated blood and water from the spear wound in his side recorded in John’s gospel medically confirms this. Pilate only handed over his body to Joseph of Arimathea for burial once he’d received word from the centurion that he was dead. Jesus was definitely dead.

2. Jesus was seen alive

Over the space of 40 days Jesus appeared to over 500 different people on several different occasions. In the gospel accounts we read that Jesus appeared to Mary Magdalene, to the other women, to Cleopas and another disciple on the road to Emmaus, to eleven disciples in Jerusalem, to the ten apostles when Thomas was absent, then a week later to the same crowd when Thomas was there, to seven apostles at the Sea of Tiberias and then on the Mount of Olives prior to his ascension. If we were to call each one of the witnesses to a court of law to be cross examined for just 15 minutes each and you went round the clock without a break it would take from breakfast on Monday until supper on Friday to hear them all. And their testimony could be reduced to one simple truth, ‘I saw a man who had died raised back to life again’.

These two facts are indisputable. The question is what happened in between? 3 common explanations are given

a. Jesus was revived

The theory goes that Jesus didn’t actually die, he just appeared to. What actually happened was that he fell unconscious, was placed in the tomb and after several hours he was revived by the cool air of the tomb arose and departed. There are several problems with this there was no way Jesus was still alive after the beating, crucifixion and flesh wound he suffered there was no way the Roman soldiers failed to kill their victims, they were professional killers there was no way Jesus could have woken up, unravelled the grave clothes, heaved the tombstone open, slipped past the guard and presented himself to the disciples in a fit state to convince them that he’d been raised from the dead We can’t believe that Jesus was revived.

b. Jesus was removed

The theory goes that Jesus died but once he’d been put in the tomb his body was secretly stolen. There are three different groups who might have taken it.

By grave robbers: It’s unlikely that they would have got passed the Roman guard but even if they had it doesn’t make any sense because they left the only things of value, the grave clothes. On top of that you couldn’t sell a corpse in 1st Century Israel for love nor money. God’s Old Testament law required anyone who’d touched a dead body to live in a tent outside the city for a week until they were considered ritually clean again. There just wasn’t a market for it.

By the Authorities: There’s no obvious motive for either the Roman or the Jewish leaders to do so. In fact they colluded and placed a guard on the tomb to prevent people from doing so. But even if we were to suppose that they did as soon as the apostles started to declare that Jesus had been raised from the dead they could have fabricated a reason for doing so and owned up to removing his body. Christianity grew at an alarming rate and right at the heart of its popularity was the teaching about the resurrection if the authorities had the body they could have discredited it straight away and stopped the spread as they wanted to do.

By the disciples: this explanation is actually the oldest of the lot and is found in Matthew’s gospel. The Jewish leaders, in response to the news that the tomb was empty, bribed the Roman soldiers to say that the disciples had come under cover of darkness and stolen the body. But it just doesn’t add up as an explanation. They simply wouldn’t have done it. Three days after his death they were cowering behind locked doors in Jerusalem in fear of the Jews. But something happened to convince them Jesus was alive again because 49 days later they stood up in Jerusalem city centre and preached sermons all about Jesus coming back from the dead. To say the disciples stole the body doesn’t take account of the extraordinary transformation in the apostles. It doesn’t take account for the fact that these men were prepared to die as martyrs for saying that Jesus rose from the dead. People don’t put up with torture and execution for something that they know to be untrue. No one willingly dies for a lie. They were convinced he was alive again.

c. Jesus was resurrected

Only this explanation makes sense of the death of Jesus, the empty tomb and his subsequent appearances. Jesus Christ who was once dead came back to life and his dead corpse was reanimated. There is no other explanation. If you think that there is then let me challenge you to come up with an alternative explanation and try it on a Christian friend. But let me save you the mental energy, you won’t because there isn’t one. However, when they’ve eventually argued you into submission there’s a further question that needs to be asked. So what? What difference does it make that this man came back to life?

4 quick implications

i. Jesus was who he said he was. He claimed to be God in human flesh and that as God he would die but then rise again. That’s an outrageous claim and if any of our friends said that we’d think they’d lost the plot unless they pulled it off. Jesus did. He was telling the truth. We mustn’t dismiss him because this man is God.

ii. Jesus demonstrates that there’s life beyond the grave. He came back from the dead to show us that we will exist in some form after we’ve died. We mustn’t just live for this world because death is not the end.

iii. Jesus claimed that he would deal with the death sentence that hangs over each one of us. God has imposed this on us because of our rejection of him. But he’s provided an alternative method of paying. Jesus said he would pay it instead. When Jesus was executed that sentence was paid in full. There was nothing left to pay. Therefore death could no longer hold him in its debt and had to give up its hold on him and he came through death to life. He paid the debt. We mustn’t try and pay our debt to God in any other way.

iv. Jesus foreshadowed the future for all that entrust their lives to him. Just as he was raised to life in a new kind of existence so those of us who follow him will be given the same new life to kit us out to exist forever in eternity. We mustn’t think that there’s any other form of eternal existence that’s worth thinking about.

Conclusion

The evidence leaves us with one option, as unexpected as it seems Jesus Christ rose from the dead. And that has massive implications for our lives here and now and our existence beyond the grave.