If You Think You Knew the Meaning of “Resurrection,” Think Again (Or Read This Book)

I just finished reading the greatest book I’ve ever read on the Christian faith. C.S. Lewis, for me in the past, did a wonderful job in providing perspective on many Christian beliefs and practices. But I think he’s been “one-upped”.

N. T. Wright, in his new book Surprised By Hope – Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church, does an absolutely incredible job in providing enlightening early church views about the title topics and packaging them wonderfully in a message of hope for the future in which we can immerse ourselves today.

Here are a few things from the book that have refreshed my faith:

● I should be looking forward to a new resurrection and re-creation of heaven and earth where we’ll thrive with Christ, rather than anticipating some sort of a dis-embodied existence in a far away “heaven”

● Everything we do in our bodies that eventually will die (good works) will become part of God’s future and ultimately will be part of his new creation. (This certainly gives fresh meaning to life itself.)

● Christ’s resurrected body was our first glimpse of the promised new creation and the Kingdom of God. It was the beginning of God’s reign on earth (just as we pray for in The Lord’s Prayer) that will culminate when God finally “brings together” heaven and earth.

● The mission of the church is a mission of hope – “that the genuine Christian hope, rooted in Jesus’ resurrection, is the hope for God’s renewal of all things, for his overcoming of corruption, decay, and death, for his filling of the whole cosmos with his love and grace, power and glory”.

● The sacraments are not just “remembrances." Communion, for instance, is a celebration of the presence of the living Lord who has gone on into the new creation as its prototype. In a real sense, through the eucharist, we experience Christ’s resurrection in a tangible, powerful way, in anticipation of the new creation and the marriage supper of the Lamb.

And there's much, much more. I highly recommend Wright’s book. It has for me changed forever my understanding of Christ's resurrection and the very purpose for my existence.