Because you will die, you need this hope. We may not think we need this hope now when we’re relatively healthy. But remember: one day you will die. Christianity prepares you for this day and gives you hope even when you face your greatest enemy, which is death.

Earlier this year I attended the funeral of two friends who died within a week of each other. As you can imagine, it was a sad time to see two relatively young friends die.

I was surprised by their deaths, especially one of them who died without any warning. But what surprised me most was what wasn’t said at their funerals. Their funerals took place at churches that would believe everything that we believe, but they left out possibly the most important truth that you could state at a funeral:

I believe in the resurrection of the body
and the life everlasting. Amen.

We’re concluding our series on the Apostle’s Creed today. The Apostle’s Creed is one of the earliest summaries of the Christian faith. And today we get to the final two lines of the creed, ones that make all the difference in the world, but also ones that I find ignored even when we need them the most.

Here’s why we need these truths. I’ll give you the short version and the long version. Here’s the short version.

This is great Twitter account. I think everyone should follow it. Every day it tweets out the same important reminder: you will die someday. Harsh but true, and it’s important to be reminded of this regularly.

Here’s the longer version from Mike Wittmer’s book The Last Enemy:

You are going to die. Take a moment to let that sink in. You are going to die. One morning the sun will rise and you won’t see it. Birds will greet the dawn and you won’t hear them. Friends and family will gather to celebrate your life, and after you’re buried they’ll return to the church for ham and scalloped potatoes. Soon your job and favorite chair and spot on the team will be filled by someone else. The rest of the world may pause to remember— it will give you a moment of silence if you were rich or well known— but then it will carry on as it did before you arrived. “There is no remembrance of men of old,” observed Solomon, “and even those who are yet to come will not be remembered by those who follow” (Ecclesiastes 1: 11).

You are going to die. What a crushing, desperate thought. But unless you swallow hard and embrace it, you are not prepared to live.

If our Christianity doesn’t include these words, “I believe in the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting,” then we have nothing. I don’t know why we have lost these truths when we need them most, but it’s time to recover them!

We need these truths. If Christianity can’t handle the accident site, the cancer ward, the funeral home, then it’s not worth anything. “If death was no big deal, there would be no reason to be a Christian” (Wittmer).

So we need these truths. Here they are. There are two of them.

I Believe in the Resurrection of the Body

One of the simplest verses that explains the resurrection is Philippians 3:20-21:

But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself.

Let’s follow the logic.

First: death is a problem. This is the overall teaching of the Bible. This may be where we go wrong, because I keep hearing people say that death is natural, that death is simply part of life, that it’s no problem at all. Tell that to the parent holding the body of their baby in their arms, or to anyone who’s had to deal with the loss of a loved one — or even stared death in the face themselves. Death is the fundamental human problem.

But second: here’s where Christianity stands apart. It says that Jesus conquered death. Nobody expected it, but on the third day Jesus rose from the dead.

For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures… (1 Corinthians 15:3–4)

Here’s what happened that day.

This is the moment in which Jesus has made good on His promise. Gone is the tortured carpenter. Gone is the heavy, lumbering, splinter-laden cross, the nails still dripping. It’s been snapped like a toothpick. Reduced to splinters. It doesn’t hold Him anymore. Neither does the grave. This right here, this is Jesus, the firstborn among the dead, the victorious conquering, undefeated King—who holds the keys to death and hades—and this is the moment in which God the Father has officially and once and forever transferred you and me from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of the Son of His love…

Satan’s defeat was absolute. The victory complete. Eternal. Irrevocable.

This is that moment.

As Jesus walks out…He exits through the prison of cells—the Alcatraz of hell—where His people have been held in bondage. Slavery. Every form of addiction. Every sin. And as He walks by, every lock clicks, shackles fall off, gates of bronze are ripped off their hinges, bars of iron cut in two.Prisoners, long held captive, begin screaming at the top of their lungs. (What If It’s True?)

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