Listen to this post NOW on Beyond Everything Radio!

We are several weeks past Easter, but our eleven week detour has provided the biblical context which opens up a rediscovery of Easter. I’ve shown you the contrast between the Biblical revelation and that of the Christian religion. Today, I conclude with a few reflections on how we can reclaim the Easter narrative from institutionalized religion.

Easter is like Black Friday to churches. We’re then invited to convert to the Christian religion, in order to apply Jesus sacrificial death to our personal life, and that gets us eternal life after we die. When a person truly realizes what Christ has done for them on the cross, it changes everything. But how could it dawn on them at all if Christ’s sacrifice hadn’t already been there for them to realize. The Easter invitation is not to convert, but to follow Christ…and to discover what He’s done prior to our belief.

If Jesus bore upon himself the entire wrath of God for the sins of the world, then there can remain no more wrath in God. This creates a theological tension to be resolved, but religion hasn’t resolved it. Was Jesus’ death efficacious in that it satisfied the wrath of God and saves humanity? Or, was his death merely symbolic, not actually accomplishing this work, but making humanity “savable.” This makes each of us our own savior, by conferring the sacrifice upon ourselves as a choice. This binary of the atonement has been argued since Calvin and Arminius.

Easter is not attesting to a theological binary.

This binary imposes a limit upon the atonement, claiming God either doesn’t have the power, or lacks the will to save all of humanity. This version of God and the atonement is too small for modern faith. If God only loves and therefore saves a few elect, then he is certainly no savior of the world and his victory is infinitely smaller than his triumph. Not a great Easter. If the atonement is left entirely up to humanity to essentially save themselves, then Christ’s victory is really man’s and not worth celebrating.

The scripture’s ternary perspective is unlike either of these. Good doctrine gets us beyond the either/or and into the both/and, but usually doesn’t go far enough. Yes, salvation is the work of grace by God to resuscitate our dead heart and cause our affections to gravitate toward Christ. It’s also true that our awakening to Christ’s sacrifice means we ought to respond affirmatively in faith and repentance to this Good News. Both are happening because we are all at varying points of both lost and found. Yet, church history has left us in a precarious gap, presupposing that Christ hasn’t come to us, and that we have to wait till death for his other-worldly kingdom, morphing this both/and salvation into an either/or commodity sold by religion.

I’ve challenged the pre-tribulation, pre-millennial assumption because the biblical revelation and textual criticism simply don’t allow for these claims. So let’s consider the consequences of these beliefs.

If I’m mistaken (since I’m not dogmatic) then the consequence as Christ followers, is that we won’t miss out on anything that Christ would do in a global tribulation and rapture of his saints. Our faith is as valid as any other believer in that Christ is trusted as our savior, not religion. For those not in faith, the plan of destruction is unchanged.

But if my assertion is true, that the pre-mill eschatology is unbiblical, then over the centuries, God’s church has become an alternative religion, promising to evacuate and save only a few chosen people (just as Judaism once did). Instead of quietly Christ following within our lives, people are constrained to live under the rule, authority, and optics of religious power, as those in charge decide who is really saved. This turns Judgment Day into a threat, as the church turns against the culture and forces people to pick a team. The cost of this belief is that modern faith is in compliance to religion and not in God.

Do we want another few centuries of this trajectory? To me that’s untenable.

We must regain the perspective of the early church who understood Easter as Good News…as the promise of a new covenant, where the first one of religion is obsolete. In Jesus Christ, salvation has come to all people, Jews and gentiles, sinners and saints, not on the basis of our good merit but on the basis that God is good. The both/and means that ALL SINS without exception are covered by the sacrifice of Christ. There remains no wrath of God, and no appeasing God, and nothing between God and humanity. This both/and continuously calls each of us to turn form our sin and believe for the rest of our days, because we are both more lost than any of us can comprehend, and more loved than we can possibly imagine. This makes him the only savior of the entire world because none of us are other than both of these realities.

“For God has not destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us so that whether we are awake or asleep we might live with him.” (1 Thessalonians 5:9-10)

Allow the scripture to rewrite your unbiblical doctrines. The sleeping are those who Paul says live in darkness. Why would he admonish us to stay awake and remain sober to see Christ, if we were not also capable of sleeping through it? Not two people groups, but two aspects of humanity with the same salvation.

 “The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost.” (1 Timothy 1:15)

Would Paul conclude he is the worst of all sinners if he was convinced he was only a former sinner? Does this mean he doesn’t see himself as a Saint? Of course not, he knows he is possesses both just as everyone else.

“This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.” (1 Timothy 2:3)

Does God have anything for which He desires but doesn’t get? That is theologically impossible for a sovereign God. If he desires it, it happens. When and how it happens is entirely up to God.

“The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance. For to this end we toil and strive, because we have our hope set on the living God, who is the Savior of all people, especially of those who believe.” (1 Timothy 4:9-10)

It’s this last verse that reveals the depth of the “both/and” Easter. God who has shown Himself to the world as Christ, is the savior of all people, especially of those who believe, not only those who believe. Now Easter makes sense. Now we know why the disciples risked their lives to tell everyone who would listen. Easter is our salvation apart from religion. It’s time the church brings back this message.

Lastly, Easter isn’t complete until we understand Jesus’ message to his disciples:

 “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. (Matthew 28:18)

Yes, he’s saying that his subversive kingdom has unearthed the institutional powers that belonged to Satan, and now all èxousias belongs to Christ. As a result he commissions us to go and make students from the heathens, getting them into their lives in God, helping them to see all Christ has shown them, and reminding us that He’s always with us.

What an amazing way to live and see the world.