On the Road to Emmaus

When Jesus rose from the dead, splendor returned to the world. From the depths of death’s dark gloom, Jesus emerged triumphant and the light of new life shone out permeating the entire earth. God’s redemptive purpose to not abandon the earth to its decay, death and misery, but to restore, renew and indeed re-create it with greater glory than it possessed in its pristine state, though prophesied throughout the Old Testament, was enacted in and through the resurrection of Jesus from the dead.

In the last post I discussed the Jewish concept of “resurrection” as an expectation which was

bodily (entailing a return to the life of the physical body),

earthly (as opposed to other-worldly),

corporate (it happened to all the people of God),

simultaneous (all at one time), and

eschatological (as the transitional event between this age and the age to come in which all things would be restored).

In such, I began to assert the notion that the resurrection of Jesus was not simply a fantastic miraculous event, perhaps the best of all the miracles in Jesus’ career. Rather, the resurrection of Jesus, as understood in its Jewish context, marked the irruption of the life of the Age to Come into the present. This Age to Come, was heralded by the Hebrew prophets as a time when death would be no more (Isa. 25), when all areas of life would be renewed and restored, whether they be ecological, agricultural, physical, political, economic, relational, etc., and God’s people would forever rejoice with gladness (Isa. 35:10).  In short, the entire earth and all that is in it would be renewed and re-created. When Jesus was raised from the dead, this re-creation began. The restoration of all things had its inauguration. As Jesus stepped out of the tomb, the springtime of all creation started to blossom and the age-anticipated promises of God for life, righteousness and freedom began to find their fulfillment. This notion is termed inaugurated eschatology, meaning that eschatological realities of the age to come have been inaugurated, that is, they have begun, even now in the middle of the present age, while yet awaiting a future consummation of fullness (this is often discussed in terms of the Kingdom of God being both “already but not yet”).

To continue to demonstrate this idea of the resurrection of Jesus heralding the advent of God’s New Creation (i.e., inaugurated eschatology), I would like to quickly breeze through the Gospel of John – a whirlwind tour perhaps, and show how the notion of “new creation” is present in this work.

To begin with, the familiar opening words of John are “In the beginning…” What is strikingly obvious to us, would have been equally apparent to hearers/readers in the first century. John is intentionally mirroring the initial words of Genesis, the famed creation story. While this would not be conclusive in itself (but will be made much more clear as we proceed), why might John be intentionally beginning his Gospel with the first words of Genesis? He continues to speak of the incarnation in terms of “light shining in the darkness,” a further allusion to the first chapter of Genesis. Is it possible that John is setting us up for precisely what it sounds like – a second (new) creation story?

In John 5:24-25, Jesus says, “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who hears My word, and  believes Him who sent Me, has eternal life, and  does not come into judgment, but has passed out of death into life. Truly, truly, I say to you,  an hour is coming and now is, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live.”

Three points are of note.

1)    The person who believes has, that is, currently possesses eternal life. This phrase translated “eternal life” literally means “life of the age” and was used in Jewish writings from or before the time of the New Testament to mean the “life of the age to come” (Dan. 12:2; Pss. Sol. 3:12; 13:11; 14:10; 1 Enoch 37:4; 58:3). Furthermore, in the Synoptic Gospels, the terms “eternal life” and “Kingdom of God” are used interchangeably on a number of occurrences (Mk 9:43, 45, 47; 10:17-30; Mt. 19:23-29; Lk. 18:24-30). Thus, when we come to the Gospel of John and see that the term “Kingdom of God” only occurs twice, it seems very likely that the often used phrase “eternal life” (i.e., “life of the age”) is John’s preferred way of referring to the same reality the Synoptic Gospels prefer to call the “Kingdom of God.”[1] This life of the age to come, this experience of God’s Kingdom is available in the present as the possession of those who believe in Jesus.

2)    This possession of eternal life entails “passing out of death into life.” Here we see clear resurrection language, as will be confirmed in the following verses. This further clarifies the reception of the life of the age to come. There is a sense to which the believer in Jesus transfers from the present evil age into the Age to Come, while yet remaining in the present age. Jesus uses a verb of motion, “passing out of,” to describe the believer’s participation in eternal life. This militates against the pure internalized understanding of these verses, as if Jesus is speaking mostly of an internal, immaterial, “spiritual” change in the believer. Jesus does not view this change as internal, but as external. It is not a “change of heart,” but rather a change of location for the entire person. Their “inner being” does not move, but “the one who believes” in their entirety of personhood moves beyond the realm where death has sway and into the resurrection life of the age to come.

3)    Finally, if this wasn’t already clear, Jesus emphasizes that the time in which this happens is now. This is significant because the resurrection events that will soon happen to Jesus in the narrative cannot be construed solely as an isolated incident for Jesus. We are meant to understand the dynamic connection between what happens to Jesus and what is available to the believer. As Jesus rises from the dead in the life of the Age to Come, so likewise all believers are able to participate in that life in the present.

In John 11 Jesus makes a remarkable statement: “I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in Me will live even if he dies, and everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die.”

As Christians, we have heard this verse so often, I think it ceases to strike us as strange. Jesus claims to be the resurrection. But the resurrection is an event. How can a person be an event? Furthermore, how can a person be an event that properly belongs to the entire people of God at an eschatological transition between the Present Age and the Age to Come? It seems like Jesus is telling us that he is somehow God’s future in person. He is the personal presence of the life of the Age to Come. Here among us, in the midst of a world inundated with decay and death, the light of God’s New Creation is beginning to shine. It is walking among us in the person of God-himself made flesh.

However, is this New Creation life restricted to the person of Jesus, as in, he possesses the life of the Age to Come, but the rest of us need to wait until his return to experience it? Does this New Creation, resurrection life, Kingdom of God presence leave the earth when Jesus ascends to heaven? The previous passage addressed (John 5) expresses the contrary quite emphatically, but even in this verse, Jesus informs us of the participation of the believer in the same eschatological realities. Since “life” and “eternal life” are interchangeable in the Gospel of John[2],  and since “eternal life” means the “life of the Age to Come” (see above), it stands to reason that the phrase “resurrection and the life” is a hendiadys, in which the two words joined by “and” should be taken together as a single idea. If not, since “life” certainly means the “life of the Age to Come,” we should at least see “resurrection” as the event which initiates the “life”[3] In either case,”life” in verse 25 certainly means “resurrection life” and thus the occurrence of the same word in the next verse, the “everyone lives” in verse 26, would mean, “everyone who has the life of the kingdom of God.” This is further advanced by Jesus’ assertion that unless one eats of the bread of life they have no life in them (John 6:51), meaning they do not have the “life of the age to come.”[4] The one who believes is the one who truly lives, who shares the life of the resurrection that Jesus himself embodies in the present.

If we skip forward a bit, we come to Holy Week.

On the sixth day of the week (Friday), after flogging him, robing him in purple and crowing him with thorns, Pilate displays Jesus to the crowd with the words, “Behold the man!” (John 19:5). Note that in Genesis 1 (remember our previous discussion about John 1 quoting Genesis 1 – “in the beginning…”), on the sixth day of the week, God created the human beings, those who were meant to rule the earth. Now on the sixth day of this week, Jesus is displayed as the true human, as a mockery dressed in royal attire, yet refusing to retaliate to the false rulers, to those whose greed and violence had corrupted their humanity to the point of unrecognizability.

The power hungry inhuman forces of violence succeed in killing the one who truly embodied what it meant to be fully human. The rulers of this world put to death the world’s true Lord. After doing so, he was laid to rest in an empty tomb. It was here that Jesus spent the seventh day of the week. As God rested from his labors on the seventh day of the creation account, so too, Jesus spends the seventh day in a Sabbath rest – the utter stillness of death.

John 20 begins with the words, “on the first day of the week.” Is it possible that more is going on here than a mere temporal indicator? As we observed this Gospel starting by alluding to the Genesis 1 account of creation, saw how Jesus understood himself as embodying the life of the Age to Come and sharing it with those who believe in him, and walked through days six and seven of creation during the weekend proceeding the first Easter, are we meant to understand that the timing “on the first day of the week” signals something much bigger than we were expecting? As Jesus rises from the dead, we are beholding the advent of God’s New Creation life bursting forth from the tomb! The Jewish concept of resurrection and new creation seems sufficient in itself to indicate such, but there is more in text itself. In verse 15, John tells us that Mary, seeing the resurrected Lord, believed him to be a gardener. What an odd detail. Why would Mary mistakenly believe Jesus to be a gardener, unless they were actually in a garden? And does not being in a garden, yet again allude to the biblical creation account? As Jesus rises from the dead, he is the New Adam in a renewed Garden of Eden. Eden has been restored and humanity once again has been given access to this Paradise once Lost.

In verse nineteen, we are told that “it was evening on that day, the first day of the week.” Apparently we need reminding that this is not any day – it is the FIRST day of the week. John repeats himself in order to emphasize, however allusively, the full scope of what happened on that day. Though the doors were shut, Jesus comes and stands among them saying, “Peace be with you.” After showing them his hands and side, “He breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit.” Just as God breathed the breath of life into an inert Adam and he became a living being, so now Jesus breathes the Holy Spirit into his disciples at the dawn of God’s New Creation. Yet this new life of the Kingdom of God, is not merely for the disciples’ enjoyment. He charges them, “as the Father has sent Me, I also send you.” As the Father sent Jesus to be the living presence of the life of the Age to Come, so now as the followers of Jesus share in that life by believing in him, they are commissioned likewise to be agents of God’s Kingdom and resurrection life.

Though not in the Gospel of John, one more verse bears mentioning. In Luke 24:30, Jesus is sitting at a table with two disciples with whom he has walked from Jerusalem. When Jesus took bread, blessed it, broke it and gave it to them, Luke tells us that immediately “their eyes were opened and they recognized him.” Where else in Scripture do we have two people, who upon eating, have their eyes opened? Adam and Eve, after consuming the fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, experience their eyes being opened into a shameful self-awareness of their nakedness. In Luke however, the resurrected Lord is reversing the curse of Adam’s sin. He is inaugurating the life of the Kingdom of God, the New Creation, whereupon partaking of blessed and broken bread (a clear allusion to the Church’s practice of the Lord’s Supper), eyes are opened from woeful disillusionment into a hope-filled recognition of the Risen Lord. After this experience, the two disciples immediately run out and announce the  Gospel: “Jesus is risen!” The experience of the life of the Age to Come, the initiation of overturning sin’s curse, in John’s Gospel results in being sent just as Jesus was sent, and in Luke results in the proclamation of the Resurrected Lord. The presence of God’s Kingdom is in our midst, inaugurated through the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. This new life is the very impetus behind the Church’s mission in and for the world. Through proclaiming the Gospel of the Risen Lord and the arrival of God’s Kingdom, we become those who share and impart the life of the age to come amidst a world embroiled in the challenging yet, for those who believe, inevitably triumphant conflict with death.

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[1] Marianne Meye Thomson, “John, Gospel of,” in Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels, ed. Joel B. Green, Scot McKnight, I. Howard Marshall (Downers Grove, Ill,: Intervarsity Press, 1992), 380.

[2] ibid.

[3] George R. Beasley-Murray, John (Dallas: Word, 1999), 190.

[4] ibid, 191.

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