WILKEN:
Greetings, and welcome to Issues, Etc. I'm Todd Wilken. Thanks for
tuning us in.
In celebration of the
resurrection of Jesus, the Church has proclaimed, "Christ has risen! He has
risen indeed!" And it's the resurrection we're going to talk about during
this hour of Issues, Etc. with Dr. Norman Nagel.
The resurrection of Jesus Christ is an historical fact, but it's more than
that; it is for Paul the lynchpin of all Christian truth. He says, "If this
has not happened, then our faith"—every last bit of it—"is empty, in vain, and
we are of all men most to be pitied." How can it be that upon one event can
hang everything—everything—that a person believes? How can it be that one
event—upon one event—can hang one's entire hope? What is the
celebration of Easter for the Church, the
celebration of Christ's resurrection? We'll talk about those things during
this hour of Issues, Etc.
Dr. Norman Nagel is professor of systematic theology—doctrinal theology—at
Concordia Seminary here in St. Louis. Dr. Nagel, welcome back to Issues,
Etc.
NAGEL: Glad to be here.
WILKEN: The Church proclaims "Christ is risen." If we go back to the
account of Jesus' resurrection, what happened on the first day of the week?
NAGEL: The good news is simply that it happened. What happened is
something beyond the range of what we can grasp. It is simply proclaimed to
us. We are told that it happened, and the evangelists record how the risen
Lord was there with His disciples. But the way in which He was there with
them was now as the risen Lord, as something beyond what they had known of Him
so far, for He was now the Lord who had been through Calvary and was there the
risen Lord with them. But now with them in a way that He was there, and He
wouldn't be there, and then He would be there again, as if He was getting them
ready—training them for the time when they wouldn't be having to rely on
whether they could see Him wherever He happened to be, but confident of the
promise that He left them, that wherever they would be, He would surely be
there with them. And His being there with them is the One who has done the
work of salvation and is now the risen Lord. It is the risen Lord who
fulfills that promise of being always with us where He has put His name on us,
as with the water of Holy Baptism.
WILKEN: In the simplest terms, is the Jesus—in His body—who came out of
that tomb after three days in death, is this the same body? Is this the same
Christ? Is this the man that they had touched and handled before His
crucifixion and His death, that they touch and handle now after His
resurrection?
NAGEL: He shows them that that is the case. In John 20 where He
proves—He shows them His hands and His side. The wounds, the marks on
Calvary, are on Him. It is the same Jesus. And in Luke, while they are just
sort of shaken by this, "There's the risen Lord, that One that had died, and
there He is," and He says, "Do you have any fish to eat?" as if joining them
again in that so physical a thing, they would know that it was He Himself.
And as it says, not some phantom, some spirit, the resurrection isn't a pretty
idea or a wish-fulfillment thing. They could put their hands on Him. He
touched them. He blessed them. But He did it in a way that now, as the risen
Lord, He was moving them toward a deeper confidence of living with Him than if
they could see Him as He was walking among them through the years of His
earthly ministry.
WILKEN: Jesus had raised the dead on several occasions during His earthly
ministry—the widow's son at Nain. He had raised Lazarus from the dead. There
are others—the little girl in the house. He had raised these people from the
dead. How are those resurrections—or are those resurrections different in
some way than this resurrection that Christ has accomplished?
NAGEL: There He brought them back to life again. That was His gift to
them that showed Him to be the Lord of life. In His hands are our lives. He
gives us the number of our days. And in those cases He gave additional days
to those who were dead. But their death and their coming to life again was a
great blessing for them. But the death that Jesus endured wasn't one that was
just for His benefit. He went through it all for our sake, bearing our sins
and having done the job coming through as the One who had done the job
completely, the victorious message of Easter. So, His death, His
resurrection, there's only one like that in all the world. We need to
distinguish that—there's loads of stories in others' religions where those who
had died come to life again. People think that that's the best thing that the
Lord God could do for anybody would be to have the victory over the death of
our bodies. But here with the death and resurrection of Jesus, there is a
death and a resurrection that only He could achieve that is unique in all the
world, for when He rises, the One who rises is the One who has answered for
all the sins of all the world. And only His death and His resurrection, which
proclaims that completed fact isn't to be found anywhere else but in Jesus.
WILKEN: What do you mean when you say ‘His resurrection proclaims the
completed fact'?
NAGEL: Well, that's what the Gospel writers do in telling us of the risen
Lord. And have you ever tried to fit all His appearances together? And when
you can't quite manage to sort it all out, then you are learning the lesson
that He was teaching them, that this isn't something that we can fit together
and offer our evidences and our proofs that now we have worked it out, so it's
all right we can believe that He rose from the dead. He simply rose from the
dead, and the way in which that's told to us is in a way that we can't reckon
it all out. But of course we can't reckon it all out. There never was such
another. And it isn't subject to whether we can figure it out whether it
happened or not; it simply happened. That's the wonderful thing in John 20,
where there the poor disciples are there, and the doors being closed for the
fear that their turn might be next, and then it says, "Came Jesus." And then
they were "glad"—that note of joy that rings through in those messages and
that would always be something that He would be more and more as He lives on
with them. And as we see most beautifully in Mary Magdalene, where she wanted
to draw Jesus back into the way He had been so dear for her before, but Jesus
said, "Don't touch me." He would not suffer Himself to be pulled back into
just that much of a Jesus for her as she had known so far. Now He wanted to
be all the more for her, more than she had ever imagined. And so He says, "I
go to My Father and to your Father." Jesus brothers Mary Magdalene as He
opens for her the more that He would be for her as He goes to the Father and
she then also headed that way, too.
WILKEN: With about a minute-and-a-half, Dr. Nagel, Jesus appeared to His
disciples on several occasions, some of which are not fully recorded in the
days after His resurrection. Why these appearances in the first place?
NAGEL: Well, we—the Lord doesn't wait for us to give a reason for His
doing anything. He simply does what He does, and then as we ponder that we
may say, "Well, isn't it just wonderful that He did it the way He did?" But
whether we can find reason—if He only did as much as we could find reasons
for, that would be a pretty sorry savior. He does what He does. He is that
Savior. And then subsequent to that, in our devotion, in our prayers, we
marvel that that is just the way He did it, and it couldn't have been any
better than that.
WILKEN: Dr. Norman Nagel is our guest. We're talking about the
resurrection of Jesus Christ. He's professor of systematic theology at
Concordia Seminary here in St. Louis.
There have been, I imagine, this day in congregations all over the place, the
loud and clear proclamation of Christ's resurrection. A lot of our hymns
proclaim the "what" of Jesus' resurrection. Yes, He is alive. He lives!
Sometimes we miss the "why." Sometimes we miss the "wherefore" of the
resurrection as well. When we come back, we're going to talk about the words
of Paul, where He says as he writes to the Corinthians in his first letter,
that "if Christ is not raised"—well, then "we are of all men most to be
pitied. Our faith is empty." How can it be that upon this one event hangs
everything Paul hopes for and believes in, and everything that Christians hope
for and believe in? "If Christ is not raised, you are still in your sins," he
says. And that's bad news if Christ is not raised, which is why the good news
of Easter rings so good for those of us who, by Christ's death and
resurrection, are no longer in our sins but redeemed by Him who died and rose
again. We'll be right back to talk more with Dr. Norman Nagel about the
resurrection of Jesus Christ.
[COMMERCIAL PAUSE]
[HYMN STANZA]
WILKEN: Welcome back.
We're discussing the resurrection of Jesus Christ with Dr. Norman Nagel.
Next week on Issues, Etc. we'll talk about "Understanding the End
Times" with Dr. Kim Riddlebarger of The White Horse Inn. What does the Bible
teach about the End Times? Will there be a rapture with some people left
behind? How has the Church traditionally understood the Millennial Age?
We'll talk about it next week on Issues, Etc. with Dr. Kim
Riddlebarger.
Now, if you'd like to know what we'll be discussing on Issues, Etc. for
the entire month of May, go to our Website, issuesetc.org, and there
you'll find a list of topics and guests for the weeks ahead. While you're
there be sure to read several articles on the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Dr. Nagel, looking in the 15th chapter of 1 Corinthians, Paul seems
at pains to talk about the resurrection of Jesus Christ with respect to what
appears to be a rumor or a question circulating among the Corinthians about
whether or not the dead in general will be raised. And he comes to this point
where he says, "If Christ is not raised, then you are still in your sins. If
Christ is not raised, we are of all men most to be pitied, and our faith is in
vain." Why does Paul put such an emphasis on the resurrection of Jesus?
NAGEL: Because, I suppose, it's all a part of Jesus being our Savior. He
comes to say that of the resurrection after beginning the chapter with the
good news of our being saved, and so verse 3: "For I delivered to you as of
first importance what I also received: Christ died for our sins according to
the Scriptures." He lays that down, that fact of our salvation—chapter 15:3.
And then we may not be reading the rest of chapter as if he'd forgotten that,
or that he'd forgotten what he said in chapter 2:2, where he says, "I
determine to know nothing among you save Jesus Christ and Him crucified."
He's not going on to talk about somebody else when he talks about the
resurrection. But "Jesus Christ crucified" is the risen Lord, and that's the
whole point of the resurrection. If He had not risen from the dead, the
crucifixion would've been the end of Him. The job would not have been done as
acceptable and pleasing to God, as the resurrection clearly shows and affirms
as received by the heavenly Father as well. So, to play one thing off against
the other is to pull this apart. You have to pull it apart to get it wrong.
He is the Savior from sin and as the Savior from sin He surely is that as the
risen Lord. The good news of Easter isn't that the man who was dead came out
of the grave again, but that the One who answered for our sins came through
not to put an end to by His having been forsaken of God, but having born all
of that in our place, He came through triumphantly. And not only did He go
through all of the big death—that is the hell for our sin—but He also made the
journey through the little death of our bodies and came out triumphant with
that as well. So, He is our Savior from sin from the big death that is the
hell for our sins, and He also has made the way for the little death of our
bodies when our hearts stop beating. And that's now not really any great
problem, because as it says there in the 15th chapter: "Oh, death,
where is thy victory? Oh, grave, where is thy sting? The sting of death is
sin. The power of sin is the law. But thanks be to the God who gives us the
victory through our Lord Jesus Christ!" Our little death would indeed be a
fearful thing if by way of the little death of the body we came to our Judge
and stood before Him not in the forgiveness of Christ but in the insistence of
our own answering for our own sins. If you think that you die just like an
animal, well, and then you get used to that as a natural thing. But what
really is the fear of death is the fear of the judgment. "It is appointed
unto man once to die and after that the judgment." How is that you stand
before God in that judgment?
WILKEN: The first appearance of Jesus among His disciples together—you've
made reference to this several times in John 20—where He comes on the evening
of that first day of the week, He stands among them, and this is what He
says. John 20, beginning at the latter part of verse 19:
"'Peace be with you!' When
He had said this He showed them His hands and side. Then the disciples were
glad when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, ‘Peace be with you!
As the Father has sent Me, even so I am sending you.' And when He had said
this He breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. If you
forgive the sins of anyone, they are forgiven; if you withhold forgiveness
from anyone, it is withheld.'"
Why does Jesus talk about this
there in His first encounter with the group of His disciples?
NAGEL: What He has won by His completed work, "It is finished!"—work of
redemption of answering for our sins as He attested to by showing them His
hands and His side, it is because of Calvary that He now bids them carry that
forgiveness. And in order that they may do that not in their own strength,
but in the strength that He gives them, He breathes on them. Now, the breath,
the Spirit, when Jesus is breathing on His disciples, when does the breath
stop and words begin? It's all in continuity. The words of Jesus are
breathed by the breath of Jesus. They are alive with the Spirit of Jesus as
He said, "The words that I speak to you they are spirit and they are life."
So He gives them the Holy Spirit with His words that they are then to deliver
the words of forgiveness, of Holy Absolution. "Whosoever sins you forgive,
they are forgiven to them." They are to be the apostles who deliver the
forgiveness that He has won for them. So, all that He has achieved for us, He
sees to it that it gets delivered. And He is the One who, by the marks of
Calvary on Him, is the One who has answered for our sins and therefore is the
One who can give the forgiving words to the apostles to speak. And His words
are alive with the Spirit to bestow the gifts that they bring, here, the
forgiveness of sins in Holy Absolution. To the impenitent, to those who want
to cling to their sins, they are told, "Your sins are still yours."
WILKEN: Dr. Norman Nagel is our guest. We're talking about the
resurrection of Jesus Christ. When we come back, the words that Jesus speaks
first there to His disciples, "Peace be with you"—He repeats it again: "Peace
be with you." What is this peace of which Jesus speaks, having conquered
death and now standing bodily among His disciples on the day of His
resurrection? We'll find out what it is when we come back.
Dr. Norman Nagel is professor of systematic theology at Concordia Seminary
here in St. Louis. Stay with us.
[COMMERCIAL PAUSE]
[HYMN STANZA]
WILKEN: That's the Children's Choir of St. Paul's Lutheran Church in Fort
Wayne, Ind., singing the hymn, "Christ the Lord Is Risen Today." The
resurrection of Christ is the subject matter for this hour's Issues, Etc.
Dr. Norman Nagel is our guest.
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in Jesus Christ through His Word taught and defended here on Issues, Etc.,
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Dr. Nagel, how does the world's peace—the kind of peace that is defined by an
absence of hostility, an absence of trouble in life—perhaps the presence of
prosperity—how does the world's peace differ from the peace that Jesus speaks
to His disciples there on the day of His resurrection?
NAGEL: When Jesus speaks it, it's a Jesus kind of peace that He's
talking. Peace is one of the happiest words. "Peace be with you"—that is,
shalom! That is the way in which the Lord God wanted—planned everything
to be. When everything is alive, healthy, working well, bursting with delight
in it, it's what creation was planned to do to be in that shalom. Of
God's astonished bounty and goodness and all of it being the delight that He
wanted it to be as His bountiful blessing to us—that's the peace that is in
shalom. The opposite of that, of course, is when it all gets jangled
up—when we disconnect these things from the Lord and give them only such value
as we set upon them, for how they are serviceable to ourselves. If you
disconnect them from God, then they can no longer be in that happy shalom
of which Jesus speaks. So that it could be said by people in Jesus' day just
as an everyday greeting, but when Jesus speaks it, His words not only tell you
about something but they deliver what they say. And so when Jesus says
"Peace," you are at the receiving end of that gift. He brings you into that
way of things being the way He wants them to be for you, now free of sin, no
longer fearful of death, all held within His hands, the hands that bear the
marks of Calvary on them. He is the One who speaks peace to you. That in the
early liturgy was at the beginning of the Holy Communion liturgy, where the
word of the risen Christ, "Peace be with you!" was received as His words
spoken as the One who is there present, dealing with His people in the way
that He has set up for Him to be there. As He speaks His words and gives with
the bread and the wine the body and blood for us Christians to eat and to
drink, in that also then there is that peace that was also in the early
liturgy, called sometimes "Grace be with you," as you have at the end of some
of the epistles. But in our liturgy now, it's the Lord is here but
acknowledging that we, before the risen Lord, are about to be dealt with Him
being given those gifts which give to us the shalom, the peace that is
His that He would bring us into the enjoyment and delight of. That's good
Easter celebration.
WILKEN: Scripture speaks of Jesus' resurrection in several very
interesting ways, and some of them come to mind. There are metaphors that
seem to go together of tasting and swallowing. At one point in the Book of
Hebrews it talks about Jesus "tasting death for everyone." In the Book of 1
Corinthians, "swallowing up death forever." What does this mean?
NAGEL: Different ways of extolling what it was that He did for us. It's
difficult to exhaust the extolling of that gift. You can say it one way; you
can say it another. But we do not cut it down to the size of what's with
tasting or what's with swallowing. These are just sort of exclamations of
wonder at what it is that He has achieved for us with His resurrection.
WILKEN: And also in the Book of Hebrews the resurrection is described in
this way, where it says, "Since the children shared in flesh and blood, He too
shared in their humanity so that He might destroy him who holds the power of
death." Is this another way of talking about the resurrection?
NAGEL: The power of death is our sin and the fear of the judgment upon
our sin, and that sin has as its lord, Satan. And when our Lord frees us from
our sins, He frees us also from the dominion of Satan. And to be freed of
sins is then to be freed of death—the big death for sin—and also to be freed
of the fear of the little death of our bodies. For when Satan now accuses us
as sinners and only fit to be damned and belonging to him and headed for hell,
we can say, "No! Christ crucified and risen is my Savior!" And that is the
word that is the Savior and the Lord in the confidence of whom we live our
lives, and that is a confidence that cannot be undermined, then, by the threat
of any force or fear that would seek to overthrow us, for they can only
overthrow us if they could disconnect us from such a Savior, crucified and
risen. The Lord allows us to disconnect ourselves from Him if we wish not to
have Him as the One who answers for our sins. No one is in His family by
compulsion. He suffers Himself to be rejected. But that's the other way of
saying that all that He has done for us comes to us as nothing but a gift.
WILKEN: When Luther says when he encountered the accusations of Satan you
just mentioned—saying that you're bringing up the accusation of sin—"you are
worthy of nothing but to be tossed away and damned by God"—Luther responded,
"I am baptized." Why did he say that?
NAGEL: Because with Baptism, as Jesus said, with the water the name of
God goes on us. And where the Lord puts His name, He says, "that's one of
Mine." And so we are surely His as surely as He has watered His name upon
us. And when our fears—when the challenges of Satan and the burdens and fear
of our sins would bring us into bondage, then we are to cry out, "But I am
baptized! You can only do me in if you can take the name of the Lord from off
me! And so you have to do Him in first before you can do me in."
WILKEN: This is why I think, folks, that St. Paul hangs so much upon the
resurrection: not only because it stands central in Christ's atoning work for
us, that His death is followed by His resurrection as the affirmation from God
Himself, that His sacrifice for us is completely sufficient, that He does pay
for all of our sins, but also because there is for the Christian this daily
assurance that we have, as Paul says, "been baptized into His death and united
with Him in the likeness of His death." And Paul says, "Now if we have been
united with Him in the likeness of His death, then we will certainly also be
united in the likeness of His resurrection." In order for Satan's accusations
against us to stick and have any effect, he would have to be able to accuse
Christ who has already paid for our sins, who has been declared innocent by
His resurrection from the dead by God Himself. In order for Satan's
accusations against us to stick against us, he has to deal with Jesus into
whose death and resurrection we have been baptized.
Folks, if you'd like to receive a free tape of this broadcast with Dr. Norman
Nagel on "The Resurrection of Jesus Christ," all you have to do is contact the
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tonight's broadcast with Dr. Norman Nagel on "The Resurrection of Jesus
Christ." He's professor of systematic theology at Concordia Seminary here in
St. Louis.
When we come back, how has death been changed for us because Jesus has died
and lives again? What is it for us now to face, as Dr. Nagel says, this
little death when I am still afraid of death? Why is the resurrection of
Jesus Christ of such great comfort to Christians not only for the forgiveness
of their sins but also when we face death ourselves? Stay with us. We'll be
right back.
[COMMERCIAL PAUSE]
[HYMN STANZA]
WILKEN: Welcome back to Issues, Etc. We're talking about the
resurrection of Jesus Christ with Dr. Norman Nagel.
Folks, it's obviously too late to purchase our Issues, Etc. Book of the
Month for April as an Easter gift; however, the events of Christ's death and
resurrection as detailed in this book, The Very First Easter—and
beautifully illustrated as well—are always timely, always relevant, and always
needful for your children. Now, you can order The Very First Easter by
calling Concordia Publishing House weekdays during regular business hours.
Their number: 1-800-325-3040. The Very First Easter costs $12.99,
plus shipping and handling. The Very First Easter is a great bedtime
book for your children and your grandchildren. You can also order the book
online. Go to our Website: issuesetc.org. Under the "What's New"
section you'll find information on The Very First Easter.
Dr. Nagel, Christians, like all others, face the reality of death in gradual
stages. When we're young we don't think that death will ever touch us. As we
grow older we become aware of its presence. As we watch our parents pass
away, it kind of takes root in our lives, if you will. And then we enter that
stage of life where we know death is coming for us. We don't know when, but
we do know it's coming. And sometimes for the Christian, then—even for the
Christian—fear sets in of the circumstances of death, and of the hour of
death. How is death changed for us because Christ has conquered death in His
resurrection?
NAGEL: First of all, I suppose, we don't play games with death, and we
don't make pretenses about it. The last enemy is death, and we don't
trivialize it but face it for the grave blow that it is in our own lives and
for those whose death that we are present at and whose death we mourn. We
recall that Jesus wept for Lazarus with his sisters. So we don't play these
games of, "Well, death is a natural thing" and treat it as if we are just
another animal that we die like a dog and that's it. We face death for all
that is repugnant about it. It's not a pretty thing. It's not a thing that
we can make pretenses about. Our Lord doesn't minimize or trivialize what it
is to die. And the heaviest thing of death is, of course, that as it says,
"It is appointed unto man once to die and after that the judgment." The fear
of death is not in our heart's stop beating but we come to judgment. And in
that judgment we stand as those whom the Lord has baptized and made His own,
putting His name on us with the water. Or we come before Him as those who
have said no to Christ, "I'll answer for my own sins, thank you very much.
Doing quite nicely without Him." Then the forsakenness of God, the hell for
sin, you may claim as your own. So, it's a heaven or hell difference that
Calvary and the resurrection mean. For when we come to die, our confidence is
not in ourselves or how well we're going to do our dying. The big dying He's
done for us in our place. And as Romans 6 says in our Baptism, His death and
His resurrection are made ours. And there's a confidence that finally holds
when we look away from ourselves and all that's going on in us in the
miserable business of dying. We look to Him, and there is the confidence in
His death and resurrection that carries us through.
WILKEN: What awaits those who die in Christ? You mentioned the judgment,
but Christ promises the resurrection of all flesh and, in particular, the
resurrection of those who die in Him. We've got about two minutes.
NAGEL: When He has redeemed us, He didn't just redeem a part of us; He
redeemed the whole lot. What He created that He redeemed, forgiven, enlivened
with His Spirit, made His own. And He doesn't scrap some part of us into some
sort of ethereal soul something or other floating around. What's you He has
redeemed, forgiven, made His own. And He brings you out of the bondage of
sin, out of the bondage of the big death for sin, and so also through the
little death of the body. And that He will do. And that is emphasized, then,
when we confess the resurrection of the body. There isn't any of you going
on—well, He has undertaken to rescue us, to redeem us, and He does that with
the whole of you. All that's you He will bring through to final completion so
that what you will be then is more than you can even imagine from what all
He's done for you so far.
WILKEN: Dr. Nagel, thank you again for being our guest on Issues, Etc.
Dr. Norman Nagel is professor of
systematic theology at Concordia Seminary here in St. Louis.
If you'd like to receive a complimentary copy of our Issues, Etc. Journal,
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Jesus stands between us and death. He stands there as the One, by His own
proclamation, who holds the keys of death and hell. He is the One who is the
source of life because He has conquered death in His body once and for all and
for us, so that as we face death, we can face it not confident in ourselves—or
as Dr. Nagel says, ‘confident in the way we die'—because we will die
like all men die. And, yet, for those who die in Christ who have already died
in Christ because we have been united in His death and His resurrection, what
awaits us is what Christ has accomplished for us already in His resurrection.
Even as He is risen from the dead, so also He will raise us from the dead. So
tightly bound to Him are we because He has made Himself our Savior, that if He
has risen, there can be no end for us except that we would rise too! And on
the Last Day He will keep this promise to us. When He comes again to call us
from our graves to leave our graves as empty as His grave was left. Right now
Christ's tomb is empty, but on that Last Day, every tomb will be empty because
Jesus lives. He lives for us, just as He died for us. And the promise of our
resurrection lies firmly planted in His resurrection.
I'm Todd Wilken. Christ has risen! He has risen indeed! Thanks for
listening to Issues, Etc.