We gladly testify to the reality of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. He was crucified, died, and was buried. He came back from the dead on the third day, raised in the power of the Spirit, and He did so in full accordance with the Scriptures. This we confess, and confess with staggered joy. But it is not enough to declare the fact that Jesus is risen; we must also declare the ramifications of this stupendous fact. And when we first get a glimpse of what God has done for us His people, and for our sorry world, in the resurrection of Jesus, our Bibles will explode in our hands and we will see what we have been given.
Many modern apologists for the Christian faith think of the resurrection as a datum needing to be proven. It is of course challenged by unbelievers, and so we marshal our various arguments to show that Jesus “did too” rise from the dead. In a day that acclaims its “Da Vinci code” and “gospel according to Judas,” careful argumentation and scholarship in response are certainly necessary. So this can be appropriate, in its limited place, but we should never forget that the New Testament treats the resurrection, not as something demanding proof, but rather as something that is a proof of everything else that matters.
Who is Jesus? He was declared, with power, to be the Son of God by His resurrection from the dead (Rom. 1:4). The resurrection is not waiting around to be established; the resurrection establishes. In our passage from Acts, the thing that is established by the resurrection is the fact that Jesus Christ will judge the world. He will judge the world, we are assured, because God the Father raised Him from the dead. This is how we know that the world will be judged “in righteousness.” This is our basis for telling men that continuation in their idolatrous ignorance is no longer acceptable, but rather that God now commands all men everywhere to repent. This command to all men comes in and through the resurrection, and it is the nature of this command that we will consider this morning. One of the things we must repent of is that we don’t know what repentance means.
We must not assume that if Jesus is going to judge the world then we automatically know what His judgment will look like. It is far too glib and facile to say that His resurrection clearly shows that He has a lot of power, and that it would certainly take a lot of raw power to judge the whole world, and so He will judge the world just like anyone else around here would, only bigger and stronger. No. To think this way is to miss the point entirely. The resurrection does not just show that Jesus has the authority to judge (though He most certainly does), it also reveals something to us about the nature of the standard to be used, and the nature of the saving blessing contained within His judgment. We learn that He has final authority, but we also learn the nature of His authority.
The message is not “Jesus is coming again, and boy, is He mad.” To think this way is to assume that Jesus was co-opted by the system that He actually came to overthrow, and which, in His death, He actually did overthrow. To think this way is to assume that Jesus finally capitulated to the temptation to bow down to Satan.
Who is our judge? He is the resurrected victim of a judicially-rigged murder. The Lord Jesus is returning, and He is returning with deliverance from our ways of cultured death that we have cleverly disguised as justice. Prior to His return, He commands His people to believe, embody, and declare His standards of life-justice, His ways of life-justice, which are completely contrary to the pagan ways of death-justice. His judgment, His justice, His gospel, is nothing other than the way of everlasting life. We need to master this distinction because the sin we must be delivered from is the sin of confounding the Spirit of God, the comforter, with the spirit of Satan, the accuser. And that is quite a confusion—but one that the resurrection of Jesus dispels entirely.
When Jesus returns, He will return as the savior of the world, bringing final and complete deliverance. Until He returns, the on-going proclamation of His great deliverance in the Cross, and the ratification and vindication of that deliverance in the resurrection, will lift up Jesus Christ in such a way that all the nations of men will stream to Him. That is why we are here this morning—to proclaim and declare this But in streaming to Him, we must never forget that we are streaming toward ultimate grace. The resurrection is not just a reversal of physical death, but it is also the reversal of the culture of death, the polis of violence, the way of all pagan mythologies and civilizations. When that glorious day finally comes, the swords will be reshaped into plowshares for a reason.
We commemorate Easter because it marks the downfall of all Satanic civilizations. The name of Satan means accuser. He is the one who delights in pointing the accusative finger at unrighteousness. He is the accuser of the brethren, day and night (Rev. 12:10). He is the one who comes into the presence of God, prepared to accuse Job (Job 1:6-9). Our word devil renders the word diabolos, which means “slanderer, blasphemous accuser.” Satan delights in juggling turmoil, stirring up trouble, circulating false reports, encouraging people to cut others absolutely no slack. This is his way. He loves treachery, backbiting, suspicion, recriminations, pettiness, tale-bearing, cattiness, double-dealing and all manner of malice. But please note that his ultimate contribution is that he enables people to do all such things with an air of unquestioned moral superiority.
But he does all this to a purpose; it is not just mischievous and impish behavior. Pagan civilizations have always been built on the bedrock of scape-goating murder—the bedrock of human sacrifice. This kind of turmoil mentioned a moment ago is managed until it gets to a crisis point, and then everyone wheels on the designated victim. The murder of this victim introduces peace, catharsis after the sacrificial and ritual murder. These were ritual murders or expulsions that used to “work.” From Oedipus at Thebes, Agamemnon’s sacrifice of his daughter Iphigenia, to Remus at Rome, to Julius Caesar in Rome, we see this happen over and over. For the carnal man, this is the most natural thing in the world. Accusation equals guilt, and unanimous condemnation for the victim equals salvation for the accusers. This is a false gospel indeed—salvation through accusation.
Now if we use biblical terms, all of this is satanic—but do not confuse this satanism with things ghoulish. The ghoulish ideal projected onto the satanic ideal is a distraction, and a very clever lie. Satanism is not characterized by troubled teenagers painting their fingernails black, or by severed goat heads and pentagrams on the floor. Satanism is accusation and condemnation, and is something that struggles (always) for the moral high ground. The devil is an angel of light, and he dazzles us with his effusive commitment to righteousness (of course, as he defines it). Remember, without a strict standard of righteousness, what is an accuser to do? He is the one who is right there with a shrewd guess as to what Job’s real motives for serving God may have been. But the gospel reveals all this for what it really is—wickedness striking a moralistic pose, one of its favorite things to do.
The way of the gospel is entirely different. Jesus promises that when the Paraclete, the comforter, the divine attorney for the defense, comes into the world, He will convict the world with regard to sin, righteousness, and judgment (John 16:8-11). In short, He will reveal that what we previously thought was sin actually was not, what we previously thought was righteousness was not, and our previously assumed standard of judgment was actually upside down and backwards. “Of judgment, because the prince of this world is judged” (John 16:11). Got that? The prince of accusation is judged. What is thrown down? It is Satan the judgmental. It is Satan the accuser. It is Satan the moralizer.
And remember, it is the Comforter who reveals this. But when we hear those words—sin, righteousness, and judgment—we automatically assume that when the Spirit comes into the world, He will somehow do so as a Super-Satan, a Super-Accuser. “You thought the devil could nail you? Well, watch this!” But what does the Spirit actually bring? Forgiveness, grace, kindness, grace, forbearance, and more grace. We have a lot to learn, and we routinely screw this up. Fortunately, God is gracious.
We can also see this in the very bad manners of the psalmist. From beginning to end, the Scriptures stand squarely against this pagan mentality—the mentality that is always serene and self-confident about the guilt of the designated and accused victim. Once the victim is dead, and the euphoria of that solution is at its height, the murderous society always averts the gaze, and draws a shroud, the shroud of mythology and veiled justifications over the whole business.
But consistently, from Genesis through to the end of the Bible, the Scriptures tell this same story that all pagan societies do, but consistently from the vantage point of the innocent victim. This mechanism that is found in all pagan societies is also found throughout Scripture—but the difference is that Scripture consistently tells the story from the other side, from the side of the one falsely accused. Think of Joseph sold into slavery by his brothers, falsely accused. Think of Job, falsely accused by Satan in the heavenly courts, and then by his so-called comforters down here on earth. Think of all the prophets, from Abel to Zechariah, son of Berechiah. One of the truly astonishing patterns of religious life is how religious people can read this holy Book, which tells this story of the railroaded saint over and over, and then somehow from this to conclude that their appointed job is to railroad people.
And think of the psalmist, usually King David. In Stalinist show trials (yet another attempted modern reversion to paganism) part of the drill was to get the accused to accuse himself as well—as a vindication of “the system.” “See, the system works!” But the Bible never goes along with this charade. The psalmist, frequently the designated victim of an approaching or threatened lynching, is about as uncooperative as a victim can get. And we see here a deep irony in the problems that many modern Christians have with the psalms of imprecation and psalms of protested innocence. We think the language of the psalmist is over the top. A man is sitting on the back of a horse, hands tied behind his back, and a rope around his neck. He looks at the bulls of Bashan round about and calls them a brood of snakes. Tsk, we think. That language there was a little intemperate.
In order for pagan accusation to work, it cannot admit the standards of evidence and proof that Scripture demands for all judicial proceedings. That kind of thing ruins the party. Carnal accusations are made with priestly garb on, and a mask over the face, and the victim is supposed to just nod, and deal with it like a good citizen. The moment is a fragile one, and if the virgin on the lip of the volcano says something like, “But what did I do wrong?” the liturgy of the whole thing, which was assumed to be self-evidently righteous, is interrupted in an unforgivable way. This is a central reason why the psalms of imprecation are so unpopular, even with Christians. The psalmist appears far too ready to challenge his sanctimonious accusers. All our sympathies tend to go the wrong way, showing that many of our instinctive sympathies are still carnal.
And in Scripture, when this rousing affirmation of the innocence of the falsely accused victim reaches its final fulfillment in the passion of the Lord Jesus, we see that God has ordained the central story in the history of the human race to be a story of false accusation, perverted justice, manipulated trial evidence, a grotesque miscarriage of justice in the name of universal and civilized justice. In short, in the death of Jesus, with the entire story told, God has overthrown the wisdom of this world, all of it.
But we could never have unveiled this aspect of the story had God not told the remainder of the story three days later. Jesus came back from the grave. He is the perfect witness for a really unsettling murder trial—He came back from the dead, and He testifies against the wisdom of this world that had committed the murder. Caiphas had said that it was fitting for one man to die for the whole nation, and in this, he was speaking an ancient wisdom, one that has supplied the bedrock for countless kings’ palaces. But Christ represented a wisdom far more ancient than that, a deeper magic. And in His representation of it, He came back from the dead to represent it. And because He came back from the dead, He destroyed the wisdom of paganism. No longer is it possible for persecutors, witchdoctors, inquisitors, tyrants, Supreme Court justices, priests, or dictators to declare what they used to be able to declare without challenge. He is risen! He is risen, indeed. He has turned all our shamans into shamans, with emphasis on the sham.
But please note. This has nothing to do with resentment of true authority. Another important detail we can see in the Scriptures is the fact that the divide is not between prince and peon, but rather between false accuser and falsely accused. Sometimes the accuser is slave girl (think of Peter), and sometimes the accuser is a prince of the people (think of Caiphas). Sometimes the accused is entirely defenseless (think of John the Baptist) and sometimes he is the king (think of David). The issue is biblical justice versus worldly justice, always. Satan can show up anywhere. When Peter rebuked Jesus for all His crazy talk about dying at the hands of the priestly establishment, Jesus rebuked him as Satan (Matt. 16:23). This was not because Peter was dabbling in spells and occult mysteries. Rather, he wanted Jesus to be the accuser of bad guys instead of bad guys being the accusers. And Jesus said that his mind was still in tune with the things of men, and not the things of God (v. 23).
The Lord Jesus was the prince of heaven, He was ultimate royalty. Although He stepped into the place of the despised and rejected, we should never forget who it was who was there, twisted with pain on the cross. He was, and is, the king of glory, and until you see the glory of His self-denial there, as our king and lord, you will not understand the glory that stepped out of the tomb three days after. Envy and bitter resentment can arise anywhere, and be directed anywhere. This is the antithesis; some receive the blessing and grace of God, and some resent and despise those who do. The issue is not office, or ability, or riches, or lack of wealth. The issue is always the grace of God that defends His people against accusation.
And so here is the true scandal of the cross, exacerbated beyond all reckoning by the resurrection. Wicked accusers always have bad consciences at some level. It was not for no reason that Herod assumed that Jesus was John the Baptist come back to life. And because of this, the resurrection of Jesus was the ultimate bad news for the “respectability of carnal justice.”
The resurrection of Jesus was the death of false accusation; it was the death of carnal civilization; it was the death of death. In the resurrection, Jesus finally and completely crushed the head of the lying, enticing, accusing serpent. The resurrection of Jesus is therefore for our justification (Rom. 4:25). This is not condemnation—it is only condemnation for those who cling to the old satanic order, which is teetering. The prince of this world is judgment; the principle of judgment is now judgment. The spirit of accusation now stands accused, revealed for what it truly is.
Because Christ is raised, we are enabled to walk in the power of His resurrection (Rom. 6:8). “He that saith he is in the light, and hateth his brother, is in darkness even until now. He that loveth his brother abideth in the light, and there is none occasion of stumbling [scandal] in him” (1 John 2:9-10). The cross is a scandal to worldly justice because worldly justice is a scandal to the ways of God. Therefore, love one another. Abide in the koinonia of the Spirit, the communion of the saints, the fellowship of the forgiven.
This question of false accusation is not something that the Bible is against simply as a matter of fairness, out at the periphery. You see, false accusation is foundational to the unconverted world system, and the death and resurrection of Jesus subverts that system and overthrows it completely. Until the end of the world, what is now the central story that must be told—and that will be told—is the story of a miscarriage of justice, done in the name of justice, by conniving, worldly respectable men. This story is represented to us not only as the central story, but also as the story that every other story throughout the Old Testament pointed to, usually in very similar ways. From the blood of Abel, crying out from the ground, to Job dealing with his sanctimonious friends, to David dealing with backstabbers in his court, it all comes down to this. This event, this resurrection, rips the veil of sanctity off the central lie that the father of liars has loved to tell. For those who have heard the story in evangelical faith, it makes bony-fingered accusation impossible.
Christ has risen from the dead. What does this mean for us? We are in Him. In Christ there is therefore now no condemnation (Rom. 8:1). Take those words in both your hands and hold them up before your face. No condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Those who could be truly accused for their own sins are invited to take refuge in the one who was falsely accused. In Christ, there is no condemnation. Take those words as the very bread of life, and put them into your mouth. Chew and swallow them down. No condemnation. Take the glass of wine in your right hand, and ask yourself what the red means. This is the wine of the new covenant and is not a mocker, and the red means no condemnation. Savor it in your mouth and swallow. The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart. No condemnation. The words of the gospel are declared now to you. Hear them, and believe. Christ was crucified and raised again. Therefore, Satan is thrown down like lightning from heaven. No condemnation.
The Holy Spirit is poured out, and sheds love abroad in our hearts. This is the point of application for the death and resurrection of Jesus. The Spirit of Jesus is the Comforter. This means—not to put too fine a point on it—that He comforts. You are in Christ. The Holy Spirit was not given to you so that you could interpret His dealings with you as the ultimate and perfect accusations. The Holy Spirit was not given to you in order to be your own private Satan. He is no Accuser. Neither was He given to enable and empower you to accuse others. He is no Satan’s helper. The resurrection turned the world right side up. Leave it that way.
And so, returning to our text, in His resurrection Christ was established as the judge of the whole world. And what is His standard of judgment? We see it in the death and resurrection. He stands in judgment over the judgmental; He has bound the strong man; He has thrown Satan down, and He is pillaging His goods, all the goods obtained by false accusation. The world is made new. We can never go back. The way is established before us, and we see it in how Jesus taught us to pray—forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. And Satan trembles when we do this, for one little word shall fell him. That word is grace or any of its glorious synonyms.