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Monday, April 14
Behold I tell you a mystery: we shall not all fall asleep, but we shall all be changed ... (1 Corinthians 15:51)
It's Monday of Holy Week. Two million people have crowded into Jerusalem for Passover, so Jesus and his disciples are staying with friends in Bethany, a suburb of the Holy City. On their walk to Jerusalem they encounter a g tree on the way, carefully cultivated with beautiful leaves but no fruit.
Immediately Jesus sees in this fruitless fruit tree a symbol of Israel. He says to it, "May no fruit ever come from you again!" and the g tree "withered at once" (Matthew 21:19, 22). The tree looked healthy, but it bore no fruit. And a fruit tree is good only if its fruit is good. According to Jesus, it is the same way with us.
Jesus arrives next at the Temple, where he nds moneychangers at work. People coming to make sacri fices must buy their animals at exorbitant prices, using their currency at astronomical exchange rates. Jesus is outraged for one of the very few times in his ministry. He drives these corrupt merchants out of the temple and cries, "My house shall be a house of prayer, but you have made it a den of robbers" (Luke 19:46). Then he heals the blind and the lame who come to him in this newly cleansed "house of prayer." The authorities immediately begin plotting to kill him.
After this uproar, Jesus continues teaching in the Temple. Some Gentiles who have come to Passover have heard of him and want to meet him. But Gentiles aren't allowed into the Temple itself, so they nd one of his disciples and say to him, "Sir, we wish to see Jesus" (John 12:21). Jesus sees their acceptance of his message as fruit of his global movement.
Where in Holy Monday are you?
What God's word means
Paul has assured the Corinthians that Jesus' resurrection guarantees our resurrection from the dead.
But what about those who are still alive when he returns?
Behold ("Listen!") shows the importance of Paul's next statement, one of the most critical in all of Scripture. Paul will tell the Corinthians a mystery ("secret"), something they could not have known apart from the revelation to follow. (This is one of 19 such occurrences of the word in the New Testament.) Here's how the mystery begins: we shall not all fall asleep, meaning that not all Christians will die before Jesus returns. However, we shall all be changed ("altered, transformed"), whether we have died or not. In the next verse, the apostle will clarify this revolutionary revelation.
1 Corinthians was probably written several years before the first Gospel.34 As a result, chapter 15 is God's rst written assurance to the Corinthians that all Christians will be transformed with heavenly bodies. (Paul gave the same assurance to the Thessalonians:
"The dead in Christ will rise fi rst. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air," 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17.) All in verse 51 is emphatic, demonstrating God's inclusion of every believer in his eternal paradise. None of us deserves such favor, but all of us will receive it. How should we respond to such grace?
Why Easter matters
Easter comes with both a promise and a requirement. The promise is that God's love triumphs over death and the grave, for Jesus and for us. The requirement is that we must give the world what God has given to us.
After the women were invited to "come, see the place where he lay," they were immediately commanded to "go quickly and tell his disciples that he has risen from the dead" (Matthew 28:6, 7). When his disciples met with their risen Lord, "they worshiped him" (v. 17). Immediately Jesus commissioned them to "go therefore and make disciples of all nations" (v. 19).
Easter gives us both the glorious guarantee that we shall all be changed and the staggering privilege of sharing this mystery with the world.
How to respond
John Calvin observed that works do not save, but the saved do work. Holy Monday teaches us that fruit makes the tree, and the soul. The book of James asks, "What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save him?" (James 2:14, NIV). A tree can look good but have no fruit. A man can work in the Temple under the authority of the High Priest himself, but blaspheme God by his money-changing corruption. Gentiles can trust in Christ more than his own Jewish people.
The hard news is that God cares about our attitudes, our thoughts, and our actions more than he cares about our appearance or social status. The good news is that God can use any person who wants to be used, as we respond to his grace with our grateful service.
Has your life been used by the King yet today?
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