Curt Harlow [00:00:00]:
Hello, my friends, and welcome to a very, very, very that's three verys special Easter edition of the Bible Study pod. And who is our special guest? We don't have one. I. I'll say the Holy Spirit is our special guest today. You know, we could add Mark Clark, we could add Jason Caine, Kevin Thompson's always good, Morgan May, there's a list of them. But for Easter, I just wanted it to be me and you, Dena, because we all know I'm the humblest one at Bayside and she's the smartest one at Bayside. So, kidding aside, what I love about this, I said to Dena, I said, why don't you go ahead and pick our passage because we're going to take a momentary break from the Book of Acts, which go back and listen to the other podcasts and just talk about Easter in this special edition. And what I loved is the passage.
Dena Davidson [00:00:46]:
You chose is 1 Corinthians 15, 1 14.
Curt Harlow [00:00:50]:
That's right. And so oftentimes at Easter, we study all these resurrection accounts from the Gospels, which we should but but this particular passage in first Corinthians might be other than a spot in Romans, it might be the best articulated defense of significance of the resurrection in all of the New Testament. Why did you pick this passage, Dena?
Dena Davidson [00:01:16]:
Well, the Gospels, they give what happened, but 1 Corinthians 15 gives what happened, but also what it has, what it means, what it means, what does it mean that Jesus has rose from the dead. And so in the Gospels, you're getting the live action account of, like, this is what it was like to be in that moment. But in 1 Corinthians, you're getting all of their reflection. You know, the Holy Spirit has come at this point, the Gospel has gone out and it started to reach the furthermost regions of the empire. And this revolution has started. And it's all around this event of the resurrection. That's what kicks it all off. So you have this rich theological reflection in 1 Corinthians 15, where Paul is saying, this is what this central event, the resurrection, means to us as believers.
Dena Davidson [00:02:03]:
And this is why it is so important.
Curt Harlow [00:02:05]:
Yeah, really important. Because if we know what happened, but we don't understand the implications of why it loses its power, it becomes just a fascinating historical moment. Was it true or wasn't it? When the apostle Paul says basically in this passage Corinthians, here's our context, primarily Greek, some Jews very, very far away from Paul's home in Asia Minor, you very, very, very pagan Greek people, hellenized People, this idea of following Christ, it wins or dies. It's wisdom or foolishness based on whether or not you understanding the meaning of the resurrection. And that's true for you and I.
Dena Davidson [00:02:49]:
That's right.
Curt Harlow [00:02:50]:
Our Christian significant, real dynamic when we understand the importance and the reason behind the resurrection, and it becomes religious fluff and stuff when we do not understand it.
Dena Davidson [00:03:04]:
And I'd say it's a very biblical thing for us to be pausing acts right now and actually examining the resurrection story and unpacking what the resurrection means. Because this in the church, this is once a year where we are meant to pause and really think about this central event. So we're not being like, you know, topical preachers, where we're just saying what we want to say. This is not about what Curt wants to say or what Dena wants to say. This is us honoring the central event in the history of Christianity, the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and really diving into that. Tell me if you can relate to this. I feel like a lot of people in Christianity, they're so skeptical and they're immersed in the secular society that they're coming at Easter with just like a smidgen of unbelief, you know, just kind of this thought of, like, this is a weird holiday, Right. Is this the Christian version of Santa Claus that we all kind of like, we know, like, wink, wink.
Dena Davidson [00:04:03]:
This, you know, this is not really happening, but we're all going to act like it happens.
Curt Harlow [00:04:08]:
Yes.
Dena Davidson [00:04:08]:
Is that what's going on? I think that's in a lot of people's mind. So speak to that, Curt. Speak. Why does it matter?
Curt Harlow [00:04:15]:
I would say a little bit different than that, Dena. I think most Christians believe in the resurrection in an unfounded way. So they go, I want to believe that Jesus conquered death. I want to go to heaven. I want my loved ones to go to heaven. I definitely sense the Holy Spirit in my life. I sense the presence of God from time to time. So, yeah, I guess I believe in this.
Curt Harlow [00:04:38]:
And at Easter, I'm going to go public. He is risen. He is risen. Indeed. I did the chant. But they are afraid to truly investigate it. They're afraid to think of it deep, deeply. They're afraid to read both sides of the arguments for and against.
Curt Harlow [00:04:53]:
And the reason is they're a little bit afraid that if they think about it as deeply as they should, they will discover really good evidence against it. Because let us be really clear, this is an outrageous claim.
Dena Davidson [00:05:06]:
It is.
Curt Harlow [00:05:08]:
A man stopped, his heart stopped, his brain stopped, his circulatory system. Stopped. He was placed in a tomb and his cells degener. And then he overcame that and raised from the dead, that brain restarted. You know, the Christ of the post recurring Christ in the Gospels is a physical man. He can touch his wounds. And so, yes, so it is an outlandish. It is an extremely.
Curt Harlow [00:05:44]:
It's the biggest claim as you can make. So most Christians, I think they shy away from really understanding. They might, you know, here's someone who read something by Lee Strobel and grab a couple of those things, you know, yeah, the soldiers, they, they. How do they not let him out of the tomb? You know, and they grab a little bit of that. But what I have found, if you're brave enough, your faith can be wildly liberated. And you can, you can. You know, I know moments of great doubt in me, I sit down and go, you know what? Let's think about the resurrection and the historicalness of the resurrection. And yeah, I would just hope for folks, especially around Easter, they would go, I'm going to go on a journey of loving Christ with my mind by understanding both the importance of, and the credibility of Jesus came to earth and really conquered death itself.
Dena Davidson [00:06:41]:
And this problem, this skepticism, the fact that it's hard to believe, it's an outrageous claim. This is why Paul is writing First Corinthians 15, because it's not like in the first century, you know, they said Jesus rose from the dead and everyone was like, oh, wow, that's incredible. I mean, he is writing because this is hard to believe that there is resurrection from the dead. And you know, someone posted on, on Twitter, he said, just a reminder to everyone this week, dead people don't rise from the dead.
Curt Harlow [00:07:10]:
Right.
Dena Davidson [00:07:11]:
Like, we all know this, right? And you could say that, you could take that Twitter post or tweet and you could put that in the first century and everyone would have wanted their heads. Dead people don't rise from the dead. That is why Paul had to write 1 Corinthians 15.
Curt Harlow [00:07:26]:
And I think they knew that more than we know it, because they dealt with death more directly than we deal with death. We. We anesthetize ourselves from death. We embalm ourselves away from what death really is. And they put their loved ones in a tomb for a year and then went and regathered their bones and put them with the other bones. They. They were hands on about death in ways that we were not. And also, you look in the context like you're saying a book of Acts, and we'll get to the passage.
Curt Harlow [00:07:54]:
Don't Worry. What is the offense of the gospel? Why is it that everywhere Paul goes, there's riots? Part of the offense is you're coming against our gods, whom we're familiar with and love. Part of the offense is, how dare you tell us that for Jewish believers, devout Jews in the first century, how dare you tell us we miss the scripture? But part of the offense is the Messiah came and he conquered death for you and you missed it. Part of the offense and part of the foolishness for Greeks was who came? Why? So I'm not even a physical being. I'm really. This is an artificial coil around me. I'm a spirit. I don't need death to be conquered for me.
Curt Harlow [00:08:42]:
And so the offense of the gospel was the preaching of the resurrection in so many ways. All right, let's get to it. I'm going to do about half the passage here, because normally we do about four or five verses. We take, like, one idea from a chapter. This is 13 verses. I'm going to do about half of it, and then I'm going to do the second half, and we'll go through our normal order. Dena, where I'm going to ask you.
Dena Davidson [00:09:03]:
What translation are you so that I'm in the niv? You're oh, God's translation, obviously.
Curt Harlow [00:09:07]:
Well, the translation most people have, so it's less confusing for them if you do this on your podcast. Okay, here we go. Chapter 15, First Corinthians, verse 1. Now, brothers and sisters, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand. By this gospel, we are saved if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise you have believed in vain. For what I received, I passed on to you as of first importance, that Christ died for our sin according to the scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the scriptures, and that he appeared to see. And then to the 12.
Curt Harlow [00:09:53]:
After that, he appeared to more than 500 of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all, he appeared to me also as one abnormally born. So our rule here at the Bible Study Podcast is we want to look at the passage and hermeneutically get to the most accurate, original meaning of this passage. Dena, what is this passage saying? What's the hermeneutically most accurate way to look at what Paul's saying here?
Dena Davidson [00:10:29]:
First of all, this is the gospel. This is the good news. This is the central idea of Christianity and everything that Paul and all of the other apostles have been proclaiming. I love verse three through verse eight. Scholars believe that the way that this is written, this is early creedal form, meaning that this is a recitation that new believers would have had to memorize before they were baptized and be able to repeat this back, because this is the heart of the gospel. And we wanted to make sure that all believers knew this and could say.
Curt Harlow [00:11:04]:
This and experience this is what I have experienced. If I'm getting baptized, I've experienced these doctrinal ideas.
Dena Davidson [00:11:09]:
Exactly. Which is really exciting because they think that they. This is one of. When we encounter verses three through eight, we're encountering earliest Christianity. This is the version of Christianity that scholars would say is the most. The most reliable form of what it meant in the early centuries to be a Christian. And it's all there. What I received, I pass on to you as a first important thing.
Dena Davidson [00:11:36]:
One, Christ died. There's a lot of scholars out there saying, did Jesus really live? And that's really generous to call those people scholars, because anyone who studies ancient history knows Jesus existed. We have more evidence for his existence and why he did on earth.
Curt Harlow [00:11:53]:
The chief critics of the Bible, even most of them, now, all the most famous ones, say there was Jesus, he lived at that time. That, that theory that was really popular in the 1960s has been blown out of the water.
Dena Davidson [00:12:04]:
Academic now made famous again by TikTok, as we know, which is so reliable.
Curt Harlow [00:12:08]:
An academic powerhouse of a place, 100%.
Dena Davidson [00:12:12]:
So Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, that he was buried and that he was raised. And then it goes on to list all that he appeared to. So we have the death, the burial and the resurrection of Jesus and the subsequent appearance of him to these disciples to entrust to them this mission and this responsibility for the church that was birthed out of this.
Curt Harlow [00:12:33]:
So as we celebrate Easter, the resurrection this year, we celebrate an evidentiary faith. It is not emotional faith. It was. They didn't say, and this is what you need to confess before you get baptized, that you felt the presence of God in your life. No, you have to say, I agree. Christ died completely. He was dead. Then I have to agree.
Curt Harlow [00:13:01]:
This is according to the Scriptures. The Scriptures predicted he would die. The Old Testament teaches he would die. The suffering servant. As the Messiah would come in, that he would die. Then I have to say there was a period of time where he stayed dead. It wasn't. Can't be medically Explained away.
Curt Harlow [00:13:19]:
There's no swooning here, there's no near death, there's no in between life and death place. No, he, he was dead for put in a grave. Yeah, he was, he was, we all saw it. Then he conquered death and appeared to more than 500 people in a very short, in the Paul's phrase here the same time he appeared to lots of people and you can go ask them to this day because most of them are still alive. This is an evidentiary faith. It's not the faith of I know it's true because I know it in my knower. It's what do we do with this? This happened among us. Paul says at one point, I think it's to the Philippians, blessed are you believe that you didn't get to see.
Curt Harlow [00:14:04]:
And he means that you got to read that in the context but a bunch of us did. I've seen Christ, my friends, the apostles in Jerusalem, they saw Christ, they camped with them for three and a half years and when he rose from the grave they were there. It's an evidentiary faith. And then this is a thought I was talking to you and Kevin about last week. Go listen to that pod. This is a perfect example of the rule of faith with the early church fathers called the rule of faith which simply means there is an authentic Christ oriented the real teachings of Jesus faith. And we hold to that rule and that rule only. We are not in this to edit, abbreviate.
Curt Harlow [00:14:43]:
We're not assimilating other thoughts and other religions. We are committed to the gospel, the rule of faith, what Jesus taught us faith. And often popular criticism is that Paul took some Jesusy ideas and turned it into his own theology or that very quickly Greeks hellenized the gospel and this couldn't, this couldn't be. I was actually meeting with a person like three weeks ago and they without really knowing it perfectly described themselves as a Gnostic. I believe in secret information and that if you seek God in this way he will tell you something he's not telling anyone else. And these guys are saying the opposite. No, this happened, this was public, this was public. And to be a follower of Christ, this is the rule you have to agree to.
Curt Harlow [00:15:37]:
And we're not changing it, we're not adding to it, we're not subtracting from it. This is very publicly this and to me I find that very, very comforting. And once I said this last week, I'll say it again once your eyes are open to this idea of the rule of faith that they were very Passionate about keeping the authentic, primitive, real teaching of Jesus. You see it everywhere. You see it in Peter's writing and James writing. You see it. And Paul is the perfect example. Follow me as I follow Christ.
Curt Harlow [00:16:04]:
What I was given, I passed on to you. What does it say? As of first importance, my biggest priority is not the ministry and thoughts of Paul. It's passing on the teachings and real authentic faith of Jesus, the Christ of God. And I just find that really comforting. Revisit every Easter that we are not an experiential faith. We're not coming together. If you come into the worship service this Easter and you don't feel a thing, well, I hope that will change for you. I hope you'll get an emotional breakthrough.
Curt Harlow [00:16:36]:
That's important and it's a part of your relationship with God. But it's not why I believe. Yeah, I believe because, gosh, I think Jesus came.
Dena Davidson [00:16:50]:
Yeah.
Curt Harlow [00:16:51]:
And I think he was dead and I think they put him in the grave.
Dena Davidson [00:16:54]:
Yep. There's moments where you encounter information and your whole life has to change. So for example, I'm married. If I found out my husband was having an affair, that would be me encountering information. The rest even can't ignore it. Right, Right. Can't bury that under the rug. My whole life has to change.
Dena Davidson [00:17:18]:
Even if we stayed together, like the way we went about our relationship, how.
Curt Harlow [00:17:22]:
That happened, what are the seeds of that?
Dena Davidson [00:17:24]:
Yeah, 100%. And this is one of those moments. It was for everyone in the first century that paid att to what was happening. Jesus came, he died, he was buried and he rose again. One of the most powerful arguments for the resurrection. N.T. wright writes about this extensively and it's a whole the Resurrection of the Son of God. It's a tome.
Dena Davidson [00:17:48]:
It's like, I don't know if you've read it, but it's so thick. And he basically makes this one big argument. What caused first century Jews that were experiencing all the aftershocks of what it means to worship other gods? What caused these first century Jews who were so devout in worshiping one God? What caused them to worship this man named Jesus?
Curt Harlow [00:18:15]:
Yep.
Dena Davidson [00:18:15]:
And he writes this compelling argument that they encountered something that they couldn't turn away from. And that was the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Curt Harlow [00:18:24]:
Yeah. When Jesus ascended these Jewish boys, it says they worshiped him.
Dena Davidson [00:18:28]:
They worshiped him.
Curt Harlow [00:18:29]:
Every Jewish man started his day by proclaiming, hear O Israel, the Lord your God is one is one God. This fundamental idea that I must say Jesus is God. It had to be something, you know, here's another thought on that same. Right. And by the way, I've always said nt right. He's pretty right. So go ahead and it's a tome, but it's worth it. Okay, so here's the other thing.
Curt Harlow [00:18:53]:
So you go. If you follow the Book of Acts, like we've been doing here at Bayside, everywhere Paul goes, they're offended. But the argument against Paul is never this argument. No, Jesus died, right? This didn't happen. Jesus died and he never resurrected.
Dena Davidson [00:19:13]:
Here's his body.
Curt Harlow [00:19:14]:
They're insulting our gods. They're taking our business away. And the biggest argument against Paul, this is the argument that's used over and over again. It's too much chaos. He's causing chaos. He's disrupting the Roman order. And even people that didn't really care about the Roman order were like, let's get the Romans in here. But you don't see anyone standing up.
Curt Harlow [00:19:35]:
You don't see anyone. In Athens, these very smart people going, yeah, I don't think because this had a historical shockwave, the fact that they couldn't produce the body had a Mediterranean shockwave to it. So it was a futile argument. Paul's easy refutel to someone who said, well, that didn't happen is I got 500 people said it can, right? It's like, you know, I had a person way, way back in the day that wanted to charge our organization with a very frivolous lawsuit. They were just looking for money. And so their lawyer called me and said, yeah, we're going to need some settlement here because. And I said, well, let's go, because I have 500 people there at that same event and they will all say something different than your client. So let's go.
Curt Harlow [00:20:24]:
Never got a call back from that guy. This is Paul's answer to this. So, okay, I want to move on. But before we do it, let me give you one application question for folks. If you were the sort of person who said, you know what? I am going to go down this rabbit hole, I'm going to learn the evidence for the resurrection. I'm going to build my faith muscle up on is this historical or is it emotional? Where you, Dena, great apologist that you are, where would you start?
Dena Davidson [00:20:52]:
I would just look up Gary Habermas. He's one of the foremost resurrection scholars of our time.
Curt Harlow [00:20:58]:
You're going to have to spell Habermas.
Dena Davidson [00:20:59]:
Habermas. H A B E R M A.
Curt Harlow [00:21:01]:
S. See, Dena never disappoints. He put me on the pressure to spell I'm not good. Habermas.
Dena Davidson [00:21:06]:
Habermas and he. So just to give you his credentials, this is the man that has. Has hosted all of the debates on did the Resurrection actually happen? It's what he has specialized in apologetics career. And he developed a friendship with an atheist named Antony Flew. And Antony Flew was a highly respected scholar. Like 40 years ago. He was the guy well represented the atheist viewpoint, all the critiques on Christianity and other religions. And in Antony Flew's life, he had a relationship with Habermas where they would debate each other and then they would go out to coffee and they would kind of keep talking.
Dena Davidson [00:21:48]:
And through the course of that relationship, Habermas never convinced Flew that the resurrection happened. So this kind of shows you he's an honest skeptic. But one of the things that Antony Flew said, he later recanted his atheism. He said, I am no longer an atheism. The evidence is no longer. It's no longer tenable to be an atheist. I am a deist. I don't believe in a personal God, but I believe there is a God.
Dena Davidson [00:22:13]:
He said this about the Resurrection on the basis of his conversation with Habermas. He said by far, Christianity and its account of the resurrection is the most credible miracle of any religion. He said by far. And that was on the basis of just these conversations and these debates with Habermas. So I would honestly read anything and listen to anything you can from Habermas. He has probably like 30 books on it and pick your one and then also nt write the Resurrection of the Son of God. If you want to really go deep and be convinced that's the one. That's awesome.
Curt Harlow [00:22:46]:
That's a great answer as always. All right, let's pick it up from verse nine and look at the second half of this, because I think this really gets to the heart of why you pick this passage. For I am the least of the apostles and do not even deserve to be called an apostle because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God, I am what I am. And his grace to me was not without effect. Now, I worked harder than all of them, yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me. Whether then it is I or they. This is what we preach and this is what you believe.
Curt Harlow [00:23:23]:
But if it is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. Dena, why does that explain the importance.
Dena Davidson [00:23:43]:
Of the resurrection, because this is the whole story. The whole story of God is that God created us. We chose to distrust and disobey him, which broke our relationship with God and broke our world, set into motion the broken and fallen world that we exist in today. Sin ruptures everything, including our relationship with God. And, and so into that chaos and mess, God himself stepped in, became a man. Jesus Christ lived a sinless life and ultimately went and was the sacrifice for our sins. If the story stops there, then it ends for God in defeat. And that's not where the story stops.
Dena Davidson [00:24:30]:
The story stops in his victory over death, which is resurrection. Jesus just didn't, didn't just come as a sacrifice. He defeated the problem that was set into motion in the garden. He has been victorious over death. So if you don't believe in the resurrection, then you're saying God has not really solved this problem. What started in the garden still needs to be solved. Death is the ultimate foe in the story. It's not Satan, right? Satan is the one that tempts us towards sin, but, but death, separation from God and eternal enmity between us and him, that is the foe that must be defeated.
Dena Davidson [00:25:13]:
So when Jesus rises from the dead physically, it shows that the physical death has been defeated. But much more importantly, because it stretches into eternity, the eternal death has been defeated. We have connection with God and we have the possibility of being restored into right relationship. And Paul's like, if you, you miss that, if you're missing that part of the story, you've essentially, you've missed the whole story. We're still dead in our sins, right?
Curt Harlow [00:25:43]:
So there's so many things I could say about this. I had A old mentor, Dr. Dan Pakota, did a lot of Chi Alpha events back in my old Kayalpha days. And he was fond of saying this because there was a song going around when I was a college student and it was Jesus came to show the way. And that would incense him. He said Jesus was not a moralist. He did not come and live a perfect life so that you and I could live a perfect life. We don't live a perfect life.
Curt Harlow [00:26:11]:
We won't live. None of us will be Jesus. And he would like thunder at this point. He was a normally very quiet academic man. He said, Jesus came to be the way, not to show the way, but to be the way. And it's exactly what you're saying. Without providing the pathway to our Creator, without solving the problem of the debt of injustice, then we cannot have relationship with a perfect God. And so Jesus was the way in which we are accounted righteous.
Curt Harlow [00:26:46]:
The theological theories is we are endued with Christ's righteousness. We do not earn it, we do not produce it, we don't even and really initiate it. We are endued with it, we're given it by grace. So perfect God of the universe, except Curt Harlow. Based on my work in defeating sin and death, based on that. And so it's not that Jesus just was such a great teacher and lived such a great moral life. I listened to this one liberal theologian and he was going through why he lost his faith and deconstructed. And this is a long, long time ago before deconstruction was even a word word used in Christian circles.
Curt Harlow [00:27:28]:
And he got to the end of it. And his final statement was, after all, if the cross actually happened and the resurrection actually happened, or if it's a very inspirational story, what does it matter?
Dena Davidson [00:27:45]:
It really matters. It says verse 16, your faith is futile.
Curt Harlow [00:27:51]:
Yeah, okay. If I am paying for my own debt of injustice, and this is the way I like to think about this, we love to see justice happen when justice, injustice has been done to us. But we don't realize my existence has created injustice. I have hurt my children, I have hurt my wife, I have hurt my co workers, I've hurt my family. I've done selfish, thoughtless things that created a debt. And so this is where I have the problem with deism. So what do you do about that with international students especially? I do this with American students a lot too, but especially international students that were devout. I would try my hardest to never debate.
Curt Harlow [00:28:36]:
Let's never have a debate. It just proves who's the better debater. And oftentimes when you're dealing with honor students, they are better than you at debating. But I would often, when we got into a real, honest, good, healthy dialogue, I'd say, help me understand. How does your worldview or your religion deal with the issue of my injustice or your injustice? Help me understand. And usually the answer was some form of, well, we just work harder. We try to do more good than evil. Like that will, you know, that's like saying, I robbed the bank, but I was very generous afterwards, right? I was very generous and I tried to be as generous as I could be afterwards.
Curt Harlow [00:29:21]:
No, someone needs to go to jail for that bank robbery. That was wrong. I took what was not mine by force. And so this idea that Paul is saying to them, oh, here's another question I have for you. Why is it that some of the. What do you suppose And I've got an answer obviously, too. Why do you suppose that some of the Corinthians have given into this? He said some of you believe that Christ didn't actually raise from the dead. Why do you think this error is gaining some weight in Corinth?
Dena Davidson [00:29:57]:
Well, they had pressure from a Jewish stream as well as a Gentile stream to not believe in the physical resurrection. So within the Gentiles, there's this devaluing of the body. And so when you talk about you're going to live eternally as a resurrected body, that's a, that's an odd, hard thing to believe for Gentiles foolishness. And also, again, we just know dead people don't rise from the dead. This is a very challenging miracle. At the center of what you're asking us to believe, can't we just start by agreeing with Jesus's sermon on, on the Mount? That would, that would be easier, I think, is what's happening on the Gentile side. And then on the Jewish side, they had this whole group, the Sadducees, who've been influencing the Jewish people, and they denied the resurrection from the dead at all. And so I think you have these streams that are outside of the gospel.
Dena Davidson [00:30:52]:
And people within the church are wrestling with these ideas and saying, well, do we have to choose? Do we have to pick? Can we accommodate all of these thoughts? And Paul is, is making this point. He is saying there are some things that to be a Christian, we have to believe. And this is one of those things. In fact, it is the thing, because if this doesn't, if this has not happened, he says in verse 16 or verse 17, your faith is futile, it's purposeless, it's not accomplishing what you are trusting it to accomplish.
Curt Harlow [00:31:26]:
Right.
Dena Davidson [00:31:27]:
What would you say?
Curt Harlow [00:31:28]:
I mean, I totally agree with you. Obviously, we have primitive Gnosticism here. We have more than that, actually, more Hellenistic thinking, which is the flesh is very corrupted and I'm going to be this erythrial, much more free thing. And so why would I want to bring this flesh with me into eternity? And then I really do believe that in the Sadducee way of thinking, there is some bleakness there that is very logical if you understand the history of the Jewish people, the history of being honest about life and death. And so there's a feudalism, there's a negativity that they've given into. And I can't be totally critical of them for it. But Paul is fighting both. I have another, even deeper idea why humans do This, I think it's very difficult for us to believe that we are loved this much.
Curt Harlow [00:32:28]:
I think most of our real skepticism comes from, you know, the why me thinking why would I know who I am? I know what thoughts I've had. I know, you know, if your conscience is alive at all, you know what a sinner you are. Why would Christ, while I am yet a still sinner, come and die for me? Is there really a God that loving? And I find that to be a very compelling objection. And I find it to be the real root of most of the real seekers that have been friends of mine over the years. I do not believe that there is a God this loving, or maybe even better put, it feels very dangerous for me. And you know why it feels dangerous for me? It is dangerous. What you know, here's what I say every Easter, and I guess for my little application, thought you had one. I'll have one.
Curt Harlow [00:33:20]:
Because we've gone over time, my little application thought is, what if it's true? And I would say to the Christian, do exactly what Dena, you have suggested and go on a deep dive of the evidence of the Resurrection, because what if it's true? And then I also say to Christians, if it's true, then we've got to stop celebrating this one day a year. The Resurrection Day has got to be the culmination of our celebration. Every we've got to walk and live and breathe. In the Resurrection, we are so loved that God himself became fully human. And he became not just a human, that would have been enough, but he became a human servant. And not just any other, any ordinary servant, but a servant who washed our dirty feet and healed our leprous skin, tolerated our foolishness and did so all the way to the torture, false prosecution and torture of the cross. And then that's not even where it stops. All the way to conquering death itself, that there may not be any obstacle between us and our Creator.
Curt Harlow [00:34:38]:
What if that's true? What if I really am that loved? It's at least worth suspending your automatic cynical disbelief because my mom and dad didn't love me to that level. My friends don't love me to that level. My spouse doesn't love me that level level. Your kids love you when they want to.
Dena Davidson [00:35:03]:
So true.
Curt Harlow [00:35:04]:
What if God loves me to that level? And to me, that's the radical, dangerous, powerful, wonderful, scary thing called Easter. So what a joy it is to talk about the Bible with you, Dena. And it's really, really, really a joy. I want to encourage you if this is your first time with listening. There's a lot of this going on, and usually we have one of the Bayside communicators with us from Blue Oaks or Orange county or Granite Bay. And what we do is we just do this verse by verse, idea by idea. We examine what is good, solid, hermeneutically accurate, exegetically integral Bible study. If you're interested in that, wherever you are on the spectrum of faith, I want to encourage you to tune back in.
Curt Harlow [00:35:51]:
In. Also, would you tell a friend, would you like and spread this? We say that for no other reason than we just think the world gets a whole lot better, and you and I get a whole lot better when we learn and apply the real truth of God's word. So God bless you. I hope you have a wonderful, wonderful Easter.