To answer any significant question about where we come from, why we are here, what is right and wrong, who God is, and where we are going when we die requires doctrine. Subsequently, everyone has doctrine. The only question is whether it is truthful, biblical, and helpful.

Admittedly, in the name of being doctrinally vigorous, some people go too far and put secondary issues—those that are unworthy of battling over—in the closed hand of conviction. Conversely, some people do not go far enough and put in the open hand primary issues that are worthy of battling over. In writing Doctrine, my coauthor, Dr. Gerry Breshears, and I sought to follow the storyline of the Bible and focus on the major unifying, liberating, and life-changing doctrines of the Bible.

The timing of this book is incredibly significant. At the very least, evangelical Christians in general, and younger evangelical Christians in particular, seem incredibly confused on doctrine. One study revealing the incredible need for Doctrine is the third wave of the National Study of Youth and Religion (2008) (see note below). It reports the beliefs of the 13.5% of emerging adults (ages 18 to 23) in the United States today who self-identify as Protestant Christian and who attend an evangelical church at least “two to three times a month”:

• 97.2% believe in God.
• 96.6% believe that Jesus was/is the Son of God who was raised from the dead.
• 96.4% believe that God created the world.
• 89% “definitely” believe in angels.
• 76.2% “definitely” believe in demons.
• 82.5% “definitely” believe in any form of afterlife.
• 83.0% believe in astrology “not at all.”
• 83.2% believe in reincarnation “not at all.”
• 94.8% “definitely” believe in miracles.
• 95.0% believe in a coming judgment day, when God will reward some and punish others.
• 91.2% believe that God is a personal being who is still involved in the world today.
• 81.9% believe that only people whose sins are forgiven through faith in Jesus go to Heaven.
  Corollary: 5.3% say that only good people go to Heaven; 2.5% say that all people go to Heaven; 4.9% believe “something else” about Heaven, and 2.2% “don’t really know or care” who goes to Heaven. 3.3% don’t believe in Heaven at all.
• 1.6% tries to include practices from Buddhism, Hinduism, Zen, or other Asian religions.
• 85.5% say that it is “okay for religious people to try to convert other people to their faith.”
• 71.8% say that Christians should only practice one religion.
• 24.6% say that it is okay for Christians to practice other religions as well. (Another 3.6% don’t know.)
• Less than two-thirds (66.2%) say that “only one religion is true.”
• 70.8% say that it is not okay for Christians to “pick and choose their religious beliefs without having to accept the teachings of their religious faith as a whole.”
• More than one-quarter (27.0%) thinks that it is okay to “pick and choose.”
• 89% say that they have “a lot of respect for organized religion in this country.”
• Almost one-quarter (24.3%) agrees with or is still undecided about moral relativism.
• 36.0% “agree” or “strongly agree” that “we should adjust our views of what is morally right and wrong” to reflect changes in our world.
• 52.0% “agree” or “strongly agree” that people should not marry someone of a different religion.

REMEMBER: These statistics are from the 13.5% of emerging adults (ages 18 to 23) in the United States today who self-identify as Protestant Christian and who attend an evangelical church at least “two to three times a month.” In Doctrine we hit all these issues and many more in a readable manner.

Note: The National Study of Youth and Religion (NSYR) is the most comprehensive and rigorous social scientific research ever conducted on the religious and spiritual lives of American youth. It is based out of the University of North Carolina and the University of Notre Dame. The wave 1 survey was conducted among American youth ages 13 to 17 between July 2002 and April 2003, and produced a total N = 3370. Most recently, a third wave of the survey was conducted from September 24, 2007 through April 21, 2008 with the same respondents—when they were between the ages of 18 and 23 years. (This is during the first half of what developmental psychologists call “emerging adulthood.”) The National Study of Youth and Religion was generously funded by Lilly Endowment Inc. and is under the direction of Christian Smith of the Department of Sociology at the University of Notre Dame. For methodological details and related publications, visit: http://www.youthandreligion.org/.

Mars Hill Global

Serving the church and spreading the gospel. Help support this effort by giving to the Global Fund. More info at MarsHillGlobal.com.

God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong (1 Cor. 1:27).

When I Am Weak, Then I Am Strong

Paul wrote 1 Corinthians 1:27 because the religious couldn’t accept a defeated Savior, and philosophers couldn’t believe in a God who would take on frail flesh and die. Paul honed the point later by repeating what God said to him: “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor. 12:9). Basking in this promise, Paul declared: “For when I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Cor. 12:10).

The Inverted Way of Jesus

Jesus’ life and shameful death informed Paul’s thinking. Jesus spent lots of his time with the lost and the least. He talked about the last becoming first and the first becoming last. He embraced the meek and the broken—the humble ones who felt swamped with heavy burdens. He died alone, bitterly forsaken by all.

This is Jesus’ upside-down approach to our world. It is the way of his grace. We live in a world where the biggest, best, and brightest succeed and the littlest, last, and least get trampled. But Jesus disrupts and interrupts our power-fetish and our lust for significance, polishing our reputations and annihilating other people for our success. The ways of our world are interrupted by the inverted way of Jesus. Because of this, Christianity has from its beginning prized weakness and rebuffed strength.

In his book on leadership lessons from 1 Corinthians, D.A. Carson writes: “God has not arranged things so that the foolishness of the gospel saves those of us with an IQ above 130. Where would that leave the rest of us? Nor does the foolishness of what is preached transform the young, the beautiful, the extroverts, the educated, the healthy, the wealthy, the upright. Where would that leave the old, the ugly, the illiterate, the introverts, the poor, the sick, and the perverse?”

Despair of Your Ability

This leaves us in despair. But it can be “gospel despair” if it leads to trusting in Christ and not in ourselves. Martin Luther writes: “It is certain the man must utterly despair of his own ability before he is prepared to receive the grace of Christ.”

This means that we are not operating out of self-sufficiency, but out of total dependency on Christ and in need of being empowered by the Spirit. So, let’s boast in our weakness instead of displaying our self-righteousness and strength. This is obviously folly and nonsense to the world, but to those who are being saved it is the power of God.

Re:Train

We are launching The Resurgence Training Center (Re:Train) to prepare leaders for ministry locally and around the world. Additional details and downloadable application form here.

Sinless

This poster explains the doctrine of the perfect, sinless life of Christ and how it relates to our salvation. By God’s grace, the perfect obedience of Christ is attributed to all who put their faith in him.

Download the Sinless poster here.

Click here for ideas for how to use the posters.

Advance 09 Media

Video, audio, and images from the Advance 09 conference in Raleigh-Durham, NC, June 2009. Find out more.

Your people could benefit tremendously from having a solid grasp of key theological terms. We at the Resurgence came up with the idea of creating posters that succinctly explain the most important theological ideas.

Prophecy

This poster explains prophecy about Jesus and his coming into human history. We can find hope and comfort in the fulfillment of all of God’s prophecies knowing that he has been, and always will be, perfectly faithful to his promises.

Download the Prophecy poster here.

If you need ideas for how to use the posters, click here.

Re:Sound

The musical arm of the Resurgence offers music that is theologically unified, stylistically diverse, and musically excellent. Find out more.

Jesus rose from the dead. We have an amazing God. Go update your Facebook status and tell all of your friends why you celebrate Jesus’ resurrection.

Today there will be live streaming of Mars Hill’s Easter services all day at marshillchurch.org/live.

How in the world did the celebration of the resurrection of Jesus, the most sacred and central event in Christianity, come to be represented by a fluffy bunny who lays colored eggs and gives out cheap candy to kids? The Easter Bunny is a commercialized cultural commonplace around the world (though it may be losing ground to the Easter Bilby in Australia), yet for all its familiarity, the Easter Bunny's true origins are a mystery.

Eggs and Bunnies

Eggs and rabbits have been used as traditional symbols of springtime fertility and rebirth by various cultures throughout history. Eggs symbolize new life about to emerge, while hares and rabbits are conspicuous in the spring because they breed—like rabbits. The hare's association with Easter may be a holdover from the ancient pagan spring festivals of Europe. According to Bede, an 8th-century Anglo-Saxon church historian, the British pagans used to celebrate a spring feast in honor of the goddess Eostre, who was represented by the hare.

Eostre and the Hare

When Pope Gregory the Great (540-604) sent missionaries to the British Isles, he instructed them to adapt the existing religious places and festivals for Christian use. He wrote, "Since the people are accustomed, when they assemble for sacrifice, to kill many oxen in sacrifice to the devils, it seems reasonable to appoint a festival for the people by way of exchange. The people must learn to slay their cattle not in honor of the devil, but in honor of God and for their own food…" Because the celebration of the Resurrection replaced the old spring feast of Eostre, the Christian holiday came to be called Easter, and Eostre's pet animal the hare apparently came along for the ride.

Osterhase

The first known mention of the actual Easter Bunny comes from Germany in the 1600s, where the cute little guy was known as the Osterhase, or "Oschter Haws." German immigrants came to America with a tradition in which the kids would build nests around the house out of hats and bonnets, and if they had been good children, Osterhase would leave brightly-colored eggs in the nests. The tradition grew and spread over time, and eventually Osterhase turned into the Easter Bunny and began giving out chocolate and candy as well as eggs.

The Resurrection

Easter is still celebrated as a major holiday all around the globe, but the truth of Jesus' gory crucifixion and glorious resurrection is often obscured by the garish cartoon bunny in the stores and the gaudy displays of springtime fashion among the religious. Traditions of cute bunnies, colored eggs, and little girls in pink dresses are harmless enough, but at the same time we must not let anything obstruct our view of the earth-shattering reality represented by Easter. There's nothing cute or cuddly about the fact that we killed God. When we were his enemies, he came to us, suffered in our place through the horror that was Good Friday, and rose from his grave on Easter Sunday so that we will one day rise from ours. The curse is broken, and we celebrate the Resurrection of Jesus because we know we will one day experience it (1 Cor. 15:20-23). Let's be joyful, let's never shrink from speaking about Jesus' death and resurrection, and let's never trivialize it.

Death By Love:

Mark Driscoll and Gerry Breshears tackle some of the most serious redemptive aspects of Jesus' work in these twelve letters of counsel to individuals. Find out more.

My encouragement to all Christian preachers is to not get too fancy on Easter.

It is the day we want to be incredibly clear about the death of Jesus for our sins and the resurrection of Jesus for our salvation. We do not need to be clever. We need to be clear. And we need to add to that clarity a fitting and authentic excitement for the victory of Jesus Christ over Satan, sin, death, hell, and the wrath of God while calling sinners to be saved.

For those preachers wanting to do a good job this Sunday, I felt compelled to share with you bits from a summary of N.T. Wright’s amazing tome on the resurrection, as they could be most helpful. I also want to thank my researchers at the Docent Group for doing the summary on which this blog is based. I would encourage all pastors who can afford it to consider their services.

I would encourage every preacher to go out and buy this unprecedented book. Despite his views on justification, which I disagree with, this book is so outstanding that it has to be read, as even Tim Keller evidenced by making his chapter on the resurrection in A Reason for God basically a series of summaries and quotes from Wright’s book.

N.T. Wright’s The Resurrection of the Son of God looks at why Christianity began and why it took the shape it did. N.T. Wright (a renowned New Testament scholar) answers these questions: What precisely happened at Easter? What did the early Christians mean when they said that Jesus of Nazareth had been raised from the dead? What can be said today about this belief?

This book is third in Wright's series Christian Origins and the Question of God, and it sketches a map of ancient beliefs about life after death in both the Greco-Roman and Jewish worlds. It then highlights the fact that the early Christians’ belief about the afterlife belonged firmly on the Jewish spectrum, while introducing several new mutations and sharper definitions. This, together with other features of early Christianity, forces the historian to read the Easter narratives in the gospels, not simply as late rationalizations of early Christian spirituality, but as accounts of two actual events: the empty tomb of Jesus and his appearances.

How do we explain these phenomena?

The early Christians' answer was that Jesus had indeed been bodily raised from the dead; that was why they hailed him as the messianic son of God. No modern historian has come up with a more convincing explanation. Facing this question, we are confronted to this day with the most central issues of worldview and theology.

A brief five-point summary of Wright’s book-length argument would be as follows:

1. Resurrection and its cognates mean “life after ‘life after death.’”
2. Ancient paganism strenuously denied the possibility of resurrection.
3. A strong belief in the hope of future resurrection existed only within the bounds of certain sects of Judaism.
4. The only possible reason why early Christianity began and took the shape it did is that the tomb really was empty and that people really did meet Jesus, alive again.
5. Though admitting it involves accepting a challenge at the level of worldview itself, the best historical explanation for all these phenomena is that Jesus was indeed bodily raised from the dead.

Wright proposes that in the first century, “resurrection” did not mean “life after death” in the sense of “the life that follows immediately after bodily death.” [1] According to Wright, “Here there is no difference between pagans, Jews and Christians…Pagans denied this possibility; some Jews affirmed it as a long-term future hope; virtually all Christians claimed that is had happened to Jesus and would happen to them in the future.” [2] In other words, “resurrection” was a way of “speaking of a new life after ‘life after death’ in the popular sense, a fresh living embodiment following a period of death-as-a-state.” [3]

Life After Death

According to Wright, the meaning of resurrection as “life after ‘life after death’” cannot be overemphasized. This is due in large part because much modern writing continues to use “resurrection” as a synonym for “life after death.” Belief in “resurrection” meant belief in what Wright calls a “two-step story.” Resurrection itself is preceded by an interim period of death-as-a-state. “Where we find a single-step story—death-as-event being followed at once by a final state, for instance of disembodied bliss—the texts are not talking about resurrection. Resurrection involves a definite content (some sort of re-embodiment) and a definite narrative shape (a two-step story, not a single-step one). This meaning is constant throughout the ancient world.”[4]

Most books on the resurrection of Jesus begin by studying the gospel narratives and then work outwardly from this vantage point to an analysis of the appropriate pagan and Jewish sources found in antiquity. Wright takes the exact opposite approach. He begins with a study on resurrection (or, better, the lack thereof) in ancient paganism and then narrows the scope of his investigation tighter and tighter, concluding with a study of the resurrection as recorded by the writers of the canonical gospels.

"The idea of resurrection is denied in ancient paganism"

“In so far as the ancient non-Jewish world had a Bible, its Old Testament was Homer. And in so far as Homer has anything to say about resurrection, he is quite blunt: it doesn’t happen.” [5] The idea of resurrection is denied in ancient paganism from Homer all the way to the Athenian dramatist Aeschylus who wrote, “Once a man has died, and the dust has soaked up his blood, there is no resurrection.” [6] Wright provides a helpful summary: “Christianity was born into a world where its central claim was known to be false. Many believed that the dead were non-existent; outside Judaism, nobody believed resurrection.” [7]

One of the most influential writers in antiquity was Plato. According to Wright, “neither in Plato nor in the major alternatives just mentioned (i.e. Aristotle) do we find any suggestion that resurrection, the return to bodily life of the dead person, was either desirable or possible.” [8]

This view is also evident in the writings of Cicero. “Cicero is quite clear, and completely in the mainstream of Greco-roman thought: the body is a prison-house. A necessary one for the moment; but nobody in their right mind, having got rid of it, would want it or something like it back again…Resurrection was not an option. Those who followed Plato or Cicero did not want a body again; those who followed Homer knew they would not get one.” [9]

After surveying several other ancient pagan writers and philosophers Wright concludes: “Nobody in the pagan world of Jesus’ day and thereafter actually claimed that somebody had been truly dead and had then come to be truly, and bodily, alive once more.” [10] Death, in ancient paganism, was a one-way street. According to Wright, “the road to the underworld ran only one way. Throughout the ancient world, from its ‘bible’ of Homer and Plato, through its practices (funerals, memorial feasts), its stories (plays, novels, legends), its symbols (graves, amulets, grave-goods) and its grand theories, we can trace a good deal of variety about the road to Hades, and about what one might find upon arrival. As with all one-way streets, there is bound to be someone who attempts to drive in the opposite direction. One hears of a Protesilaus, an Alcestis or a Nero redivivus, once or twice in a thousand years. But the road was well policed. Would-be traffic violators (Sisyphus, Eurydice and the like) were turned back or punished. And even they occurred in what everybody knew to be myth.” [11] Wright notes: “We cannot stress too strongly that from Homer onwards the language of ‘resurrection’ was not used to denote ‘life after death’ in general, or any of the phenomena supposed to occur within such a life. The great majority of the ancients believed in life after death; many of them developed… complex and fascinating beliefs about it and practices in relation to it; but, other than within Judaism and Christianity, they did not believe in resurrection.” [12]

This evidence confirms that the resurrection of Jesus Christ is unique in all of history and worthy of our full throated conviction on Sunday.

[1] N.T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003), 31.

[2] N.T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003), 31.

[3] N.T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003), 31.

[4] N.T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003), 31.

[5] N.T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003), 32.

[6] Quoted in N.T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003), 32.

[7] N.T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003), 35.

[8] N.T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003), 53.

[9] N.T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003), 60.

[10] N.T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003), 76.

[11] N.T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003), 81-2.

[12] N.T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003), 82-3.

Darrell Bock talked to the Resurgence at the recent Christian Book Expo about how to study the Gospels.

Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) began ministry at the age of nineteen and went on to be the greatest theologian America has ever produced. Additionally, the Great Awakening began in 1734 in his Northampton, Massachusetts congregation with the young people who had drifted away from the church, but suddenly wanted to begin meeting with him about his sermons. In light of the great interest and controversy surrounding the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, Edwards wrote the classic book Religious Affections to speak of the works of regeneration wrought by the Holy Spirit. To explain the Holy Spirit's work in revival he also wrote The Distinguishing Marks of a Work of the Spirit of God, and the follow-up book, Thoughts on the Revival in New England. For those who want to learn more about the teachings and experiences of Jonathan Edwards, there is now an amazing Web site from Yale that you would be well served to spend hours and hours of your time exploring: The Jonathan Edwards Center at Yale University.

Today, my dear friend, John Piper, who is mentioned in the Time article, carries on the teachings and passion of Edwards. Anyone who has read Piper's classic book Desiring God or any of his other books, especially his most recent book Finally Alive on the doctrine of regeneration by the Holy Spirit, are immediately aware of his affection for and learning from Edwards.

Trial Study Guide:

Get the companion study guide to Pastor Mark's latest sermon series in downloadable PDF form. Find out more.

Jesus was dead, and I mean really dead, on a cross, but he's not anymore.

That's how my son Timothy, a few years ago when he was three, explained to neighbors why he was so excited about Easter. No one referred me to a therapist, or to a cognitive development seminar. Those around me didn't see the horror of what I was doing to my children. Neither did I.

We didn't know that the Gospel, like Ginsu knives and blood pressure medicine, ought to be kept out of the reach of small children.

At least that's what one church was told recently, by a publisher of children's Sunday school curricula, according to Two Institutions, a blog about family and church matters.

The pastors at this church in Raleigh, North Carolina, were perplexed when they saw the Holy Week Sunday school lessons for preschoolers from "First Look," the publisher of the one to five year-old Sunday school class materials. There wasn't a mention of the resurrection of Jesus. Naturally, the pastors inquired about the oversight.