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In this week’s Life of Jesus class, we talked quite a bit about sin, suffering, and God’s will.

Why does God allow so much suffering?  It’s not an easy question, and the answers we do have are less than fully satisfying.

Jared Wilson, quoted on Justin Taylor’s web site, offers ten reasons.  Here is just one:

To remind us that the world is broken and groans for redemption

Romans 8:20-23 describes the condition, not just of the human race, but of all creation.

For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.

We experience corruption.  We yearn for freedom and redemption.  We live in a world that is subjected to futility, in bodies not yet redeemed.  It is a frustrating way to live, but God has a purpose: to make us whole, and to make us wholly his.

This side of Heaven, we cannot fully know why God allows what he allows, but 2 Corinthians 4:8-9 gives us hope in God’s purposes and in his protection:

We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed

In last week’s Life of Jesus class, somebody asked how Jesus disciples could have recorded in the gospels the events and words of Jesus’ temptation in the desert, when they were not present for them.  The same question could be asked about Jesus’ prayers in the Garden of Gethsemane, when the disciples had all fallen asleep.

The site bible.org offers a response:

I think we have essentially four options in questions like this:
(1) assume that it is wholly fictitious;
(2) assume that someone besides Jesus told the disciple(s) about the incident;
(3) assume that the Holy Spirit told the disciples later; or
(4) assume that Jesus told the disciple(s) about the incident.

The writer addresses, in turn, each of the first three options, and then…

When we come to view 4, it certainly raises some interesting questions, such as “How did the disciples find out? Did they sit down and interrogate Jesus about these events? Did they function as reporters?” What is interesting to me is that not once do we read anywhere in the Gospels, as far as I am aware, in which an evangelist says, “I got this story from so and so.” That is, nowhere in the Gospels does the evangelist tell us that he used a source for a particular story. Yet Luke’s prologue and John’s epilogue tell us, in broad strokes, that they did this very thing. So it seems to me that the M.O. of the evangelists is not to tell who their sources were, but to indicate that they did use human, eyewitness sources for their narratives and, on many occasions, were the eyewitnesses themselves. All it takes is for us to use a slightly sanctified imagination to envision the disciples sitting around the fire with Jesus, asking him all sorts of questions. We know that they did this with prophecy (see Matt 24); so why couldn’t they do this with history, too?

The four gospels make no claim to represent everything that Jesus ever said and did during his three-year ministry on earth.  It is reasonable to conclude that many conversations happened that were never written down or, if they were, did not end up in the gospels we have today.

A question came up this week in the Life of Jesus course at St. John’s Vancouver: “What is a Christian?”

Romans 10:9 is a good answer:

If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

Noted theologian (and St. John’s parishioner) Dr. J.I. Packer also  addresses this topic:

True Christians are people who acknowledge and live under the word of God. They submit without reserve to the word of God written in “the Book of Truth” (Dan 10:21), believing the teaching, trusting the promises, following the commands. Their eyes are upon the God of the Bible as their Father and the Christ of the Bible as their Savior.

Christians will tell you, if you ask them, that the Word of God has both convinced them of sin and assured them of forgiveness. Their consciences, like Luther’s, are captive to the Word of God, and they aspire like the psalmist, to have their whole lives brought into line with it. “Oh, that my ways were steadfast in obeying your decrees!” “Do not let me stray from your commands.” “Teach me your decrees. Let me understand the teaching of your precepts.” “Turn my heart toward your statutes.” “May my heart be blameless toward your decrees” (Ps 119:5, 10, 26-27, 36, 80). The promises are before them as they pray, and the precepts are before them as they go about their daily tasks.

The web site gotquestions.org offers another good response:

The Bible teaches that the good works we do cannot make us acceptable to God. Titus 3:5 says, “He saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit.” So, a Christian is someone who has been born again by God (John 3:3; John 3:7; 1 Peter 1:23) and has put faith and trust in Jesus Christ. Ephesians 2:8 tells us that it is “…by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God.”

A true Christian is a person who has put faith and trust in the person and work of Jesus Christ, including His death on the cross as payment for sins and His resurrection on the third day. John 1:12 tells us, “Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.” The mark of a true Christian is love for others and obedience to God’s Word (1 John 2:4, 10). A true Christian is indeed a child of God, a part of God’s true family, and one who has been given new life in Jesus Christ.

In this week’s Life of Jesus class, somebody posed a superb question I had never heard before.  If Jesus died to pay for our sin, then didn’t his resurrection from the dead somehow “undo” that atonement for sin?

Romans 6:9 tells us that the power of death no longer holds any power over Jesus:

We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him.

Jesus, the sinless Lamb of God, was the only one who could atone for the sin of the human race.  Having done that, God then raised him up, breaking the stranglehold of death forever.

For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. (1 Corinthians 15:3-5)

Jesus’ resurrection is the means of eternal life for every believer:

Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?” (John 11:25-26)

Christians demonstrate their unity with Jesus in baptism, which represents death, and, likewise, will be raised to eternal life, like Jesus was raised:

For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. (Romans 6:5)

The message of the New Testament depicts the resurrection not as an “undoing” of Jesus’ atonement.  It is, rather, a completion of that saving act.  Not merely a ransom payment, Jesus death and resurrection were a game-changing combination that forever altered how people could relate to their God.

What happened in the time between Jesus’ death, and his resurrection?  S. Michael Houdmann writes:

Did Jesus go to sheol/hades? Yes, according to Ephesians 4:8-10 and 1 Peter 3:18-20…Jesus’ body was in the tomb; His soul/spirit went to the “paradise” side of sheol/hades. He then removed all the righteous dead from paradise and took them with Him to heaven… It was the death of Jesus on the cross and His suffering in our place that sufficiently provided for our redemption. It was His shed blood that effected our own cleansing from sin (1 John 1:7-9). As He hung there on the cross, He took the sin burden of the whole human race upon Himself. He became sin for us: “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21)

…When Jesus cried upon the cross, “Oh, Father, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46), it was then that He was separated from the Father because of the sin poured out upon Him. As He gave up His spirit, He said, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit” (Luke 23:46). His suffering in our place was completed. His soul/spirit went to the paradise side of hades. Jesus did not go to hell. Jesus’ suffering ended the moment He died. The payment for sin was paid. He then awaited the resurrection of His body and His return to glory in His ascension.

In this week’s Life of Jesus class, somebody asked whether Jesus, at 33 years old, was already at an advanced age, for his place and time.

Answerbag.com provides a response:

“The average life expectancy at the start of the Roman Empire was 28 years of age. According to mythological tradition, Jesus died at the age of 33. However, due to a very high infant mortality rate, it is more accurate to look at the life expectancy of someone of that era who has made it to the age of 15. That person would have probably survived another 25 years, or to about the age of 40. I believe Caesar Augustus lived to about the age of 72. It wasn’t until about 100 years ago that human life expectancy began to greatly increase…”

A related question is: “Why did some people in the Bible live so much longer than people do now?”

I’m not certain that the Bible gives a direct answer, but pastor and writer Jack Wellman attributes humanity’s shortening life expectancy to the effects of sin:

The first few humans recorded in the Bible, in particular the Old Testament, lived an exceedingly long number of years.  Adam lived to the age of 930 years, his son Seth lived 912, his son Lamech lived 777 years, Lamech’s son Noah lived to 950 years, his son Shem lived 600 years.  There is a pattern that shows up.  Progressively, each generation lived shorter and shorter lives.  Adam was the first human created and must have been nearly perfect.  They were more perfect in health, size, and stature.  Perhaps the first generations of humans lived such long lives because they were so close to the man that God created and what God creates was perfect from the beginning.  That is until sin entered the human race.  Sin is destructive and the continuing sin through the generations had a cumulative effect.  By the time Abraham was born, the life spans had shrunk considerably.

Even though Abraham lived to 175 years, Moses lived only 120 years.  The effects of the fall of man, which happened in the Garden of Eden, had an effect. The creation had fallen with the fall of man.  God cursed the land after Adam and Eve sinned.  No longer would the environment be perfect.  Even nature itself would be feeling the effects of sin.

Ken Ham’s web site speculates that the earth, before the Flood, had a tropical environment that could have contributed to longer lifespans.  The site also offers an interesting graph, showing the decline in the patriarchs’ lifespans: