The Resurrection and God's Future

Christian faith is openness to the future because the future is God’s future. Christian faith includes a living hope that leans into God’s future. It is not hope in this or that, or hope in utopia, or even hope in “heaven.” It is hope God alone—the God of Jesus Christ, the God who raised Jesus from the dead, “the coming God.” This is why Christian faith is eschatological. It always keeps “the end” in view and interprets the present in the light of God’s coming future. There can be no selling out to the present, as if the present is all there is, without a future horizon: “Live for today because tomorrow we die!” That’s nonsense. The present without God’s future makes no sense, and Christian faith without Christian hope is a contradiction. Christians await “the new creation.” All creation is groaning for the coming of God’s future.

God’s coming future is the presupposition of the New Testament. We cannot understand the New Testament apart from the awareness that “the times” have shifted. Salvation has arrived in Christ. The cross and resurrection have inaugurated “the new age.” We are already living in “the last days,” and the Spirit is the “first fruits” of “the age to come.” The first rays of dawn are shining. We eagerly await the full light of God’s glory. There is a horizon! Therefore, to work for the kingdom of God here and now is to also keep in view the kingdom yet to come, the kingdom established by God alone, by God’s initiative.

This eschatological perspective drives the theology of the New Testament. Christians never lose hope in the present because they never lose hope in the coming God who is the ruler of both present and future. This is the God who raises the dead and brings life out of death. Jesus has been raised from the dead! God’s future has already begun! There is more to come! This, to me, is the theological meaning of the resurrection.

I live today with hope, no matter what. Why? Because Christ lives! And his life is the guarantee of God’s ultimate triumph.