| Early Christians in Rome were buried outside the city in the catacombs. A catacomb is an underground burial chamber, connected by tunnels, and there are at least 40 of them around Rome. Though some pagans and adherents of other religions are buried there, the vast majority are Christians.
Estimates I’ve read range from 200,000 to 600,000 people were buried in the catacombs, and you can go to several today and take tours. Bones and skulls are stacked in shelves dug into the rock, and both times I’ve been I am deeply affected, thinking about all those people in heaven now, and what they went through in life.
Among those hundreds of thousands of burial chambers and passageways is the earliest Christian art. In the same way today we might write the person’s name, date of birth and death, and a short thought on a tombstone, they decorated the tomb walls with Biblical art.
Scenes of Adam & Eve, the Good Shepherd, and especially loaves and fish are common. Often pictured is the risen Lord eating bread, fish, and honeycomb (Luke 24:42, Jesus ate honeycomb to prove He was risen). The vast majority of their tomb art was focused on resurrection and the risen Lord.
In all the art in all the miles of tunnels, in all the hundreds of thousands of tombs, there are only 3 crosses, and those dated to be near the end of the use of catacombs as a burial place. Only 3 crosses. The majority of the rest are focused on the risen Lord.
Think about today’s cemeteries. How many hundreds of crosses on tombstones we see. How are Christian graves marked on the battlefield and have been for centuries? A cross. Why were they so focused on the resurrection and we are focused on the cross?
The first non-burial related cross is seen on a chapel door in the Vatican in the year 500AD – nearly 500 years after Pentecost of Acts 2: 4. For 500 years our brothers and sisters were focused on the resurrection. They were ‘life’ oriented, not ‘death’ focused.
How did the focus shift from the resurrection to the cross?
Christianity was legalized in the Roman Empire in the year 313 with the Edict of Milan, just under 300 years after Pentecost. It became the state religion in the year 380.
Emperor Constantine’s mother, Helena, was rumored to have discovered pieces of the cross during excavations around the city of Jerusalem. Constantine built a big church over what he assumed was the tomb of Jesus, called the Martyrium. That September when they celebrated the completion of the building called church, it became known as the feast of ‘The Exaltation of the Cross’ and it is still a Roman Catholic feast to this day.
With the Exaltation of the Cross and feast decreed by the Emperor, the church throughout the Empire shifted attention away from the resurrection to ‘exalt the cross’ instead. Christian culture has been stuck at the cross ever since. The early church was focused on the resurrection. We focus on the cross.
Why do we only celebrate the resurrection one weekend a year when for the first 500 years that was the truth that governed their spiritual lives and their growth in Christ?
Are you cross focused or resurrection focused? One is a focus on self and the other a focus on His power. Listen to songs on Christian radio, church selections, and your own playlist. How many are about how lowly we were, how the cross saved us – and now many are about the power of God that works in us that is changing our lives and empowering us? Praise God for the cross, but Jesus didn’t stay dead.
Why are we so focused on the cross?
Why do we spiritually stop our growth in Christ at 3pm that Thursday afternoon when Jesus died, instead of moving on to Sunday morning? The early church didn’t stop at the cross. They lived in the promise and power of the resurrection.
They knew what Paul wrote to the Ephesians in 1: 18-20: “…and what is the boundless greatness of His (Father’s) power towards us who believe, which He used when He raised Jesus from the dead…”
That should be our focus, the power of the resurrection which the Father directs into our lives. That is the transforming power; it isn’t the power of the cross, but the power of the resurrection – according to Ephesians 1: 18-20. Let us renew our thinking to what scripture actually says, instead of focusing on the ‘power of the cross’ focus on the power of the resurrection directed to us by our Father and therefore at work within us.
This inward ‘me’ focus is in part due to our church culture that focuses on the cross alone and ignores the resurrection. What if we went back in our thinking to Christian life before 500 AD? What if while being thankful for the cross which paid for our sins, we didn’t stop there? What if we focused on the risen Lord and the power of His resurrection?
Is risen or has risen?
The term “He is risen” was used by the angels at the tomb to describe Jesus. Why did they use ‘is risen’ instead of saying ‘has risen’? Mt 28: 6, Mk 16:6, Lk 24: 6.
The phrase ‘is risen’ is in aorist tense, meaning Jesus was risen, is risen, and will always be risen. In other words, it is a completion, a state of being, not merely an event. It is a condition of existence, not just something that happened at dawn that Sunday.
The angels were telling the women who came to embalm the body of Jesus that He is in a new condition of existence – a completed existence: Resurrected from the dead. It is a completed work, one that needs no improvement nor can it ever be improved upon. It will forever be unchanged; Jesus is forever in a condition of resurrection.
It is also important to note the Greek is written in the passive aorist, which means Jesus did not make His own resurrection. He was resurrected through a power other than His own.
This agrees with Romans 6:4: “…Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father…” It was the glory of the Father that raised His Son from the dead, and that power is so strong, so powerful, so eternal, Jesus is forever in a condition of existence known as resurrection, known as ‘is risen’.
The power the Father used to raise Jesus to the ‘is risen’ state of being, is the same power in you and I, so that we are now and forever also ‘is risen’ – eternal now, in eternity now, in the family of God now, in heaven now as citizens. Amazing grace!
How the resurrection changed the relationship between Father and Son is next week…until then, blessings,
John Fenn |
