C.S. Lewis on the Resurrection

“… the Resurrection (the earliest Christian teachers claimed to have witnessed) was not regarded simply or chiefly as evidence for the immortality of the soul. … I have heard a man maintain that ‘the importance of the Resurrection is that it proves survival.’ Such a view cannot at any point be reconciled with the language of the New Testament. … The New Testament writers speak as if Christ’s achievement in rising from the dead was the first event of its kind in the whole history of the universe. He is the ‘first fruits’ the ‘pioneer of life.’ He has forced open a door that has been locked since the death of the first man. He has met, fought, and beaten the King of Death. Everything is different because He has done so. This is the beginning of the New Creation: a new chapter in cosmic history has opened.
I do not mean, of course, that the writers of the New Testament disbelieved in ‘survival.’ On the contrary they believed in it so readily that Jesus on more than one occasion had to assure them that He was not a ghost. From the earliest times the Jews, like many other nations had believed that man possessed a ‘soul’ or Nephesh separable from the body, which went at death into the shadowy world called Sheol: a land of forgetfulness and imbecility where none called upon Jehovah any more, a land half unreal and melancholy like the Hades of the Greeks or the Miflheim of the Norsemen. From it shades could return and appear to the living as Samuel’s shade had done at the command of the Witch of Endor. In much more recent times there had arisen a more cheerful belief that the righteous passed at death to ‘heaven.’ Both doctrines are doctrines of the ‘immortality of the soul,’ as a Greek or a modern … understands it: and both are quite irrelevant to the story of the Resurrection. The writers look upon this event as an absolute novelty. …
There are, I allow, certain respects in which the risen Christ resembles the ‘ghost’ of popular tradition. Like a ghost he ‘appears’ and ‘disappears’: locked doors are no obstacle to Him. On the other hand He Himself vigorously asserts that He is corporeal … and eats broiled fish.”
C.S. Lewis, Miracles

Luke 24: 37 – 43 – “They were startled and frightened, thinking they saw a ghost. He said to them, ‘Why are you troubled, and why do doubts rise in your minds? Look at my hands and my feet. It is I myself! Touch me and see; a ghost does not have flesh and bones, as you see I have.’When he had said this, he showed them his hands and feet. And while they still did not believe it because of joy and amazement, he asked them, ‘Do you have anything here to eat?’ They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate it in their presence.”

George MacDonald on Christ's Suffering

“The Son of God suffered unto the death, not that men might not suffer, but that their sufferings might be like His.”
George MacDonald
PATRIOT POST
20 March, 2008
Patriot Vol. 08 No. 12

Dieing Leads to Life

“Listen carefully: Unless a grain of wheat is buried in the ground, dead to the world, it is never any more than a grain of wheat. But if it is buried, it sprouts and reproduces itself many times over. In the same way, anyone who holds on to life just as it is destroys that life. But if you let it go, reckless in your love, you’ll have it forever, real and eternal.”
Jesus of Nazareth

Jesus' Bitter Cup of Death

From Gethsemane to Golgotha Jesus has been, for the most part, “silent." In Mark’s account, he has revealed nothing of his private thought or his personal feeling. … His spirit has been mute. … the mind is hidden in mystery.
“But … finally, on Golgotha, comes a spontaneous gesture, and with it an insight into the spirit of the Savior … what he’s been doing in the solitude of his interior self.”
He’s lying on his back, wearing nothing but a loin cloth. His head and hands have been placed on the crossbeam to which his hands will be fastened with spikes. The command to drive the spikes through his hands has been given.
“So then a woman rushes over and kneels by the figure of Jesus and offers him a drink.” She’s doing what her people have done, mercifully, for generations. She’s obeying the command of the ancient Proverb, “Give strong drink to the dying, and wine to those in bitter distress; let them drink and remember their misery no more.” She is “seeking to ease the torment of the crucifixion. She’s offering Jesus myrrh, a narcotic.
“And here is the gesture, revelation, the mind of the dying Christ:
“He shakes his head. He will not drink from her cup. He will in no wise dull his senses or ease the pain.
“And so we know. What are the feelings? What has the spirit of Jesus been doing since Gethsemane? Why, suffering. With a pure and willful consciousness, terribly sensitive to every thorn and cut and scornful slur: suffering. This he has chosen. This he is attending to with every nerve of his being – not for some perverted love of pain. He hates the pain. But for a supernal love of us, that pain might be transfigured, forever.
What “has the Lord been doing since Gethsemane? Drinking. Not from the woman’s narcotic cup, but from the cup the father would not remove from him: drinking. Swallow by swallow, tasting the hell therein, not tossing it down in a hurry: ‘So that by the grace of God he might taste death for every one.’”
What “has the Lamb been doing since Gethsemane? Bearing our griefs. Carrying our sorrows. By the stripes he is truly and intensely receiving, healing us all.”

Walter Wangerin, Jr. Reliving the Passion