The cross without the resurrection: punishment that never becomes atonement

Michael Jensen's column over at SydneyAnglicans is always worth a read. This week he strikes a real chord on the resurrection:

A theology of the cross with no resurrection is a gospel of condemnation without forgiveness, of punishment that never becomes atonement, of a human Jesus but not a divine saviour, of a world condemned and abandoned but never redeemed and transformed.

And it didn’t stop there: the resurrection of Jesus in the body supplies the ground from which the NT writers can claim that God has not abandoned, but rather reclaimed the created order from the effects of sin and death, and from the monstrous regimes that assert their power in the world in the present time.

All the ho-humming and tut-tutting by liberal theologians about the resurrection as an internal, personal experience of faith makes the gospel into nothing more than a warm inner glow. But that is not the New Testament gospel. The gospel of the apostles is the declaration of the present rule of the Son of God with power and in the flesh.