What Does the Bible Say About Resurrection? — Owen on the Risen Christ
⏱ 15 min read
The question arrives quietly, usually after a year in which something else has gone wrong. Perhaps the funeral was in the autumn and the spring has come around without anyone in the kitchen yet feeling the spring. Perhaps the doctor’s appointment was last week and the body has begun to be a thing you carry rather than a thing you are. Perhaps you are simply tired in a way the modern vocabulary cannot explain, and the word resurrection — which used to be a creed-line you said quickly on a Sunday morning — has begun to ask you to look at it more slowly than you have looked at it before.
This is the slow version. Not the apologetic argument for the historicity of the empty tomb, useful as that argument sometimes is. The slow version reads three passages from John Owen — a seventeenth-century English Puritan who spent his last decade writing about the risen Christ with the kind of attention that almost no one in the modern church has the patience for anymore. Owen’s late work Christologia and his earlier Communion with God belong together, because Owen’s account of resurrection is not first a historical claim about a Sunday morning in Jerusalem. It is a doctrine of relationship with the risen one who is now alive in heaven and accessible, through faith, to the modern Christian woman sitting in her kitchen on a Tuesday. The Everspring Bible Study Workbook for Women carries this kind of slow reading into a daily companion for the soul recovering the doctrine, if you would like a place to take the practice afterwards. For now — read slowly. Owen’s prose was written by a man who had buried ten of his eleven children. He did not write quickly about anything. You do not need to read quickly either.
What scripture says about resurrection, gathered into one sentence, is this: the Christ who died is alive, and the life He lives is the life into which His people are, even now, being slowly and gently drawn. The verses run as a quiet chorus through the New Testament — I am the resurrection, and the life; because I live, ye shall live also; if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection; Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more; if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain. Resurrection, in the Bible, is not first a future event that will happen to your body on a far-off day. It is first the present condition of Christ, and second your gradual being drawn into the life He now lives, and third the future restoration of your own body to the kind of life that has been His since the third day. The slow reading walks each of the three layers. (If the loss is recent and the calendar has not caught up to it, the companion Christian journal prompts for women — healing after a hard year was written for exactly this season. If you want the small slow seasonal walk, the meaning of Advent and Lent fasting ideas beyond giving up chocolate walk the slow two seasons of the church year that prepare the soul to receive Easter properly. If the slow study itself is the part you are returning to, inductive Bible study for beginners — a 4-step method and a beginner study Bible for women are the slow companion ground.)
Owen was sixty-three when he finished Christologia, in the year before his death. He had buried his first wife, ten of his eleven children, his second wife’s two children from her previous marriage, and most of his closest friends in ministry. He wrote, in the last years of his life, with the patience of a man who had nothing left to prove and almost no one left on earth to read it. The slow attention he gives the resurrection is the attention of a pastor who has lost almost everything and who has discovered, on the inside of the losing, that the doctrine of the risen Christ is the load-bearing thing.
The first passage — the saints’ first notion of the Father
Owen, in Communion with God, makes a structural move that is uncommon in modern devotional writing. He starts the doctrine of the risen Christ by going behind the resurrection, into what the resurrection is for — the soul’s communion with the Father whom the risen Christ has come to make accessible. The opening sentence of that move is one of the most quiet sentences in English Puritan prose.
“Would a soul continually eye His everlasting tenderness and compassion, His thoughts of kindness that have been from of old, His present gracious acceptance, it could not bear an hour’s absence from him. Let, then, this be the saints’ first notion of the Father — as one full of eternal, free love towards them.”
— John Owen, Communion with God
Read it once. Then read it again, slowly.
Notice the verb. Would a soul continually eye. The soul, in Owen’s vocabulary, is asked to look at — steadily, without breaking the gaze — three things about the Father. His everlasting tenderness and compassion. His thoughts of kindness that have been from of old. His present gracious acceptance. The looking is the work. Not the producing of new affections. The slow steady looking at affections that already exist in the Father, and that have, in fact, been the inside reality of the Christian’s situation from the beginning.
Then the consequence. It could not bear an hour’s absence from Him. The Christian soul that has seen the Father as He actually is cannot endure being away from Him for very long, because the Father seen as He actually is, is the only sufficient atmosphere in which the soul can breathe. The hour’s absence becomes unbearable not by an act of pious will but by the sheer pull of the seen reality.
What does this have to do with resurrection? Everything. The risen Christ is the one who makes the Father seeable. Owen’s whole argument in Christologia is that the resurrection is not first about Jesus’ body and second about ours, but is the moment in history when the One who shows the Father becomes permanently accessible to those who will look. He that hath seen me hath seen the Father. The resurrection is the seeing-of-the-Father, made permanent. The risen Christ stands in the presence of the Father forever, and the believer who looks at the risen Christ is, by the looking, seeing the Father through Him.
The first thing scripture says about resurrection, in Owen’s reading, is this: it is the permanent opening of the seeing. The Father has always been full of eternal, free love towards His people. The resurrection is what now makes that love seeable, steady, available to be eyed continually. The soul that has been wandering — that has been blaming God for the hard year, or has been quietly assuming He is angry, or has been afraid to look at His face for fear of finding wrath there — is being asked, by the doctrine of the risen Christ, to look through the risen Son at the Father, and to find what Owen describes: everlasting tenderness and compassion. Thoughts of kindness from of old. Present gracious acceptance. That is the Father. The risen Christ is the door through which the seeing happens. The doctrine is load-bearing precisely because the seeing is not optional. The soul that does not look starves. The soul that looks is fed.
The somatic — for the body that has been stiff
Pause here. The teaching has a body to it, and Owen, who lived in a body that buried ten children, would not have separated the doctrine of resurrection from the body that is reading it.
Sit somewhere quiet. Both feet flat on the floor. Notice your hands. The hands of the modern woman are usually held — fingers slightly curled, the small muscles of the palms working without her knowing. Place both hands, palms up, on your knees. Let the fingers unfurl by their own weight. Not by trying to relax them. By simply stopping the small ongoing effort of holding them curled.
Notice the difference in the palms. The palms turned upward, fingers loose, are the body’s small posture of receiving. The body, when it stops holding itself closed, opens slightly. The opening is small. The opening is enough.
Take one slow inhale. On the exhale, let the shoulders, also, drop one inch. Let the chest, behind the breastbone, soften slightly. The risen body of Christ is, in scripture’s vocabulary, a body that is no longer stiff — that is alive in a different way than the bodies we currently inhabit, that walks through doors and breaks bread and is, in the post-resurrection accounts, recognisable and substantial and somehow also free. The slow exhale with the palms turned up is a small piece of your body remembering what unstiff feels like. The full unstiffness belongs to the country your body will one day be restored to. The minute on the chair is the rehearsal.
One more slow inhale, longer exhale. Then continue reading.
The second passage — the overflowing sense
Owen’s second move, deeper in Communion with God, names what the risen Christ is doing for the believer now. The sentence is one of the most pastorally precise sentences in English devotional literature.
“To give a poor sinful soul a comfortable persuasion, affecting it throughout, in all its faculties and affections, that God in Jesus Christ loves him, delights in him, is well pleased with him, hath thoughts of tenderness and kindness towards him — to give, I say, a soul an overflowing sense hereof, is an inexpressible mercy.”
— John Owen, Communion with God
Read it twice. Slowly.
Notice the layered phrasing. A comfortable persuasion, affecting it throughout, in all its faculties and affections. Owen is being precise. The thing he is describing is not an emotional spike. It is a settled inside knowing — a persuasion — that affects the whole soul — every faculty, every affection — that God in Jesus Christ loves him, delights in him, is well pleased with him, hath thoughts of tenderness and kindness towards him.
Then the four verbs of God’s relating, in order. Loves. Delights in. Is well pleased with. Hath thoughts of tenderness and kindness towards. Each one is doing distinct work. Loves is the verb of action — the active reaching of God toward you. Delights in is the verb of pleasure — the joy God takes in your existence as His. Is well pleased with is the verb of approval — the rest of God in His finished work in you through Christ. Hath thoughts of tenderness and kindness is the verb of minding — the small ongoing attentiveness of the Father whose mind is, even now, taking up your situation.
The risen Christ is the basis of all four. Christ raised is the standing assurance that the Father loves, delights, is pleased, and minds. Without the resurrection, the four verbs would be in the past tense — did love, did delight. With the resurrection, they are present tense and permanent. The risen one stands in the presence of the Father continually, holding the four verbs open for every soul that will look.
This is the second thing scripture says about resurrection: it is the permanent ground of the assurance. He ever liveth to make intercession for them. The intercession is not a desperate pleading. It is the living standing of the risen Son in the Father’s presence, holding the assurance open for the soul that doubts. When you doubt, the assurance does not go away. The risen Christ is still standing there. The assurance is His to hold, not yours to produce. The slow growing into the assurance — the overflowing sense — is His giving. Your work is to look.
For the woman reading this who has lost her sense that God is for her — the long heaviness has worked on the inside until the love and the delight and the pleasure and the kindness have become words she half-remembers but no longer feels — Owen is gentle. An overflowing sense hereof is an inexpressible mercy. The sense is given. It is mercy. It is inexpressible — which is to say, the giving exceeds the language. You are not asked to manufacture the sense. You are asked to put yourself in the place where He is in the habit of giving it. The morning verse. The evening sit-down. The quiet half-hour. The slow reading. The journal page. The small ongoing showing-up to be given what He has been wanting to give.
The Everspring Bible Study Workbook for Women is built around exactly that kind of small showing-up. A short passage each session, a slow inductive walk through the text, room for the slow honest noticing of what He is saying through the verse. The workbook does not produce the overflowing sense. Christ produces the sense. The workbook is the place where, week by week, you put yourself in the way of His giving, and the sense grows as it grows. The doctrine of resurrection is the standing ground beneath the entire practice. The risen Christ is the one giving. Your job is the slow daily looking.
The third passage — the soul brought into the bosom of God
Owen’s third passage describes what the entire arc of communion with the risen Christ accomplishes for the believer over time. The sentence is unguarded. It is one of the most quiet things Owen ever wrote.
“The soul being thus, by faith through Christ, and by him, brought into the bosom of God, into a comfortable persuasion and spiritual perception and sense of his love, there reposes and rests itself.”
— John Owen, Communion with God
Read it once. Then read it again, slowly, letting the last verb land.
Notice the spatial movement of the sentence. Brought into the bosom of God. The verb is passive — the believer is brought, not climbs. The agent is Christ, by faith through him, and by him. The risen Christ is the one carrying the soul into the place of being held by the Father. The bosom of God is the Johannine image — the place where the only-begotten Son is, in John 1, said to be reposing — and the believer is, through the risen Christ, brought to where the Son is, and held there in the same place He is held.
Then the inside state of the soul brought into that place. Into a comfortable persuasion and spiritual perception and sense of his love. The three nouns — persuasion, perception, sense — are doing layered work. The persuasion is the mind’s settled knowing. The perception is the soul’s spiritual seeing. The sense is the heart’s felt experience. All three become comfortable — meaning, in Owen’s seventeenth-century English, capable of carrying weight, load-bearing. The soul brought into the bosom of God knows, sees, and feels His love in a way that holds the weight of the rest of the soul’s life.
And the final verb. There reposes and rests itself. The verb is reflexive. The soul rests itself. It does not have to be lulled. It does not have to be told to relax. It reposes by its own weight, because the place it has been brought to is the place it was built for, and being in the right place produces rest by the nature of the place.
This is the third thing scripture says about resurrection. The risen Christ is the one who carries souls into the bosom of God, and the soul carried in rests itself. The doctrine of resurrection is not first about your future body. It is, in Owen’s reading, the present possibility of resting in the bosom of the Father because the Son who took your flesh and rose again has carried you there. The future bodily resurrection is the eventual completion of that resting. The present resting in the love of God, through the risen Christ, is the first installment — the small daily preview of what the country you are heading to will be like, all the way down, when you arrive.
For the woman reading this who has been working too hard at the spiritual life — who has been trying to manufacture the love and the assurance and the felt sense of God’s pleasure — Owen is quiet and clear. The soul is brought. The work is His. The soul reposes and rests itself. The resting is the natural consequence of the bringing. Your part is the coming through Christ, by faith, by him. The bringing belongs to Him. The rest belongs to the place.
(The sibling articles in this Father-Analysis cluster sit at what is heaven like — Edwards on the world of love and what happens when you die as a Christian — Baxter on the saints’ rest. The three walks belong together. Read in order, they are the slow companion the cluster was built to be.)
What the slow reading will do over a year
If you sit with Owen’s three passages — the saints’ first notion of the Father, the overflowing sense, the soul brought into the bosom — one a month for three months, and then the question what does the Bible say about resurrection as a whole for the remainder of the year, what happens is not dramatic. The doubt does not vanish. The body does not become young again. What happens is that the centre of gravity of the doctrine moves from the future to the present.
The resurrection, slowly, stops being only an event you affirm in the creed on Sunday morning and becomes the steady ground beneath the week. The risen Christ is now, in the kitchen, in the silence at three in the morning, in the half-hour with the workbook on Tuesday evening. The four verbs — loves, delights in, is well pleased with, hath thoughts of tenderness and kindness towards — become small lit rooms in the mind that you can step into when the doctrine surfaces. The rooms are furnished. There is a chair in each one. The chairs were put there by Owen, three hundred and fifty years ago, for the soul that would one day need to sit down inside the doctrine and find it already half-felt before the doctrine finished being thought.
What the slow reading does is companion the doubt and the loss and the long heaviness. The resurrection and the heaviness can live in the same chest. Both are honest. Owen carried them together through ten children’s funerals and finished the last of his books in a sickbed, and the carrying has not stopped working. The slow walk of the next year is the slow learning of how to live with the doctrine of the risen Christ as the load-bearing ground under the rest of what you are carrying. He carries the doctrine. The doctrine carries you.
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A daily home for the slow reading
The slow practice we just walked has its 140-day form in Bible Study Workbook for Women. Each session, a short passage and a slow inductive walk through the text — a daily ground for the doctrine of the risen Christ as it becomes the inside weather of your week.
The Everspring Bible Study Workbook for Women carries Owen’s slow vocabulary — the saints’ first notion of the Father, the overflowing sense, the soul brought into the bosom of God — into a daily companion for the woman walking the question of what scripture says about resurrection, without rushing and without pretending the doctrine is smaller than it is.
