LIFE IS NOT A PRISON

Chuck Colson tells about celebrating Easter Sunday in Delaware in 2000.

It was a cold, windy morning, more like winter than the beginning of spring. We arrived at the Sussex Correctional Institution just as the day’s first light was filtering through the morning clouds. There’s always such a sense of drama about dawn on Easter morning. I invariably think about Christ’s disciples hurrying to His tomb in the dark…. the sorrow, the confusion, the angels, the incredulity, the absolute, stunning thunderbolt of joy… the sun breaking through the dark clouds, the hearts on fire, and the cry that echoes down through the ages: ‘Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!’

The prison, a drab, low-slung series of buildings, was opened in 1931. It holds about eleven hundred maximum-, medium-, and minimum-security inmates, all men, as well as a boot camp with one hundred beds that houses ninety men and ten women.

Franklin Graham of the Billy Graham Association, Bruce Wilkinson of Walk Thru the Bible, and I were to lead the worship services…. Our team gathered on the central area of the outdoor prison compound. We were on a raised platform, with sound equipment for the musicians, our microphones, and other paraphernalia. It was a good setup, but I was distressed when I saw the rest of the arrangement. There was a big chain-link fence between the platform and the prisoners, and fences between each section of inmates.

To make it worse it was getting colder. An icy northwest wind whipped through the prison yard. I had on a heavy, lined raincoat, and I was still chilled to the bone. My heart went out to the prisoners, who were standing in that wind with no jackets, just their thin, white, prison uniforms.

After music by Charlie Daniels and worship teams that warmed the men up as much as anything could, I told the inmates my own story: how the risen Christ had saved me. I spoke about Jesus, the prisoner, and about what really happened at Calvary. I tried to put the story in terms that these inmates – mostly under thirty years of age – could relate to. I talked about how Jesus had been turned over to the authorities by one of His friends, who turned on Him, how He’d been held in an isolation cell, strip-searched, beaten up. I talked about the guards who gambled for His clothes, the people who just stood by staring, watching the drama unfold, the officials who cared only about their own power … and then I talked about the prisoners who hung on the crosses on either side of Jesus. One mocked Him – like the other cynics in the crowd that day. The other recognized his own sin – and the fact that Jesus really was the Son of God. And he was promised eternal life.

At that I turned the service over to Franklin Graham, who, in his clear way, took the men through the plan of salvation in the Scriptures. He invited them to receive Christ and to indicate their decision by raising their hands. Many, many men did so. What a great Easter morning, I thought.

But it wasn’t over.

Not wanting to leave out Bruce Wilkinson, I leaned over after Franklin finished and whispered to him, ‘Bruce, why don’t you go up and say a word to the men, and then close the service with prayer?’

He nodded and got up. I prepared to bow my head for prayer.

Bruce walked up to the microphone and looked at the inmates who were all crowded against the fence trying to get closer to the platform. They looked at him…He said, ‘I want all of you men who are pushing up against the fence to move back about ten or twelve paces. …Men move back,’ he said again. ‘A few more steps back.’ Finally the crowd of men had cleared a perimeter about twelve feet back from the fence that separated them from the podium.

‘Okay,’ said Bruce. ‘Now I want all of the Christians, those of you who gave your lives to Christ today, those of you who have been believers for a while – I want all of you to walk forward to the fence.’

I covered my eyes with my hands. This is it. I thought. You just can’t do this in prison. He’s setting these guys up for trouble.

But when I looked up, to my amazement, half a dozen guys walked to the fence without hesitation. Then five or six more. They just poured forward. About two hundred inmates walked up to the fence and stood there with a kind of quiet confidence – not fidgeting, just standing and waiting, looking at Bruce.

‘All right,’ Bruce said. ‘Good. Now all you men who stepped forward… you have stepped forward as the people of God in this prison. You are the church here. And now I want you to turn around, with your backs to me. I want you to do an about-face and look at the rest of the prison population standing here.

At this point my heart was back in my mouth. The prison officials and corrections officers were shooting glances at one another, the officers watching certain inmates closely. Bruce seemed to be setting up a situation with two sets of inmates in confrontation; something like this could easily get out of hand.

But what happened was unbelievable. The Christian guys who had walked to the fence paused for a moment. Then, almost as one, they turned around and stood looking straight into the eyes of the rest of the men.

Bruce kept pushing. ‘Now,’ he said, ‘I want you believers to get down on your knees. You’re the church in here. I’m going to pray for you. I’ve asked you to turn so you’re facing the rest of these guys because they are your mission field. Your job as Christians is to share the gospel with them. Love them. Serve them.’

Talk about boldness! The Christian men got down on their knees, and then, without instruction, put their hands on one another’s shoulders. It was such a beautiful, powerful paradox – a kneeling army of believers, arms around one another, in a posture of service before the rest of the tough, skeptical men in that institution.

Bruce prayed, and a holy hush came over that cold prison yard. He prayed that these men might boldly witness to the love of Christ, that they might be filled with the grace of God, and that He would use them to build his church, extend His kingdom, so that more and more inmates in that prison community would turn their hearts to give glory to God.

After Bruce ended his prayer, he asked if any more men would like to follow Jesus Christ…and many did. Those men were still in prison, but they were free indeed.

I will never forget that Easter morning in Delaware. (Chuck Colson, Being the Body, 32-37)

What is it about the gospel of Jesus that will change the lives of even the worst of us? It is because Jesus died for our sins, and rose again from the dead to give us new life. When we open our lives to the Spirit of Jesus and follow him, God will forgive us, and give us hope for the future. This is a life-changer. St. Paul wrote about this good news in Romans 8:11.

“And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit, who lives in you.” (Romans 8:11, NIV)

“And if the Spirit of God, who raised up Jesus from the dead, lives in you, he will make your dying bodies live again after you die, by means of this same Holy Spirit living within you.” (LB)

It is good news because, due to the resurrection of Jesus, we can be raised to new life in him that death can never take away. St. Paul says that there is a close connection between our resurrection and the resurrection of Christ.

“By his power God raised the Lord from the dead, and he will raise us also.” (1 Cor.6:14)

“But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep…..for as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive. But each in his own turn: Christ the firstfruits; then when he comes, those who belong to him.” (1 Cor.15:20-23)

“The Lord Jesus Christ, who by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they may be like his glorious body.” (Phil.3:21)

This is how John Stott describes this good news of the Spirit of Resurrection Life.

The ultimate destiny of our body is not death but resurrection. Our bodies are not yet redeemed (Rom. 8:23), but they will be, and we are eagerly awaiting this event. How can we be so sure about it? Because of the nature of the indwelling Spirit. He is not only ‘the Spirit of life’ (Rom.8:2), but the Spirit of resurrection….Further, Christ’s resurrection is the pledge and pattern of ours. The same Spirit who raised him will also raise us. The same Spirit who gives life to our spirits (Rom.8:10) will also give life to our bodies (Rom.8:11).

This does not mean that our dead bodies will be revivified or resuscitated, and so restored to their present material existence, only to die again. No, resurrection includes transformation, the raising and changing of our body into a new and glorious vehicle of our personality, and its liberation from all frailty, disease, pain, decay and death. It is not that the spirit is to be freed from the body – as many under the influence of the Greek way of thinking, have held – but rather that the Spirit will give life to the body. (Stott, Romans, 226, 227)

This gives us real hope for the future. We are not imprisoned in our bodies, to be released from it at death. We are to be given new bodies, resurrection bodies, that fits our new heavenly environment. This life is not a prison.

The critical moment for the Christian is not the moment of bodily death in hope of a blessed resurrection; it is the moment at which the man came to be in Christ. From that moment he is immortal, not, so to speak in his own right, but because Christ lives in him. When bodily death comes, it is only a matter of being ‘absent from the body, present with the Lord.’ The life after death is not a new life: it is the life he has been living all the time in Christ, only lived under different conditions. (C.H. Dodd, The Epistle to the Romans, 126)

This is why Easter is such good news. It is a message of hope for the whole world. It can change even the most hardened criminal into a saint. The Spirit gives us new life, resurrection life, beginning right now, if we invite Christ  to live in us.