One of our most cherished possessions is a first edition of Christ the Controversialist by John Stott. Published in February 1970 it is inscribed to my wife: “Antoinette for her confirmation in St. Paul’s Cathedral, London on 28^th February 1970, with all good wishes, from John.”

It is subtitled A Study in some Essentials of Evangelical Religion. It has since been republished in 2013 by IVP entitled Christ in Conflict: Lessons from Jesus and His Controversies. It has been edited by David Stone for the twenty-first century.

The first chapter is about the controversy Jesus had with the Sadducees about the resurrection. They did not believe in the resurrection and challenged Jesus about its absurdity by posing a conundrum featuring a woman who married seven times. Whose wife would she be in the resurrection? Jesus refuted their logic by telling them that they were wrong because they were ignorant about the Scriptures and the power of God.

As for their ignorance of Scripture he quoted Exodus 3:6 where God described himself to Moses as the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. He is not God of the dead but of the living. He was their God still and would be to the end, keeping covenant with them, sustaining them with his steadfast love. All live to God. That is the object of their creation That purpose cannot be terminated by death. The dead are raised as even Moses was shown.

They were also ignorant of the power of God. They thought that if there were another life beyond death and resurrection it would be the same kind of life as it had been before. They underestimated the power of God to create a new and different life in which earth’s insoluble problems would be solved. Jesus taught them that the life of the age to come would be significantly different from the life of this age. They would be equal to angels and are sons and daughters of God being children of the resurrection. We will be live a life under new conditions. Sexuality will be transcended and personal relationships will be neither exclusive in their character nor physical in their expression.

The modern Sadducees are scientific materialists whose view of reality is limited to what they can explain empirically. They find no room for God or the supernatural. But God is the Creator of Nature and the author of life. God created all life and upholds the universe by the word of his power. If he can develop all of life and nature out of nothing he can resurrect us to new life. Scientific materialists are narrow-minded and cannot imagine immortality. Christianity is a resurrection religion. The New Testament speaks of at least three resurrections.

First, the resurrection of Christ. Secondly, the resurrection of the body. We shall be given bodies like his. Thirdly, the resurrection of sinners. Jesus said, “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who hears my word and believes him who sent me, has eternal life, has passed from death to life, the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and whose who hear will live.” (John 5:24,25)

Authentic Christianity is supernatural Christianity. It is not a tame and harmless ethic, consisting of a few moral platitudes, spiced with a dash of religion. It is rather a resurrection religion, a life lived by the power of God.