Sunday 26th January 2025
For the trumpet will sound,
the dead will be raised imperishable,
and we will be changed.
1 Corinthians 15:52 (NIV)
Don Carson
I read this week in Evangelicals Now the sad news that Don Carson has stepped back from public ministry. The announcement came in a Christmas letter.
Carson, now aged 78, has been suffering from Parkinson’s disease for some years and the limitations of the disease are taking their toll. The physical limitations are slowing him down, but the cognitive limitations are having an even bigger impact.
Apparently he tried to convince his neurologist that they were living in 2008, and he was unable to remember the name of the first president of the United States. He hasn’t lost his sense of humour, though. When he offered to name the first prime minister of Canada instead (Carson is Canadian), the neurologist was not impressed.
What moved me most, though, was to read how he finished his letter by writing, “I am not suffering from anything that a good general resurrection can’t fix.” Here is a man who has been a great servant of the Lord and his church over many decades, who is now clearly fading and failing, and yet whose faith in Christ burns as strong as ever.
Carson has been Professor of New Testament at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School and president and co-founder of the Gospel Coalition. He has written or edited about sixty books (or more) and served as president of the Evangelical Theological Society. He has been described as doing “the most seminal New Testament work by contemporary evangelicals” and is “one of the last great Renaissance men in evangelical biblical scholarship” (Wikipedia). The evangelical church owes him an enormous debt.
Do you share Carson’s faith, his confidence in the resurrection of believers? That there is nothing that could be wrong with us here on earth, whether in our bodies or in our minds, including our sins, that “a good general resurrection can’t fix”? And, we might add, will fix. It is the confidence of the apostle Paul, for example in writing to the Corinthians (above), and to the Philippians, that when Christ comes he “will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body” (Philippians 3:21).
We should thank God for giving us such a servant as Don Carson, and even more for the Christ whom he believed, preached and served, and in whom the dead will be raised.
Prayer
Lord, thank you for your marvellous promise to raise the dead, and every part of us, completely. I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief. Amen.
Yours warmly, in Christ,
Chris Hobbs (Senior Minister)