~ Travis Stewart

~ Recently I was reading this article in Christianity Today and resonated with the words of the author J. R. Daniel Kirk, associate professor of New Testament at Fuller Theological Seminary:

In the spring of my senior year in college, I was deeply immersed in the rhythms of Christian life. I was a leader in InterVarsity, participated regularly in a Bible study with other seminary-bound friends, set my Sundays aside for worship and rest, and read more than my fair share of extracurricular Christian books. As Easter approached, I began rehearsing the importance of Jesus’ resurrection. I knew that for Paul and the other New Testament writers, there could be no Christianity without it. Yet one day as I was walking back to my dorm, it dawned on me that the gospel as I understood it had no need for Jesus to be raised from the dead.

I can recall having a similar conversation with a friend as we discussed whether or not the fact of the resurrection needed to be included in a presentation of the Gospel message. He felt it did not while I, though uncertain, felt uncomfortable with it’s absence. Not long after that I began classes at Covenant Seminary and became convinced that my understanding (along with much of the evangelical church) of resurrection was anemic at best.

While reflecting on this memory I’ve also been reading Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde having finished it this Saturday, the day between Good Friday and Easter Sunday. As I sat on my back porch reading the last chapter of the book I was struck by how the plot of the book calls out for resurrection. This may come as a surprise to you if you, like me, have never read the book but only have your impressions from Hollywood treatments.

Dr. Jekyll is an upstanding man, respected in his community and genuine in his desire to do good. But he, like all who are honest, is haunted by his “darker desires” which are driven by selfishness and pleasure seeking. He decides that all of his suffering in life comes from the battle that is fought between his two natures. He therefore begins to experiment in order to find a way to separate his natures and thus provide relief. He believes that he can somehow completely separate himself into two; one fully good person and one evil. Thus accomplished the depraved self could pursue it’s desires without conscience and his righteous self would have no guilt.

His experiment succeeds…partially. After drinking his concoction “Mr. Hyde” materializes and though he has the intelligence and memories of Dr. Jekyll he has no need for pleasantries and has no restraint to his sin. Dr. Jekyll, on the other hand remains just as he was, a man torn between good and evil. Jekyll writes:

Strange as my circumstances were, the terms of this debate are as old and commonplace as man; much the same inducements and alarms cast the die for any tempted and trembling sinner; and it fell out with me, as it falls with so vast a majority of my fellows, that I chose the better part and was found wanting in the strength to keep to it.

After seeing what evil he can accomplish as Hyde, even murder, Jekyll does all he can in keeping his darker self at bay but finds his strongest moral effort insufficient. He does have seasons of “self-control” and remains the character of Jekyll, but that is not to last. In fact, what I found so brilliant about this story is that the most striking transformation of the story comes, not as Jekyll contemplates an outright selfish deed, but rather as he sits in a park reveling in his own moral effort to keep sin at bay:

I sat in the sun on a bench; the animal within me licking the chops of memory; the spiritual side a little drowsed, promising subsequent penitence, but not yet moved to begin. After all, I reflected, I was like my neighbours; and then I smiled, comparing myself with other men, comparing my active good-will with the lazy cruelty of their neglect. And at the very moment of that vainglorious thought, a qualm came over me, a horrid nausea and the most deadly shuddering. These passed away, and left me faint; and then as in its turn faintness subsided, I began to be aware of a change in the temper of my thoughts, a greater boldness, a contempt of danger, a solution of the bonds of obligation. I looked down; my clothes hung formlessly on my shrunken limbs; the hand that lay on my knee was corded and hairy. I was once more Edward Hyde.

From this point on the transformation between the two is no longer dependent on drinking the potion; Hyde appears without warning and creates the very struggle of the soul Jekyll was trying to avoid, tenfold. He cannot control his desires. No amount of sin-management will do. He has no power to choose a life free of evil. Now, hunted for a murder committed by Hyde and hopelessly depressed as Jekyll this man-torn-in-two despondently ends his splintered life.

So, on this Easter Sunday I again reflect on the resurrection. All Christians know the power of the cross for forgiveness of sins but many of us have missed the power and significance of the resurrection on our daily lives. Among so many significant victories the resurrection gives us, one we must not miss is the one Dr. Jekyll needed most, for in the resurrection power that now dwells in all believers, we can have release from the dance with desires. The resurrected Christ dwells in us and the same Spirit that raised him from the dead empowers our lives as well (Romans 8:11). This Spirit creates in us a new nature (2 Corinthians 5:17), one that is able to live an integrated life in which our desires and our actions flow from one motivation. Not that we do so perfectly — that will come only in eternity — but we have the resources at our disposal. As Kirk says in his article, “The fact that Jesus’ resurrection guarantees our future resurrection means that our present lives already bear signs of the future.”

Because of the resurrection of Christ, not just his death on the cross, I have hope. I have hope that my life does not need to be torn in two in a battle of desires. As I trust that what God says about me is true — that I have a new nature — I can be free to choose to love, to serve, to sacrifice for others, not out of some trumped up moral effort but by trusting the power of God in me. And as I trust I find that what is most true of me is not the man with “darker desires” but a man who loves to love and does good out of a nature that has been set free.

Read The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde online for free.