Resurrection as the Love of God for Creation and Created Human Beings

"One of the distinctive doctrines of the Christian faith is the resurrection of the body—both the raising of Jesus three days after his crucifixion and the expected resurrection of believers at the end of the age. Indeed, it was the centrality of the resurrection that served to distinguish orthodox Christian faith from gnostic interpretations in the first centuries of the early church. Whereas the variant ancient traditions that came to be called “gnosticism” are suspicious of materiality (thus denying God’s direct creation of the cosmos, as well as the importance of the incarnation and the resurrection), orthodox faith wholeheartedly affirms that God loves this world he made, became flesh in the man Jesus, and is committed to redeeming the created order, with resurrection being central to that redemption" (J. Richard Middleton, A New Heaven and a New Earth, 131).