There is no true Christianity without the knowledge of the Cross and the Resurrection power. Jesus’ Resurrection proves that the grave is not the final chapter of human existence. Jesus’s Resurrection gives forgiven life. Nations and churches are decaying and declining because of a lack of knowledge and experience of Jesus as the ONLY Saviour and His resurrection power. A ‘post-Christian’ society is a missional opportunity to know Jesus and His Power of Resurrection hence, a call away from idolatrous compromises and mere conservation of structures. Knowing Jesus and His Power of Resurrection summons us towards an ‘ever-growing biblical fidelity.’ Like the three women in the Scripture, upon seeing the empty tomb, no one is given an experience of the Power of Resurrection without being sent on the mission. Resurrection power is something that when it is known and experienced, ‘we should be off and running to share this startlingly Good News with others.’ We have a missional example in Paul, whose goal is to “know Him” (Phil 3:10). Power comes from knowledge, and indeed knowledge is more significant and determines the measure of our Power. Knowing Jesus and the Power of His Resurrection is counter-cultural to a ‘post-Christian’ society. 

Beyond a deformed “Christianity” shaped by a ‘Constantinian trajectory, marked by the heresy of confusing and conflating state and church, religion, and politics … Christian identity and national identity, the Bible places a premium on knowing who God is. Beyond its extension of Christianity as much as a rejection of it, the Enlightenment points us to the consequences of forgetting and denying the truths about knowing Jesus and His Power of Resurrection. Under a proselytizing secularism that seeks to banish religion from public life, the church points to its colonisation ‘into a single community based on the universal enjoyment of appropriate human rights.’ While the Bible tells us that it is not about how smart, wise, and rich you are, a ‘post-Christian’ society is materialistic and technologically oriented (Jer. 9:23-24). 

Gene Veith’s book, Post-Christian: A Guide to Contemporary Thought and Culture, explained that “post-Christian” is not ‘the evolution of the postmodern but the blending of modernism and postmodernism into a new anti-Christian posture.’ He says, “Modernism, with its scientific materialism and trust in evolutionary progress, is post-Christian. So is postmodernism with its relativistic mindset.” The ‘post-Christian’ society as ‘an aggregate of all forms of present-day alternative worldviews to the Christian one’ is to colonise the church with its modernist traits and postmodern trends. In all the ‘post-Christian’ several versions, combinations, and attempts in deconstructing and redefining realities, knowing Jesus and His Power of Resurrection rekindle a one-line creed within us: “Jesus is Lord.” All the Good Fridays of our lives and that of ‘post-Christian’ society to colonise the church cannot stop believers knowing Jesus or destroy His Power of Resurrection.

In one of his hymns, “Knowing You, Jesus, knowing You,” Graham Kendrick points us to the theme of knowing, sharing in Christ’s suffering, and dying and rising with Him. Kendrick also points to some elements of a ‘post-Christian’ society, especially all that we once held dear and built our lives upon, “All this world reveres, and wars to own.”

All I once held dear built my life upon

 All this world reveres and wars to own

 All I once thought gain I have counted loss

 Spent and worthless now, compared to this.

Knowing you, Jesus

 Knowing you, there is no greater thing

 You’re my all, you’re the best

 You’re my joy, my righteousness

 And I love you, Lord.

Now my heart desires to know you more

 To be found in you and known as yours

 To possess by faith what I could not earn

 All-surpassing gift of righteousness.

Oh, to know the Power of your risen life

 And to know You in Your sufferings

 To become like you in your death, my Lord

 So with you to live and never die.

The Bible tells us that the thing worth boasting about is knowledge of the Holy God, who practices steadfast love and righteousness on earth. This contrasts with a ‘post-Christian’ society, an age of science and reason shaped by declined and compromised institutionalised religions devoid of a true sense of transcendence and spiritual and eternal fulfillment. In a ‘post-Christian’ society where institutionalised religions have migrated to other forms of spirituality, ‘this migration of spirituality from the ‘religious’ to the ‘secular’ has led to a change in the meaning of spirituality, as popularly conceived’ rather than Jesus’ Resurrection powered. Among the consequences of post-Christian changes and redefinitions in the meaning of Christian traditions and spirituality shaped by popular culture is to kill, destroy, and steal the Power of Resurrection, thereby colonising the church as a puppet instead of being prophetic. Post-Christian society colonises the church through its divide and rule agenda among the body of Christ and developing nations.

Knowing Jesus results in the delight of Jesus. While echoing what the Scripture has been saying about knowing Jesus and His Power of Resurrection, Paul implies an encounter, an experience of the resurrection power. Resurrection is not head knowledge (Phil 3:10). It is a matter of the human heart dead to sin and alive in righteousness. This is what John Wesley called a ‘warmed heart.’ Knowing Jesus tells us that His Resurrection joined heaven and earth, just as a piece of earth entered heaven, a piece of heaven on earth too. The working and experience of resurrection power in us result from being born again (Eph. 1:16-20). To know Jesus is to treasure Him. 

Everything, including our ‘post-Christian’ society, which is not Christ-centred, is worthless and, using Paul’s words, is “dung.” Dallán Forgaill and Van Morrison, writers of the hymn “Be Thou My Vision,” points us to the treasure of knowing Jesus and the Power of His Resurrection:

“Be thou my vision, O Lord of my heart;

 Naught be all else to me, save that thou art –

 Thou my best thought, by day or by night;

 Waking or sleeping, thy presence my light. ” 

“Riches I heed not, nor vain, empty praise;

 Thou mine inheritance, now and always;

 Thou and thou only first in my heart,

 High King of heaven, my treasure thou art.”