He is risen! Three words, unimaginable significance. We don’t need a blog to be impressed by the fact that Christ Jesus, after being crucified and buried, rose from the dead. But it’s easy to be superficially impressed by the miraculous nature of this event and miss out on what the Bible reveals to us about what transpired in the resurrection. By examining what the Bible presents to us about Christ’s resurrection, we’ll gain a deeper appreciation for our unique savior, Jesus Christ.
Christ’s work on the cross dealt with all of the negative things in the universe. As we discussed in our last post, His work was thorough; nothing was left unfinished. After His crucifixion, a death that was torturous and humiliating, His burial was altogether noble; Joseph of Arimathea, a rich man, and Nicodemus, a Jewish ruler, buried Jesus in an honorable way and in accordance with Jewish custom. Three days later, He rose from the dead and walked out of the tomb.
In our post on Incarnation, we presented the verses that prove that Jesus Christ was both fully God and fully man. And in our post on Crucifixion, we demonstrated how Christ’s twofold nature was necessary for Him to accomplish His work on the cross. We’re going to take this approach again, related to Christ’s resurrection, because the Bible presents the resurrection from both the perspective of Christ being God and the perspective of Christ being man. In John 10:18, Jesus says, “No one takes [My life] away from Me, but I lay it down of Myself. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it again.” Jesus Christ is God, and as God, He had the authority to lay down His life and had the authority to take it up again. Regarding the resurrection, this means that because Christ is God, He was able to go into death and Hades, and leave of His own accord. But Jesus Christ was also a man, and as a man, we’re told in Acts 2:32, that God raised Him up. God raising Christ from the dead was His vindication of Christ’s crucifixion. The Son completed the work on the cross; it was fully finished. But when God raised Christ from the dead, it proved that God the Father fully approved and accepted Christ’s work. The resurrection was the perfect score on a type of divine final exam. The work had already been completed, but the resurrection declared it to be perfect, and this grade has huge ramifications for us.
The resurrection isn’t merely a display of divine power. It’s a kind of holy receipt. As sinners, we had been condemned to death because the wages of sin is death (Rom. 6:23). Christ Jesus was incarnated, lived a perfect human life, and died as our substitute, fully paying the price for our debt. He paid the price, but how do we know that God accepted the payment? The resurrection is our receipt. We can point to it and declare to God, Satan, and the universe that we are fully justified. Romans 4:25 says that Christ “was delivered for our offenses and was raised for our justification.” When we believe in Christ Jesus and receive Him, the primary thing that we affirm is Christ’s resurrection; Romans 10:9 tells us, “that if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.” This point alone concerning the resurrection is tremendous, but the Bible reveals so much more about this topic.
One of the most significant verses on resurrection in the Bible is John 11:25. Before raising Lazarus from the dead, and six days before His own resurrection, Jesus told a troubled Martha, “I am the resurrection and the life.” This should cause a fundamental shift in the way we think about resurrection. It’s not merely a historical event or a power, but a person. Jesus said, “I am the resurrection.“ The truth of God's word isn’t based on our ability to explain it. But when questions arise, the best practice is to use the Bible to interpret the Bible. John 1:4 tells us that “in Him was life.” The word translated as “life” in this verse is “zóé” in Greek, which is used to refer to the divine life, God’s life. Through Christ’s resurrection, we were able to receive the divine life. 1 Peter 1:3 tells us that “ [God] regenerated us unto a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.” Through the resurrection, we were regenerated, that is, we received a new life. In our post on the Crusfiction, we explored how Christ’s death as the Grain of Wheat produced us as Christ’s brothers and God’s sons. And this thought tracks perfectly with the revelation that we have received the life of God. Hebrews 2:11 says, “for both He who sanctifies and those who are being sanctified are all of One, for which cause He is not ashamed to call them brothers.” If we understand that when we received Christ, Who is resurrection, we received the life of God, then Ephesians 2:5 carries new and wonderful significance. This verse speaks of the condition before our justification and regeneration and the action God took on our behalf: “even when we were dead in offenses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved).” “Dead” in this verse does not refer to physical death, but spiritual. Which means that when we believe in Christ Jesus, we not only affirm the event of Christ’s resurrection, but also experience a personal spiritual resurrection. We were spiritually dead, but when we receive Christ Jesus, Who is resurrection, we are made alive!
We hope that the Scripture we’ve presented in this post has further uplifted your appreciation of Christ’s resurrection. Its objective magnificence is all the more marvelous when we realize its subjective impact on our lives. Our series on the person and work of Christ is coming to an end, and we hope you’ll join us for our final post as we endeavor to build “upon the foundation.”
