What the Resurrection Says to the World

He is risen!
He is risen indeed!

 

While Christ’s resurrection has special significance for those who are united to the resurrected Christ through faith, his resurrection also sends a message about Jesus Christ to everyone, believer and unbeliever alike.

• The resurrection is evidence that Jesus is the Promised One.
  David prophesied that the Messiah would not see corruption, and at Pentecost, the apostle Peter tells us this prophesy is fulfilled by the resurrection of Jesus: 

  … [T]he patriarch David … [b]eing therefore a prophet, … foresaw and spoke about the resurrection of the Christ, that he was not abandoned to Hades, nor did his flesh see corruption. This Jesus God raised up, and of that we all are witnesses. Being therefore exalted at the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured out this that you yourselves are seeing and hearing… .

   

  Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified. (Acts 2: 29-36 ESV)

  It is because Jesus was raised that we can “know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ.” His resurrection confirms his fulfillment of messianic prophesy, proving that he is the long awaited Promised One.
   
• The resurrection declares that Jesus is the Son of God in power.
  Jesus was born in weakness, and during his earthly ministry and perfect obedience unto death, we see his human frailty; but with the resurrection, a new phase of Jesus’ human existence has dawned. In his resurrection, Jesus is shown to be the Son of God in power. Paul tells us that Jesus was

  …descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord… (Romans 1:3,4 ESV)

  The resurrection announces to the world that Jesus Christ, who came and lived and died as one of us, has now been appointed to a position of power and authority.


• The resurrection is proof that Jesus is appointed Judge of All.
  The apostle Paul told the people of Athens that Jesus’ resurrection gives assurance to all people everywhere that he is the one whom God has appointed to judge the world:

  The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead. (Acts 17:30, 31 ESV)

  We know Jesus Christ is the Judge of All because he has been raised, and the only reasonable response to the surety of this promise of judgment by Christ is repentance.

The Jesus of history is not just another prophet or teacher or humble servant, but the Promised One, the Son of God in power, and God’s appointed Judge of All.  We can know these things for certain becaise they have been verifired by the historical resurrection.

 

The resurrection calls all people to respond by turning from rebellion against Christ to reverance of him.  The resurrection calls everyone to affirm this universal message: Jesus Christ has been made Ruler of All and is declared before all as worthy of worship. The resurrection  is confirmation to all people that

God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Philippians 2:9-11 ESV)

 

He is risen!
He is risen indeed!

 

 This is an old Easter post from the old blog, but I wanted to have it here, too, and it seems like now’s a good time to repost it.

 

O Sacred Head, Now Wounded

O sacred Head, now wounded,

With grief and shame weighed down;
Now scornfully surrounded
With thorns, thine only crown;
O sacred Head, what glory,
What bliss till now was thine!
Yet, though despised and gory,
I joy to call thee mine.

What thou, my Lord, hast suffered
Was all for sinners’ gain:
Mine, mine was the transgression,
But thine the deadly pain.
Lo, here I fall, my Saviour!
‘Tis I deserve thy place;
Look on me with thy favor,
Vouchsafe to me thy grace.

What language shall I borrow
To thank thee, dearest Friend,
For this thy dying sorrow,
Thy pity without end?
O make me thine for ever;
And should I fainting be,
Lord, let me never, never
Outlive my love to thee.

Be near when I am dying,
O show thy cross to me;
And for my succor flying,
Come, Lord, to set me free:
These eyes, new faith receiving,
From Jesus shall not move;
For he who dies believing,
Dies safely, through thy love.

—Bernard of Clairvaux (Listen.)

 
You’ll find more Good Friday reading and listening in A Few Good Reads at the top of the sidebar. 

Purposes of Christ's Death: Galatians 3:13-14

This is yet another repost from the Purposes of Christ’s Death series. You can find the other posts from this series by clicking on the purposes of Christ’s death label at the end of this post.

In this post in the series looking at the explicit purpose statements for Christ’s death found in scripture, let’s consider Galations 3:13-14:

Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us (because it is written, “Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree”) in order that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham would come to the Gentiles, so that we could receive the promise of the Spirit by faith. (NET)

The purpose statement found here for Christ’s death—or for Christ becoming a curse for us—is “in order that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham would come to the Gentiles, so that we could receive the promise of the Spirit by faith.”

What exactly does it mean when it refers to the blessing of Abraham? We can find the answer in the text just prior to these verses:

And the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, proclaimed the gospel to Abraham ahead of time, saying, “All the nations will be blessed in you.” (v. 8)

God promised Abraham that through his lineage blessing would come to the Gentiles. Verse 14 tells us that the promise to Abraham that all the nations would be blessed in him was the promise of the coming of the Spirit to those of faith.

The law, which contained promised blessing to those who kept it, also contained a curse for all those who didn’t keep it, and so it became a universal curse upon mankind, for there was no one (except Christ himself, of course) who kept the law. All human beings, both Jew and Gentile, find themselves with a curse hanging over them because of their disobedience to the demands of the law. In Christ’s death on the cross, he bore the curse of the law that we earned for ourselves by not keeping the law.

This is one of the clearest references in scripture to the substitutionary nature of Christ’s death. Christ’s death accomplished what it did because He became a curse for us. This text calls Christ’s vicarious bearing of our curse an act of redemption for us.

These two verses are set within the context of Paul’s contrast of the Spirit over against the law. While everyone has earned the curse of the law, those in Christ Jesus, both Jew and Gentile, receive the blessing promised to Abraham instead when they receive the Spirit by faith.

In these verses we see that one of the purposes of Christ’s death was the fulfilling of the promise to Abraham that the nations would be blessed in him, and this promise was fulfilled in the coming of the Spirit through faith, and this coming of the Spirit is grounded in Christ’s bearing of the law’s curse in our place.