What the Resurrection Means for Believers

He is risen!
He is risen indeed!

 

Throughout the epistles of the New Testament, we are taught that believers are united with Christ in His death and resurrection, and that union with Christ changes things for us. Here are two glorious personal benefits come to the believer because Christ has risen.

 

• Christ’s resurrection means that we can be certain that we will be resurrected after we die:

  But now Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead also came through a man. For just as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive. But each in his own order: Christ, the firstfruits; then when Christ comes, those who belong to him. (1 Corinthians 15:20-23 NET)

  In the same way that being included with Adam brought us death, belonging to Christ assures us that we will rise again after we die. Christ’s present resurrected life is a promise to those who belong to Him that they will be brought with Him into the same resurrected life when he returns.
  
  Christ’s resurrection included the resurrection of his body and so will ours. Paul tells us that the sort of body that Christ had when he walked the earth after His resurrection and with which He ascended and now rules from heaven is the same sort of body that we will have when we are raised at His coming.

  It is the same with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable, what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. So also it is written, “The first man, Adam, became a living person”; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. However, the spiritual did not come first, but the natural, and then the spiritual. The first man is from the earth, made of dust; the second man is from heaven. Like the one made of dust, so too are those made of dust, and like the one from heaven, so too those who are heavenly. And just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, let us also bear the image of the man of heaven. (1 Corinthians 15: 42-49 NET)

  Our resurrected body will be a reproduction of the one the man of heaven has. Just as our identification with Adam brought us perishable bodies, our identification with Christ in his resurrected life will bring us imperishable bodies. The mortal will become immortal, so that we can sing along with Paul and Isaiah:

  Death has been swallowed up in victory.
  Where, O death, is your victory?
  Where, O death, is your sting? (1 Corinthians 15:55)

  This is the hope we have. We will be raised with incorruptible bodies to live forever with the One who takes us with Him in His resurrection.
  
  
• Christ’s resurrection changes things for us right now in the life we live as believers.
  

  But God, being rich in mercy, because of his great love with which he loved us, even though we were dead in transgressions, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you are saved! and he raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus.. (Ephesians 2:4-6 NET)

  The resurrected life that comes into completeness at our glorification when we receive our resurrected bodies is already within us. We have been made alive together with Christ and  a new sort of life has begun—a recreated life:

  Therefore we have been buried with him through baptism into death, in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too may live a new life. For if we have become united with him in the likeness of his death, we will certainly also be united in the likeness of his resurrection. (Romans 6:4,5 NET)

  Our new life is grounded in our association with Christ’s resurrection. Because we are in Christ, we are new creation. We have begun our lives in the realm of the resurrection and sin no longer has dominion over us: the old things have passed away and the new things have come. The changed life we have—the life in the Spirit—comes to us through our inclusion with the risen Christ; and based on this new reality, we are called to live a new kind of life.

  Therefore, if you have been raised with Christ, keep seeking the things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Keep thinking about things above, not things on the earth, for you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ (who is your life) appears, then you too will be revealed in glory with him. So put to death whatever in your nature belongs to the earth…. (Colossians 3:1-5a NET)

  We are urged to put aside the things we once loved and the passions we once followed as the old sort of person we once were. Now we have been clothed with the new person, one “that is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of the one who created it (Colossians 3:10)”; and we are called to have new loves and new passions, seeking heavenly things. We must clothe ourselves in the power of the resurrection and live according to the fruit the Spirit produces within us.
  
  As men and women of the new life, we need to “present [ourselves] to God as those who are alive from the dead and [our] members to God as instruments to be used for righteousness (Romans 6:13 NET).” We can do this knowing that there is no reason for sin to defeat us as we work out the victory over sin that has already become reality in Christ’s resurrection, a victory that will come to its consummation when we are raised with Him when He comes again.
  

Christ’s resurrection proves to all that He is Lord of all, and it is through union with His resurrection that He becomes Lord in truth to those who belong to Him.

 

 He is risen!
He is risen indeed!

 

This is the companion post to the previous old post. 

 

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.)

 
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