Hmmm.......The meaning of Jesus the Son of God's resurrection is not that 'better days are ahead of us'.
The significance of resurrection of our Lord is first to be seen in the uniqueness of His resurrection from the dead. There are several facets of the uniquesness of the resurrection of our Lord which we shall focus on:
(1) The resurrection of our Lord was unique because of His deity. The significance in the event of the resurrection is intertwined with the significance of the person who was raised. It was no mere mortal who rose from the dead on that Easter morning, it was the Son of God. Throughout His life, Jesus had claimed to be the Son of God, for which reason the religious leaders sought to put Him to death (cf. John 8:31-59). At the sight of our Lord’s death, a soldier standing nearby declared, “Truly this man was the Son of God!” (Mark 15:39). Beyond this, the resurrection was proof positive that the Lord Jesus was the Son of God, even as He had declared (cf. Rom. 1:3-4).
In his message on the resurrection of Christ, one of Peter’s arguments was that if the Lord Jesus was indeed God, it would be impossible for God to have remained dead, to decompose in a tomb (cf. Acts 2:24-32). For anyone to have been raised from the dead would have been significant; for the Son of God to have been raised is all the more so. One therefore cannot take the resurrection of our Lord too seriously.
(2) The resurrection of our Lord was unique because of the death which preceded and necessitated His resurrection. The death of Christ was the death of one who was sinless, on behalf of those who were sinners. Over the years there have been some who have sought to show that the death of Christ was less noble than it is. A few have thought that it was our Lord’s own folly that brought about His death. After all, they might say, He made ridiculous claims to be God Himself, and He persistently offended the religious leaders by publicly attacking and ridiculing them. No wonder He died, some would say, because this “man” did not have the sense to recognize his own humanity or the diplomacy to pacify the power structure of that day.
Most men would not dare to go so far, but would rather look upon the death of Christ as a great tragedy. It was not our Lord’s folly, but the “fickle hand of fate” or the “evil plots of a few threatened men” which brought about the premature death of Jesus, before He could establish His ideal kingdom on earth.
The death of Christ was unique, however, because it was a part of God’s eternal plan that Christ would die as an innocent sacrificial lamb, as a substitute payment for the sins of men. The sacrifices of the Old Testament system anticipated Him who was to come as the “Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world” (John 1:29; cf. I Cor. 5:7). From eternity past, Christ was designated as the perfect sacrifice, without spot or blemish, whose death could thus atone for the sins of others (Is. 53; Heb. 9:11-14; 1 Pet. 1:18-20; 2:21-25).
(3) The resurrection of our Lord was unique as an event which had no precedent.1 Never before had anyone been raised from the grave in such a way as to be completely transformed and thus beyond the icy fingers of death. Our Lord’s resurrection was the first genuine resurrection in the history of man. His resurrection is referred to as “the first fruits,” for there will be many who will follow after Him (1 Cor. 15:23).
The Necessity
of our Lord’s Resurrection
The resurrection of Jesus Christ is significant because of its necessity. There are several reasons why the resurrection was necessary, and we shall consider some of them below.
(1) The resurrection of Christ was necessary to prove that Jesus Christ was who He claimed to be. Our Lord had clearly claimed to be the son of God, which was the reason why the religious leaders conspired to kill Him (cf. John 19:7). The resurrection was God’s proof that the Lord Jesus was Who He claimed to be: the Son of God:
Who was declared with power to be the Son of God by the resurrection from the dead, according to the Spirit of holiness, Jesus Christ our Lord (Romans 1:4).
(2) The resurrection of Christ was necessary to prove that Jesus Christ had accomplished what He had promised. The death of our Lord alone would not have sufficed, since it is by our identification with Him in His death, burial, and resurrection that we are saved.
Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through Him. For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life (Rom. 5:9-10).
In 1 Corinthians chapter 15, that great resurrection chapter of the New Testament, Paul argues that apart from Christ’s resurrection, we would have no hope:
But if there is no resurrection of the dead, not even Christ has been raised; and if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is vain, your faith also is vain. . . . For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised; and if Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless; you are still in your sins (1 Cor. 15:13-14; 16-17).
In his message at Pentecost, Peter taught that the resurrection of Christ by the Father (through the Holy Spirit) was God’s vindication of His Son, His message, and His work:
“This Man, delivered up by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God, you nailed to a cross by the hands of godless men and put Him to death. And God raised Him up again, putting an end to the agony of death, since it was impossible for Him to be held in its powers. . . .
This Jesus God raised up again, to which we are all witnesses. Therefore having been exalted to the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, He has poured forth this which you both see and hear. . . . Therefore let all the house of Israel know for certain that God has made Him both Lord and Christ--this Jesus whom you crucified” (Acts 2:23-24, 32-33, 36).
(3) The resurrection was a necessary in order to fulfill biblical prophecy. In Acts chapter 2 Peter argued that the resurrection was biblically necessary, citing David’s words in Psalm 16:10:
“Because Thou wilt not abandon my soul to Hades, Nor allow Thy Holy One to undergo decay” (Acts 2:27; cf. 13:33).
Peter argued from Psalm 16 that David could not have referred to himself, but rather to his Son, Messiah, whom God would raise from the dead. The Old Testament Scriptures were understood by the apostles to foretell the resurrection of Christ. The resurrection of Christ was thus a biblical necessity.
(4) The resurrection of Christ was also a logical necessity. In his message in the second chapter of Acts, Peter also contended that the resurrection of Christ, the Messiah, was a logical as well as a biblical necessity.
“And God raised Him up again, putting an end to the agony of death, since it was impossible for Him to be held in its power” (Acts 2:24).
Peter argued here that it is impossible for God to remain in the grave and to decay, as men do. By virtue of being God, Christ could not have been left in that tomb, dead.
(5) The resurrection of Christ is vital because it is a necessary element of a saving faith. In both the Old and the New Testaments, a saving faith was a faith in a God’s who could and would raise men from the dead. A careful study of the 11th chapter of Hebrews will indicate that the faith of Old Testament saints was a resurrection faith.2
Allow me to use one Old Testament figure to demonstrate the resurrection dimension of faith, the faith of Abraham. The initial absence of this kind of faith is apparent from Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his wife’s purity in order to save his own skin. As Abram and Sarai approached Egypt, he said to her,
“See now, I know that you are a beautiful woman; and it will come about that when the Egyptians see you, that they will say, ‘This is his wife’; and they will kill me, but they will let you live. Please say that you are my sister so that it may go well with me because of you, and that I might live on account of you” (Gen. 12:11-13).
This was far from a resurrection faith on Abraham’s part. He was so fearful of dying that he was willing to sacrifice his wife’s purity to save his own skin.
As God continued to work in Abraham’s life, a resurrection faith resulted. When God promised Abram and Sarai a son in their old age, Abraham believed God because he had come to possess a saving, resurrection faith. Paul writes about Abraham’s faith in his epistle to the Romans:
And without becoming weak in faith he contemplated his own body, now as good as dead since he was about a hundred years old, and the deadness of Sarah’s womb; yet, with respect to the promise of God, he did not waver in unbelief, but grew strong in faith, giving glory to God, and being fully assured that what He had promised, He was able also to perform. Therefore also it was reckoned to him as righteousness (Romans 4:19-20).3
Abraham’s resurrection was put to its most crucial test, once again pertaining to his son. The writer to the Hebrews tells us,
By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac; and he who had received the promises was offering up his only begotten son; it was he to whom it was said, “In Isaac your seed shall be called.” He considered that God is able to raise men even from the dead; from which he also received him back as a type (Hebrews 11:17-19).
Thus we can see that the faith of the Old Testament saints was a resurrection faith. So, too, the faith of the New Testament believer must be a resurrection faith. Jesus said,
“I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in Me shall live even if he dies, and everyone who lives and believes in Me shall never die. Do you believe this?” (John 11:25-26)
The apostle Paul wrote:
. . . if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you shall be saved (Rom. 10:9).
Personal faith in the resurrection of Christ is therefore necessary because it is a vital element in a faith that leads to salvation.
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