The Life of All Lives - Our Saviour Jesus - 9
The Resurrection of Christ
In this study we turn to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. We are not going to spend any time setting out the evidence in support of the facts. That task has been ably performed many times over. So, rather than try to prove the resurrection, we shall reflect on what the resurrection proves.
In doing so, we shall focus on two passages of Scripture: first, Romans chapter 4; secondly, Acts chapter 17.
In Romans chapter 4, we shall see that the resurrection establishes that men and women can be made right with God here and now.
In Acts chapter 17, we shall see that the resurrection proves that there is a judgment to come.
These two facts are closely linked together. If there is a judgment to come, nobody in his right mind would be careless as to how he stands before the judge on that day. And you and I have a double problem. We have a past that is unchangeable, and a future judgment that is inevitable. We need someone who can deal with our past so that we can face the future with confidence.
God’s answer is the resurrection of Jesus Christ. It is the only answer that fully meets our need and solves our double problem. Let’s think about each of them in turn.
First, we examine how God deals with our past, and in particular the problem of our sin.
In Romans chapter 4, Paul develops his great argument about justification by showing that Abraham was not justified by works, but by faith. He shows how Abraham believed the promise of God that he would have a son when he and Sarah were well past the natural age for having children. In reproductive terms, their bodies were ‘as good as dead’, but Abraham ‘did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God’. He was ‘fully persuaded that God had power to do what he had promised.’ And so it was that Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.
Then Paul goes on to teach that these words ‘it was credited to him’ were not just written for Abraham. They were also written ‘for us, to whom God will credit righteousness – for us (he promises) who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead.’
Notice carefully who is identified as the object of our faith. Paul does not speak of ‘us who believe in God’, though of course it is God of whom he is speaking. No, he speaks of ‘us who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead.’
The majority of people will tell you, when asked, that they believe in God. However, such a statement is virtually meaningless without defining the terms used. In his book ‘Does God believe in Atheists’, John Blanchard points out that in a major survey of ten countries in Western Europe, 75% of those interviewed said that they believed in God. However, when just one qualification was added – as to whether they believed in a personal God as opposed to an impersonal force – the figure dropped from 75% to 32%!
The tragedy is that when many people claim to ‘believe in God’, what they are referring to is a god of their own invention, far removed from the God who reveals Himself in the Bible. He will usually be a god who agrees with them and shares their perspective, a god who will applaud their virtues while overlooking their faults – but not necessarily other people’s. He is non-existent, but they believe in him anyway.
The Bible makes it plain that saving faith is to take God at his word, and to turn in repentance and faith to trust in God as he is revealed in Scripture – and he is there revealed as the God who ‘raised Jesus our Lord from the dead.’
At the end of Romans chapter 4, we read, ‘He was delivered over to death for our sins, and was raised to life for our justification.’ Let us not underestimate the place the resurrection plays in our salvation. If we think only in terms of the cross, we do not have the full picture. Paul puts it bluntly in 1 Corinthians chapter 15: “If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins.” The resurrection is God’s answer to our first problem: our past.
So now we turn to how the resurrection affects the future.
A God who raises the dead is enough to give anyone a sleepless night. If there is such a thing as resurrection, then who knows where it might lead? Before long, we shall be having to face up to the suggestion that we might just be accountable, and – perish the thought – that there might be a judgement!
This line of thinking is not just my rambling, which you could easily ignore. The Apostle Paul once addressed the people of Athens – and they had invented more gods than you could shake a stick at. Paul’s address is recorded in Acts chapter 17. He brought his argument to its conclusion with these words: “For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to all men by raising him from the dead.”
Now there you have it in black and white! There is a link between the resurrection of Jesus Christ in history and the judgement of the world that lies in the future. The one guarantees the other. The resurrection of Jesus Christ proves that there is a judgement to come.
Have you ever wondered why so much human ingenuity is invested in futile attempts to prove that Jesus did not really rise from the dead? Never assume that refusal to believe in the resurrection is a mark of intellectual integrity or that it arises from a position of neutrality. People reject it – whether the manner of doing so is sophisticated, or crude – because of its implications, not because of the evidence. They reach an answer before they ask the question. The resurrection means judgement. Judgement means accountability. Accountability is unpalatable. Solution: reject the Biblical truth of the resurrection.
The glory of the Gospel is that the resurrection is the solution, not the problem. Christ has paid sin’s penalty on the cross, and broken its power by his resurrection. Those who look to Him – and Him alone – for salvation can sing these well-known words with joyful conviction: “Because He lives I can face tomorrow; because He lives all fear is gone; because I know He holds the future, and life is worth the living just because He lives.”