Resurrection

The Bible tells us that Jesus lived and died for our justification. But how do we know that the sacrifice satisfied God? How do we know that that perfect sacrifice on the cross was acceptable to God? How do we know that this offering of propitiation actually yielded propitiation with the Father? In Romans chapter 5, the apostle Paul says, For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. This week on Renewing Your Mind, we are celebrating the turning point of history, the death and resurrection of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. And the question that Dr. R.C.

Sproul just raised is central to his message today. How do we know that Christ's sacrifice was acceptable to God? We continue now with our study of the work of Christ in our last session. We considered briefly His atoning death on the cross, and today we're going to look at the resurrection. And it may seem a little bit strange to speak of the resurrection of Christ as part of His work because the whole event of His resurrection was one in which Jesus was completely passive. He didn't raise Himself from the dead, but rather He was raised by the power of the Holy Ghost from the dead. Now, to understand what went on there in the resurrection, the first thing we have to realize is that when Jesus died on the cross, He was really dead. And when He was buried buried in the tomb, He was really dead. This was an occasion where the body of Jesus was now a corpse. His soul had left His body and was with the Father, but His physical corpse was placed in the tomb. And in the case of that corpse as well as with any other corpse, there was no heartbeat. There were no brainwaves.

There was no blood pulsating through His veins. He was dead. And as a dead man in His humanity, He was utterly powerless to do any significant work. And yet, we speak of the resurrection as part of the vitally important work of Christ. Now, to understand that, let me take a moment to look at Paul's statement of these matters in 1 Corinthians chapter 15, beginning at verse 20, where Paul writes these words, But now Christ is risen from the dead, and has become the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since by man came death, by man also came the resurrection of the dead. As in Adam all die, even so in Christ all shall be made alive, but each one in his own order. Christ the firstfruits, afterwards those who are Christ's at His coming, and then comes the end, when He delivers the kingdom of God the Father, when He puts an end to all rule and all authority and power.

For He must reign till He has put all enemies under His feet, and then the last enemy that will be destroyed is death, for He has put all things under His feet. And so, in this portion of the apostolic interpretation of the significance of the resurrection, we see the idea that we looked at earlier in this series of the link between Jesus and Adam in the function of Christ as the new Adam, or as the second Adam. The first Adam brought death into the world. The new Adam brings resurrection from the dead. And so, the supreme enemy that afflicts human life, death itself, is triumphed over with the resurrection.

Here we see Christus Victor, Christ the victor, not only over Satan, not only over sin, but He is victorious over death itself, and not simply for Himself. But what the apostle tells us here is that He becomes the firstfruits, so that in the resurrection, God doesn't just raise up Jesus from the dead, but He also raises up all who are in Christ who will participate in that triumph over death. That's why the resurrection of Christ is so important to the Christian faith, the fact that we join together for worship every Sunday instead of Friday, because Christ was raised from the dead on Sunday.

We call that the Lord's Day, and that has become the new Sabbath, the new guarantee of everlasting life for all of those who put their trust in Him. But let's go back now to the resurrection itself. As I said, the body of Jesus was utterly passive. You may see an analogy with Lazarus whom Jesus raised. When Lazarus was raised from the dead, Lazarus contributed nothing to it. You recall that Lazarus had been dead for four days, and when Christ came and raised him from the dead, how did he do it? He didn't go into the tomb and give mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, nor did he plead with the corpse and coax the corpse and say, come on, Lazarus, get yourself together.

No. Instead, he called with a loud voice, saying, Lazarus, come forth. And at the command of the Son of God, this dead body came to life. And I use that analogy because you go back to the dawn of creation, and how was the whole universe brought into being? How did life come to pass in the first place? Through the chance collision of atoms in this ultimate slime?

No. But through the divine imperative, by the command of the eternal of the eternal God, the omnipotent one who said, let there be light. And the lights came on. The sheer power of his command was what it took to bring life into reality in the first place and what it took to bring Lazarus back from the dead. The same power of God, the Holy Spirit, who hovered over the waters in the beginning to bring forth the gestation of all things. So, that same Spirit now comes into the tomb where the corpse of Jesus is situated and bound with the gravecloths of linen. And the Spirit of God raises him from the dead.

You think about it. Early that Sunday morning, suddenly the eyelids flutter, the brain waves begin, the heart starts to beat, the blood starts to course through the veins of the slain Jesus. And in the power of the Holy Ghost, he comes out of those gravecloths, out of the state of death and comes out alive, victorious over death. It's an interesting comment that the New Testament makes about the resurrection of Jesus that so many people believe is the ultimate unbelievable miracle. The people in the secular world, the skeptics, says if there's anything we know for sure is that when people die, they stay dead. And so, if there's anything mythological about Christianity, it's the central tenet of the resurrection because they say such an event is simply impossible. And yet the New Testament looks at it from a completely different perspective and says it was not possible for death to hold him. Death had no claim over him.

Death is the punishment that God gives to living beings for sin. But Jesus was sinless. Now of course, when He took our sin by imputation on the cross, He was filled with sin but not of His own. And His own inherent sinlessness gives no authority to death to contain Him.

So, impossible? Then it says it's impossible that He wouldn't be raised from the dead. How can death hold a sinless human being?

It can't. And so, Jesus is vindicated in this act of resurrection. The New Testament tells us that Jesus was raised for our justification.

Isn't that strange? He lived for our justification. He died for our justification. But He also was raised for our justification. So, that whole process by which we are made right with God in justification rests upon the person of Jesus through His life, His death, and His resurrection.

Why? How does the resurrection bear upon our justification? Well, suppose that all that Jesus did was to live a life of perfect obedience, which we've considered, plus offering Himself as a perfect sacrifice once and for all in His deaths. But how do we know that the sacrifice satisfied God? How do we know that that perfect sacrifice on the cross was acceptable to God? How do we know that this offering of propitiation actually yielded propitiation with the Father? In the resurrection, the Father says that He receives the perfect sacrifice of Christ.

He accepts it as His work of justifying the ungodly. The Father is saying in the resurrection, I am satisfied, and removes the curse from us in the resurrection from the dead. Later on here in 1 Corinthians, in verse 42, so also is the resurrection of the dead. The body, that's our bodies, any body, is sown in corruption.

It is raised in incorruption. Again, it was made most vivid with the burial of Lazarus, Lazarus. We're told that after the four days that there was this terrible aroma escaping from the tomb, the old King James said, He stinketh. The stench that goes with the corruption of the flesh was part of the reality of the death and the burial of Lazarus. Why did the women go to the tomb early on Sunday morning except to bring their ointments and their perfume to anoint the body of a man who in death would begin to see corruption? And so, the body is put into the grave.

It's sown in corruption. But when Jesus is raised from the dead, it wasn't just a resuscitation. It wasn't just as He was before He died. He went into the tomb, and now God raises Him from the dead, and He comes out in the same shape He was before.

No. Yes, there was continuity between the body that went in there and the body that came out. It was the same body. And it was still identifiable by the marks of the nails, and the sword, and the like.

It could be recognized. But there was also a dramatic change in the body of our Lord from the time He went into the tomb and the time that He came out. When He came out in resurrection, it's not simply that His former body was restored.

No. His former body was glorified. And again, listen to how Paul describes it. It's sown in corruption and corruptibility. It's raised in incorruption. The body that came out of that tomb could never, ever suffer decay or corruption in the flesh. Our bodies, when they come out of the tomb in our resurrection, will never again deteriorate. They will never again be subject to the ravages of time and of disease.

They will be incorruptible. The body is sown in dishonor. It's raised in glory.

We've seen along this study that Christ's life followed the pattern of humiliation that moved in the direction relentlessly towards exaltation. And even the body of Jesus was sown in dishonor, humility, crucified, but it is raised in glory. You know, I don't know what a glorified human body looks like, but I know it's different from what our bodies are now. Earlier again, the Apostle Paul had said, all flesh is not the same flesh. There's one kind of flesh of men, another flesh of animals, another fish, another of birds.

There are also celestial bodies and terrestrial bodies. But the glory of the celestial is one. The glory of the terrestrial is another. There's one glory for the sun, another glory of the moon, another glory of the stars, for one star differs from another star in glory.

We see gradations, degrees of glory all around us, but what we haven't seen is glorified humanity. And that's what came out of the tomb. Sown in dishonor, raised in glory.

He goes on. It is sown in weakness. You know, the Bible extols our creation. The psalmist says we are fearfully and wonderfully made. And sometimes, you know, when I reflect on my own life of over seven decades, I'm sometimes surprised to say, how can this frail body have survived seventy years in this world, on this planet, with all the diseases, all the accidents, all the things that take place? Don't you ever wonder about that, that how you could have lived this long because you're that close to death every second, a heartbeat away, because our bodies are fundamentally weak. They do not have the capacity to sustain themselves indefinitely.

As far as living forever, we're utterly impotent in our natural condition. We're sown in weakness. Just as Jesus' body was put in the tomb in the weakness of human flesh, but the body that came out left that weakness behind. The body that came out came out in power and in strength. There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body. And so it is written, the first man, Adam, became a living being. The last Adam became a life-giving spirit.

However, the spiritual is not first, but the natural, and afterward the spiritual. The first man was of the earth, made of the dust. The second man is the Lord from heaven. And as was the man of dust, so also are those who are made of the dust, and as is the heavenly man, so also are those who are heavenly. And as we have borne the image of the man of the dust, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly man. Here's the crux of the work of Christ in the resurrection, that He gives us a new humanity, that He restores the original image of God in His people and has prepared them to live forever. Now, Paul concludes by saying, Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood can't inherit the kingdom of God, nor does corruption inherit incorruption.

But behold, I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed. In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet, for the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For the corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. So, when this corruptible has put on incorruption, and the mortal has put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, death is swallowed up in victory. Death is devoured, consumed consumed by victory. O death, where is your sting now? O Hades, where is your victory?

The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through the Lord Jesus Christ. That's the point of His work, is that He is raised by the Father, by the power of the Spirit, not simply for His own vindication, but He is raised for us.

He may be the first to be raised in this manner, being brought forth in a glorified state, but He is by no means the last. Everyone who is in Christ Jesus will share in this resurrected glory. This is our hope. This is at the very heart and center of the Christian faith. This is our hope. The resurrection proved beyond a shadow of a doubt the true and lasting identity of Jesus. The apostle Paul wrote that Jesus was declared to be the Son of God in power, according to the Spirit of holiness, by His resurrection from the dead. You know, as we look forward to Easter Sunday, this is our hope.

This is our hope. The message we just heard is from Dr. R.C. Sproul's series, What Did Jesus Do? Understanding the Work of Christ. In 12 messages, R.C. examines how Jesus lived a perfect life, which made Him worthy of dying for our sins, and how His death appeased the Father's wrath.

I read that in the New Testament, and I read that in the New Testament, and I read that in the New Testament, and I read that in the New Testament, and I read that in the New Testament, and I read that in the New Testament, and I read that in the New Testament. I recommend this series to you, and we'll send it to you. It's a two-DVD set when you contact us today with a donation of any amount to Ligonier Ministries. You can find us online at renewingyourmind.org, or if you prefer, you can call us with your gift at 800-435-4343. Also, be sure to check your Ligonier Learning Library, where you'll find the digital files for the series ready for viewing once your donation is complete.

That way, you can watch the messages this week as you prepare for Easter and while you wait for the DVDs to arrive. Again, the title of the series is, What Did Jesus Do? Understanding the Work of Christ.

Our web address again is renewingyourmind.org, and our phone number is 800-435-4343. We hope to hear from you. You know, I treasure the many times I was able to interview R.C., and among the many things I asked him over the years was, what did Jesus mean when He said, I am the resurrection and the life? Well, I think it means that He in His resurrection, as the Bible tells us, is the firstborn of many brethren, that the power of the resurrection is found in Him. He says, I am the resurrection and the life, and then in the book of Revelation, it appears I was the one who was dead, and now I'm alive, and that He communicates the power of resurrected life to all of those who are His, and because He rose from the dead, we will as well. And that's the wonderful good news of the gospel. We'll continue Dr. Sproul's series tomorrow as he describes the events that mark Christ's return to glory, the ascension. I hope you'll join us Wednesday for Renewing Your Mind. you