| Church by the Bay

Resurrection

By Ben Petersen, 03 May 2020

1 Corinthians 15 has been a wonderful reminder of how big a deal it is that God raised the Lord Jesus from the grave. Without the resurrection we don’t even have a gospel to preach, says Paul (1 Corinthians 15:13-19)! I pray that as you read through the rest of this blog you’ll be able to delight in this glorious truth even more by seeing how much of our hope hangs on it.

Resurrection and Jesus’ Kingship

The gospel can be summed up in the words 'Jesus is Lord!' It’s a cry that shouts to the whole world that Jesus is king, and rules over everyone. Paul says in Romans 1:3-4 that at his resurrection Jesus was appointed to be the Son of God in power by the Spirit. 'Son of God' here means God’s earthly king, rather than the eternal Son of God. This means that at his resurrection Jesus became the Messiah in a way that he wasn’t during his pre-crucifixion life! The key difference being that before he was crucified he was able to die, but now he’s raised he cannot die again. By this powerful appointment, the end time reign of David’s son begins. The one whose throne God promised to establish forever. He is the one who would restore God’s people. He is the one whose perfect rule will never end, because he cannot die again.

That was God people’s hope all through the Old Testament, and Paul says at the resurrection a new age began where God’s king is on his throne, as he will be for all eternity.

Resurrection and Justification

For Paul, justification (that is, God declaring us right before him) rests as much on Christ’s resurrection as it does his death. Roman 4:25 goes as far as saying 'He was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification.' The surprise is that our right status before God in some sense rests more on Jesus’ resurrection than his death. We can see how being raised is Jesus’ justification - 1 Timothy 3:16 speaks of Christ being vindicated (proven right) by the Spirit. By this logic, God justified Jesus who died as a criminal. In the resurrection he says 'This Jesus is not the criminal you killed him as. He has not failed.[1] His work on the cross worked!' And so being raised justifies Jesus, but how is it for our justification?

Romans 5 & 6 follow chapter 4! These chapters compare Adam and Jesus - the bringer of death and the giver of life. Just as sin, death and judgment come to all people because they’re descended from Adam and belong to him, so justification and life come to all those in Christ because they belong to him by faith. As we think about Easter weekend with that in mind it becomes clearer how justification and the resurrection must go hand in hand. While Jesus’ death joins him with us in our sin and our judgment, Jesus’ resurrection joins us with him in God’s verdict on him![2] God’s verdict on Jesus becomes his verdict on .

Resurrection and the New Creation

Paul compares Jesus and Adam a few times in the New Testament. As well as Romans 5, 1 Corinthians 15:20-28, and 42-49 show us something massive, just as we’ve seen recently. Everyone descended from Adam is under sin and death’s dominion. For us to be free from sin and death there needed to be a new humanity, a new human race. For a new humanity a new Adam was needed, a head of a new family. Paul preaches that Christ is the new Adam; in whom the old age of sin and death is gone, and the new age of resurrection life is here. When Jesus rose, he did so as the first member of a new humanity, like the first daffodil of the new spring. Jesus belongs to something new. That’s what Paul means when he uses the language of “firstfruits” in verse 20.

What’s different about the two humanities? The difference between the old and new is whether or not they decay and die. It’s clear from 1 Corinthians 15:49 that what happened to Jesus’ body at the resurrection is what will happen to believers when he returns and they are raised, because they are one and the same work. Paul sees Jesus had been “transformed, changed in an act of new creation through which was no longer corruptible.”[3] Death has been undone in the new man, Jesus. And we will be like him, no longer able to die, or bring death upon ourselves through sin.

This new creation work goes further still! Making a new humanity happens within the work of making a whole new creation. Tom Wright writes that Genesis 1-3 is the background for this whole chapter. Death is the one who has spoiled this good world, and God must deal with death![4] Banishing physical death, then, is part of the wider work of defeating all powers which oppose our good God and establishing His kingdom which will never fade or die. In 1 Corinthians 15:22-25 Paul stresses that all parts of that work except the resurrection of Christ are still to come, yet Christ’s resurrection is the first stage of one work. The work of creating a new heaven and a new earth.

When you think of the new creation, do you see it as something that is entirely in the future? Something that we cannot know anything of until Jesus comes again? Paul sees the new creation as in one sense having begun already in the resurrection of Jesus. Death is defeated and a new humanity has sprouted out of the ground in Jesus' resurrection. But what difference does that make to us here and now?

Resurrection life here and now

If the new creation is all future, then we would be left in a ‘gospel gap’ - living between Christ’s past resurrection and the promise of joining him, but with no change in the present. We'd be left fighting sin in our own strength: forgiven, but not able to grow. But wonderfully, while we wait for our perishable, ill, weak and natural bodies to be made like Jesus’, Paul says there is one way in which we experience Jesus’ new creation life now.

In Romans 6 we see how we’re related to Jesus’ resurrection. We were baptised into Jesus’ death and resurrection. This means that spiritually we have already been united to Jesus as he died, and as he was raised. Verse 11 tells us to 'count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus.' Spiritually we’re alive, we’re raised; no longer dead. This means that spiritually we belong to the new creation! Because of our union with Jesus in his death and resurrection we are free from sin and alive to God! 'Here the eschaton has broken into the present age” and “believers are to walk in newness of life “just as Christ was raised from the dead… Thus the call to live in newness of life is grounded in participating… in his resurrection.'[5] If Jesus’ resurrection is the beginning of the new creation, then as we put sin to death and live by his Spirit the new creation is here. You experience the new creation as you fight for patience with your kids, as you fight through the desire to watch your 5th Netflix show of the day and phone someone from your small group instead. Christian, you belong to the new creation because you are raised spiritually with Christ.

This is put even more clearly in Colossians 3:1; believers are already spiritually raised with Christ. On that basis Paul calls the Colossians to 'set hearts on things above, where Christ is.' For now, that’s where Christians’ true self is hidden, and shall be revealed when Christ returns. Then they will be raised, and their true self revealed. Paul’s aim is for the Colossians to know who they truly are, what their guaranteed end is, and for them to live fully in the light of that. What great hope for the remainder of lockdown!

Conclusion

Paul’s letters are full of the resurrection. It’s the foundation of what God gave him to preach. It’s the miracle that makes us right with God, it’s the start of Jesus’ forever-rule, and the beginning of the new creation. By being united with Christ we know something of resurrection power in our fight to kill sin.

'Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?' (1 Corinthians 15:55).

[1] Schreiner shows how this holds together with the next point in Thomas R. Schreiner, Faith Alone: The Doctrine of Justification, (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Academic, 2015), 156.
[2] Paraphrasing Richard B. Gaffin, Resurrection and Redemption: A Study in Paul’s Soteriology, 2nd ed. (Phillipsburg, N.J: Presbyterian and Reformed Pub. Co, 1987), 123.
[3] N. T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God, (London: SPCK, 2003), 361.
[4] N. T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God, 361.
[5] Thomas R. Schreiner, Romans: B E C N T (Grand Rapids, Mich: Baker Academic, 1998) 311.