The
skeptic will ask for what purpose did
Jesus rise from the dead?
To
prove the power of GOD over death.
Jesus’
resurrection was necessary, as Thomas Aquinas puts it:
1 –
To endorse GOD’s justice that “puts down the mighty from their thrones, and
exalts the lowly.” Luke 1:52;
2 –
To confirm our faith in the divinity of Christ; [Christ is fully man and fully
GOD]
3 –
To lift up our hope for our own resurrection to follow;
4 –
To reform our lives: <”knowing that Christ, having been raised from the
dead, is never to die again; death no longer is master over Him. 10 For
the death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He
lives, He lives to God. 11 Even so consider yourselves to
be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.”> Romans 6:9-11;
5 –
To bring our salvation to completion: <”He who was delivered over because
of our transgressions, and was raised because of our justification.”> Romans
4:25.i
The
resurrection of Jesus is without question the most pivotal truth to the
Christian faith! It is the hope that we
have what we have to look forward to. Jesus raised Himself from the
grave, to and above the heavens by His own power. "In the beginning
was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word God." John 1:1.
Before all other things, before anything else existed, there was
God, and there was His Word, who was God.ii
Paul gives us in Romans 1:4, “…who was declared the Son of
God with power by the resurrection from the dead,” and in
1st Corinthians 15:17-20 he makes it clear – “And if Christ has not been
raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. Then those also who
have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. If only for this life we have hope in
Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men.”
[ii] Michael Reeves,
Rejoicing in Christ, IVP, 2015
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