faith rises and falls on the reality of the resurrection of Jesus. No resurrection
means: no savior, no forgiveness, and no hope of a resurrected eternal life. Simply
put, if Jesus is dead, there are billions of people alive today who worship Jesus as
God who should be considered gullible and foolish. If the resurrection is not true,
Jesus is the best scam artist who ever lived! He claimed to be someone he wasn’t and
fooled the course of human history by doing so.
Although the veracity of the doctrine of the resurrection is beyond the scope of
this post, I want to ponder some broad generalities for the significance of the
resurrection.
First, everybody is religious. Whether you describe yourself as a Christian, non-
Christian, atheist, agnostic, Buddhist, etc. the truth is you are religious. The reason
there are so many religions and anti-religions in the world today is because we were
created to worship. Committed and zealous atheists are “religious” about not being
religious! They have such an unwavering devotion to disprove everything that they
prove too much, to the demise of their own worldview. The good news is that Jesus,
by his resurrection, replaced religion with himself.
Second, everybody wants the resurrection to be true. Regardless of worldview, if the
resurrection is true, it makes a lot of sense of the world. Apart from the resurrection,
apart from God’s work of restoration and redemption in Jesus, the world is cruel
and bizarre. Whether you believe in the overwhelming evidence in favor of the
resurrection or not, you have to admit, you want the resurrection to be true.
Third, the resurrection changes everything. The resurrection of Jesus had a clear
impact on the immediate context in first-century Jerusalem. People were selling
their goods, sacrificing their lives and changing the way they viewed everything.
Jesus’ resurrection wasn’t just for the good of a few people, it changed the course of
human history, and it also had eternal implications.
Finally, the resurrection changes everybody. When it is said that Jesus “rose from the
dead,” the reference is to a bodily resurrection. Jesus is not just alive in our hearts,
minds or in some spiritual resurrection; the physical body of Jesus was raised from
death to life by the power of God. The very body the Roman soldiers battered and
bloodied is the very body Jesus rules and reigns over the earth in as King. There is
an objectivity and physicality to Jesus’ resurrection. Not simply the resuscitation
of a mortal body that could die again, but a physical resurrection to the immortal
splendor of a body that would never die again. Jesus’ bodily resurrection declares
that he is the King of everything and everybody. Everybody has something or
someone functioning as the King of their life but Jesus declared himself as the only legitimate King worth serving.
“I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and
everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?”
--John 11:25-26--
by Adam Viramontes
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