Lord s Day 17 Dear children of God, brothers and sisters in Christ, and guests, He has risen from the dead and He is king! That s our conviction, that s the truth. And yet, right after it happened, it was doubted, it was denied. And the doubt, we can understand it. But that doesn t make it right. The Lord Jesus had said, more than once, prior to His death, that He would come to life again. We read in Mark 16 how the Lord Jesus rebuked them for their lack of faith and their stubborn refusal to believe those who had seen Him after He had risen. Rebuked them. Those who deny the resurrection of the Christ are to be rebuked Years, decades later, there were again those who could not believe in the bodily resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. This in spite of the proclamation of the Gospel by the apostles. Some in the Christian Church of Corinth denied the wisdom and possibility of a bodily resurrection. When Paul wrote this church a letter, he wrote a long piece on the reality and necessity of the resurrection that s 1 Corinthians 15. And yet, even today there are still people to do who want to be called Christians and yet deny the physical, the bodily resurrection of our Lord. How can a person come to life again? Isn t dead, dead? But the resurrection of Christ is a fact. Boys and girls, Jesus came back to life again, there are three clear proofs for this. First of all, the grave, the tomb, was empty. The empty grave is an issue for all. It was an issue for the Jews. They had done their utmost to ensure that the grave could not be emptied. The entryway was sealed. A guard was placed. Also the friends of Jesus find the empty grave an issue. No one realizes that Jesus had come to life. Some of the disciples even go to the grave to reassure themselves that the grave indeed is empty. When they come there, they see the linens still lying there. This suggests that Jesus had indeed come to life. If someone had come to steal the body, they would not have left the linens behind. The empty grave speaks volumes. Secondly, there were angels by the grave. They tell that Jesus of Nazareth has risen from the dead. Angels, residents of heaven who have been sent by God to earth to pass on a special message. They also explain that Jesus will go to Galilee. This implies that the Lord Jesus is somewhere in the vicinity in His body. The angels make explicit what the implications of the empty grave are. Finally, the Lord Jesus Himself appears to His followers. For the first two proofs are insufficient. More is needed. Jesus needs to change His plans because His followers don t understand. Jesus meets the women. He meets Mary Magdalene, a friend so distraught she does not even recognize Jesus at first. The same is true for the two people who were travelling to Emmaus, quite possibly an uncle and aunt of Jesus. Then there was Peter. Then all the disciples that evening, all except for Thomas. A week later Thomas was there, and he was invited to touch the Christ. The resurrection of the Christ is real, it s a fact. Christ came to life again, in the same body. A body that could deal with food. A body that could be touched. A body that still bore the marks of the crucifixion. The resurrection truly happened. And this truth we, as Christian Church, confess. We confess it this Easter morning. But it s more than just a fact. It s a fact that has significance. When we read 1 Corinthians 15 we notice how Paul stresses the importance of the resurrection. Not only Christ s death has significance for our eternal well-being, Christ s resurrection does as well. It s the importance, the
relevance, the significance of the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ that will have our attention this morning. We listen to God s instruction on the resurrection of the Christ with this theme: The Christ who died lives forever. He arose (1) to safeguard our justification; (2) to start our sanctification; and (3) confirm to us our glorification. 1) The Christ arose to safeguard our justification. In Romans 4:25 we read that Christ was delivered over to death for our sins and was raise to life for our justification. This statement implies a connection between the resurrection of our Saviour and our justification. Justification is the process of justifying, of making clear, of stating that someone is not guilty as charged. In terms of us and God it means that God does not hold us accountable for our sins, be it our transgressions, the things we should not be doing but have done, or our shortcomings, the things we should be doing but don t do. And not just our sins, also our sinful nature, for we not only do sin, we are sin. Justification happens on the grounds of Christ s work. Christ is held responsible for my sins and I am considered responsible for Christ s innocence and good works. Justification: we commonly refer to it as God forgiving us our sins. Romans 4 indicates that Christ was raised for our justification. That may sound puzzling, as we are used to associating justification with the death of Christ. The death of Christ is the payment for our sins. It is His suffering, especially on the cross, Him dying both in body and soul, that satisfies the wrath of God. When we think forgiveness we think the cross. So what is the relationship between the resurrection and our justification? Why do we, for example, read in 1 Corinthians 15:17: If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins? It s because of the relationship there is between sins and death. Remember, boys and girls, how God said to Adam and Eve that they would die if they disobeyed God? Last week we reviewed how death is more than just physical death. Death, in its deepest and most complete sense, means to be cut off from God. It means dying spiritually living a self-centred rather than God-centred life. It means dying physically God taking back the spirit He gave man. It means dying eternally being forever separated from God. Romans 6(:22) tells us the wages of sin is death and 1Corinthians 15(:56) informs us that the sting of death is sin. Both texts tell us sin and death are closely related. This implies that for the source of our misery, the sin that surrounds us and is even within us, that source of our misery needs to be tackled on both fronts. It s not only sin that has to be dealt with. Death does as well. Because the wages of sin is death, Christ died. And because the sting of death is sin, we know that all who die, have somehow been touched by sin. The Lord Jesus Christ might have lived a sinless life, yet He clearly became sin for us. He died the death we were to die. But it cannot end there. Christ s work is not just about setting things straight where the past is concerned. Christ s work is as much about securing the future. Our justification needs to be valid for all time. We need to be set free from the consequences of our sins for all time. If Christ had not risen from the dead we would still be prisoners of our sin. Romans 6(:9-10) puts it this way: Since Christ was raised from the dead, He cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over Him. The death He died, He died to sin, once for all; but the life He lives, He lives to God. When Christ rose from the dead we had the proof that the power of sin and death had indeed been broken. Our sins may have killed the Christ, but death could not hold Him as He was victorious over sin. And because Christ has escaped the hold of sin and the grip of death, we have as well. Even though we might still sin, we may count on forgiveness with God because of what the Christ has done.
There s more to all this yet. When Scripture describes to us the justification of man it does so in a very graphic way so as to instill in us confidence, to have us believe that we can indeed depend on Christ for our salvation. We have painted before us the scene of a court case. There s us, the accused. There s God as judge. There s Satan as accuser. And there s Jesus the Christ as our advocate, our lawyer. As our lawyer, Christ has to do two things. One, He has to challenge the testimony of Satan and prove it false. Two, He has to convince God as judge that all is fine. We are unable to defend ourselves. Without Christ pleading for us, we would never be justified. We need Christ by our side as we appear before God. And for Christ to be by our side He needs to be alive. He needs to be there as a 100% human being. He needs to present, in court, the living proof that payment has been made. Satan s testimony is only successfully challenged when confronted with the completed sacrifice of the Christ. God is only fully convinced when presented with the accomplished work of Christ. Here we see Christ active as our eternal high priest, presenting in the real temple not made with hands the sacrifice of His own body. One finds this wonderfully described in Hebrews 9. We pray for forgiveness and trust we will be forgiven, not simply because Christ died but because He arose from the grave. That s why Romans 8(:34) puts it this way: Who is he that condemns? Christ Jesus, who died more than that, who was raised to life is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. The one who conquered both Satan and death will most surely be recognized by God and be granted His own (Isaiah 53:10). The resurrection of the Christ safeguards our justification. Because Christ arose we may be certain that nothing will ever rob us of forgiveness again. We ve been delivered from slavery to sin and death. Like Israel was set free from Egypt, so we have been set free from Satan s kingdom. 2) We come to our second thought: the Christ arose to begin our sanctification. A question for you. Where the life of Jesus Christ is concerned, what s the difference between before His crucifixion and following His resurrection? If I ask that about someone else the answer would probably be before death a person sins, after death a person does not sin. But that s not the case for Jesus Christ. He was without sin already before His death. So what is the difference? The difference is to be found with respect to the sphere of influence which sin has. Before His crucifixion Jesus the Christ was subject to everything those in the sphere of sin s influence are subject too. While Jesus was without sin, He certainly experienced the misery and accursedness that comes because of sin. Isaiah prophesied that Jesus bore our sicknesses, and the most extreme form of sickness is death. We know that the Christ had to resist temptations unto sin. Think of Satan in the wilderness. Think of the Pharisees with their trick questions. Think of the disciples, who wanted Him to live the glorious life of the Messiah, and not the miserable life of God s suffering servant. Jesus did not sin, but do not underestimate the temptations unto sin which the Christ had to endure! That was gone once Jesus had died and risen from the grave. It is now impossible for the man Christ Jesus to be tempted to sin. Where He appears, sin disappears. That is clearly demonstrated when Jesus ascends to heaven. Revelation 12 makes clear that prior to Jesus Christ arriving in heaven, Satan and his followers are all thrown out of heaven and denied access there. And where sin disappears, death is gone as well. Thus Christ is not only beyond the reach of sin, He is also beyond the reach of death. The human Jesus Christ is now immortal. He has a body which cannot die. The old way of living is gone for Him, there is now for Him a new way of living.
The resurrection has us share in that new way of living. Paul articulates this reality for us in Colossians 3. Maybe you could turn to that for a moment. Colossians 3. It s a passage that s often misunderstood to say that we should not be busy with things on earth but things in heaven, not with physical things but with spiritual things. But that s not what the Spirit is telling us. It is telling us to live our lives here on earth, with all its activities, in the way that life is lived in heaven. It kind of reflects what Christ Himself taught us to pray as in heaven, so on earth. Colossians 3:1-3a. There we read: Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. We have died with Christ: we no longer live self-centred lives that bring us death. We have risen with Christ: we are to live other-centred lives that make for life. It is the resurrection of Christ that makes clear to us what the new life looks like and establishes for us the reality of the new life. Now there are those who figure that just as we have been justified, in the same way we have been sanctified. Such argue that Christians, once they have repented, do not sin. Or at least, they are able to resist sin to the point of never sinning again. This is known as the doctrine of perfectionism. It has its roots in Arminianism and thus is challenged by our Canons of Dort. It underlies much of what so-called Evangelical Christianity teaches. This view, that Christians can live without sin, is both wrong and dangerous. It s dangerous precisely because it s wrong. It ll have you believe you can defeat sin and live without sin. But because it s wrong, you will, inevitably, find yourself sinning. David, the man after God s own heart, sinned. Peter, the disciple so fervent in serving Jesus, sinned. Imagine, you believe a true Christian does not sin or always fights and always defeats sin, and then you find yourself sinning. What will you think? You will think you are not a good Christian after all, a true believer after all. And you will despair of God. See how this teaching is dangerous? And it s dangerous because it s wrong. The Bible does not teach us that sanctification is ours the way justification is ours. Justification is something that happened once for all, for us, without us. But sanctification is a process, it s something that happens for us, within us. A key Scripture here is Romans 6. Romans 6 has much to say about the benefit of the resurrection for us. Listen closely, Romans 6:4: We were buried with Him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life. If we have been united with Him like this in His death, we will certainly also be united with Him in His resurrection. We were buried, we have been united that s past tense, that s a fact. We may live, we will certainly be united, that s referring to something not yet accomplished. And we, this is also Paul himself, the Christian Paul! The resurrection of the Christ begins for us the process of sanctification. Christ arose to live the sinless life, a life in which sin is completely out of his environment. And that s what we see happen within us and in our environment. It means that Christ s resurrection comes to us with a command, I quote Romans 6:13-14a: Offer yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer the parts of your body to Him as instruments of righteousness. For sin shall not be your master. It means that at present things are still a little different for us and Christ. Christ has arisen to a new life. We are arising to a new life. We haven t arrived yet. But we are on our way. And we have the advantage over the Christ that we don t have to go through hell to get to perfection. The influence of sin, the power of sin, it has all been restrained. In Christ we have become more than conquerors. And because we are more than conquerors we are assured of the victory.
3. The victory. That brings us to our third thought. The Christ arose to confirm to us our glorification. Romans 6(:9) unequivocally states: Since Christ was raised from the dead, He cannot die again. But we, we do still die. In Christ we have been raised from the dead. But we have not yet truly arisen. Graves are dug for believers as well. However, the resurrection of the Christ does tell us something about our own lives following our death. Christ s resurrection provides us with the evidence, the proof, that eternal life is possible. It is possible for a human being of flesh and blood to come to life again after having died. Come to life: a life in which one eats, as Christ did, and one can be touched, as Christ could be. The resurrection of the Christ is thus God s signature that life in the body exists even after death. Just as the Lord Jesus has been glorified in heaven, so we all, who have faith in Him, will reign with Him. The apostle Paul writes in Romans 8(:11): If the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies, through His Spirit, who lives in you. Eternal life already begins now. But there is much more yet to come. A little later Paul writes of what is yet to come. I quote: I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. (Romans 8:18). Or think of what 1Corinthians 15:19 implies. There we read: If only for this life we have hope in Christ we are to be pitied more than all men. Why? Because the Corinthian Christians didn t actually have a good life. And if, as they thought, there s only the here and now, well then, why bother hoping in Christ? But, as Paul points out, we hope in Christ not simply with respect to this life but also with respect to the life to come. Christ has indeed been raised from the dead and in rising He is the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep (1Corinthians 15:20). And where there are first fruits there are also more fruits. The resurrection of Christ will be followed by the resurrection of all who have faith in Christ. And those who rise, will rise to glory. Christ s resurrection confirms for us our glorification. We have faith in God because He has proven to us through the bodily resurrection of the Jesus the Christ that even our flesh is not written off. As we will confess with another Lord s Day: not only shall this, my flesh, immediately after this life, be taken up to Christ but also this, my body, shall be reunited with my soul and made like Christ s glorious body. We have the prospect of an everlasting, glorious life! The Christ who died lives forever. Today we celebrate Easter. We celebrate the resurrection of our Saviour and Lord. His bodily resurrection, it is much more than a fact which you accept or reject. It is a reality filled with significance. Because He arose I have faith in God forgiving my sins. Because He arose I myself am being changed to live a new God-centred life. Because He arose I can be sure that one day I too will enjoy the glory of immortal life. The resurrection: it s a doctrine dear to the heart of the church. Paul spares few words in fighting off the heresy that the resurrection is to be spiritualized. Not at all. At the side of every grave we may hear this Word of God; be comforted by it my brothers and sisters: When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: Death has been swallowed up in victory. Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting? The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen