Christ’s Resurrection and Ours – Rom. 8:10-11
Must we believe in the
resurrection of Christ?
Can you be a Christian and not
believe in the resurrection of Christ?
Throughout the years, there have always been those who answer this
question in the affirmative. They say that
belief in things like the Virgin Birth of Christ, his miraculous ministry, and
his resurrection from the dead all belong to a former age for superstitious
people. We who belong to this advanced
scientific age, it is said, are above such primitive views.
In the place of supernatural Christianity, at
least for a significant segment of our society, has been put what has come to
be known today as moral therapeutic deism (MTD), a term introduced by Christian
Smith and Melinda Denton in their book Soul Searching: The Religious and
Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers (2005). This is a loose set of beliefs that can
basically be summarized by the following principles: (1) A God exists who
created everything and watches over people on the earth. (2) God wants everyone
to be nice, fair, and good to each other as taught by most world religions. (3)
The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself. (4) God
doesn’t really need to be involved in our lives unless we need him to resolve a
particular problem. (5) Good people go
to heaven when they die.[1]
If that is your worldview, then I
admit that there is little need for a resurrected Messiah. In fact, there is little need for a Savior
who had to become incarnate, live a perfect life, and die a sacrificial,
substitutionary death for sinners who are under the shadow of God’s wrath and
judgment. This is because missing in MTD
is the reality of sin and the consequences it brings, condemnation before a
holy God resulting in physical and spiritual death, and therefore missing is
the need for a Savior who delivers us from these awful realities.
The reason for this hole in MTD
and the difference between the Biblical gospel and MTD is what each perspective
puts at the center of reality. MTD puts
man and his happiness at the center of the universe. The Bible puts God there. MTD makes God the servant of man. The Bible makes man the servant of God. MTD creates God in man’s image. In the Bible, man is created in God’s
image. In other words, MTD follows the
path Paul describes in Romans 1 as traveled by fallen humanity: we exchange the
Creator for the creature. And when the
creature becomes sovereign, there is no longer a need for a Redeemer to save us
from ourselves. What is wanted, instead,
is a God who pampers man and caters to his fallen desires.
One of the tragic problems with
this worldview, even though it puts man’s wishes at the center, and claims to
be in pursuit of human happiness, is that it can never attain what it purports
to achieve. As Christians, we know that
this is because true happiness and fulfillment do not necessarily come when we
get what we want. True happiness and
fulfillment come when we die to ourselves and embrace the Triune God as the
center of our affections and life. Martyn
Lloyd-Jones put it well in his commentary on the fourth Beatitude: we run into
problems when we seek to be satisfied apart from hungering and thirsting after
righteousness.
In his book, When Harry Became
Sally, Ryan Anderson gives an incredibly sad example of the folly of
thinking that a self-centered life when end in happiness. He relates the story of Andrea Chu as told in
an op-ed of the New York Times.
Chu is an example of a man who suffers from gender dysphoria and is
attempting through surgery to “become” a woman.
However, the whole point of the article is Chu’s acknowledgment that
seeking “gender reassignment” won’t bring happiness. Chu writes, “I still want this, all of
it. I want the tears; I want the pain. Transition doesn’t have to make me happy if I
want it. Left to their own devices,
people will rarely pursue what makes them feel good in the long term. Desire and happiness are independent agents.”[2] In other words, Chu acknowledges that this
radical pursuit of man-centered self-sovereignty will not necessarily lead to
happiness. Yet such is his commitment to
self-sovereignty that he will ditch the happiness if that is the cost of living
according to the counsel of his own will.
I applaud the honesty while at the same time am heartbroken over the
suicidal pursuit of godlessness. It
reminds me of the story of an ancient king who was warned by his physicians
that if he didn’t break off his debauched life-style, he would lose his
eye-sight. To which he responded, “Then
farewell, sweet sight!”
The fact of the matter is that we
don’t need to “find ourselves” or to be validated in some sought-after
identity. We need to be redeemed,
body and soul. We cannot find true life
and happiness in this world apart from Christ because every part of this world
is fallen, including ourselves and our desires.
We need to be redeemed from this word and its present fallen order.
That is why the resurrection is
so important. The resurrection, if it is
anything, is the demonstration that Christ has defeated sin and the death that
it brings. The fact of the matter is
that we cannot be Christian apart from the resurrection because there is no
salvation without it. The literal,
historical resurrection of Jesus must insisted upon for without it there is no
gospel of grace, there is no justification, and there is no hope of a future
bodily resurrection of own. Let’s
consider each of these things in that order.
Apart from the resurrection of
Jesus, there is no gospel of grace.
What do I mean by this? The gospel of grace is the good news that we
can be saved apart from any works of our own.
This is why it is of grace – grace being a free gift and not dependent
upon my merit or in reward for something I have done. But if it is true that I am not saved by my
works, then I must be saved by the works of another, for salvation does not
happen without someone doing something.
Either a drowning man will be saved because he rescued himself by
swimming to shore, or he is saved because someone else jumped in and carried
him to shore. We are drowning and cannot
rescue ourselves, so we must carried to the shore by the efforts of someone
besides ourselves.
This is why we must insist upon
the gospel as being a record of what God has done in human history. This is offensive to modern man, not because
it is impossible, but because it makes God our Savior and fallen man wants to
be his own savior. But the offense of
the gospel is also its glory. To leave
us to save ourselves is to leave us to drown in our own misery and sin and
death. Make man the savior and there is
no good news left. It is only when God
invades human history to rescue us that we can be saved.
And let’s be clear: God did not
invade history to show us how to be better people. He didn’t come primarily to be a good
example. He came to do what we couldn’t:
pay the infinite debt we owe to God because of our rebellion and defeat the
powers of sin and death (Rom. 8:3). And the
resurrection is a necessary part of the saving action of God in the person of
his Son Jesus. Without resurrection,
there is no defeat of death. The cross
cannot be separated from the empty tomb.
There is no redemption apart from the resurrection. This is why Paul would say, “If the Spirit of
him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus
from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who
dwells in you” (Rom. 8:11).
The grace of God is demonstrated
primarily in history before it affects our hearts, and the latter
is dependent upon the former. The
Spirit, who regenerates us and gives us new life, does so as the Spirit of
Christ, and because of what he accomplished on the cross and in rising from the
dead. This is why, every time the
resurrection of Jesus is denied, Christianity just becomes another system of
morality, and not a very good one at that.
Without the resurrection of
Jesus, there is no justification.
In verse 10, Paul writes, “But if
Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life
because of righteousness.” What is this righteousness
that the apostle is speaking of here? Is
it our righteousness (cf. 8:4), or is the righteousness of God in Christ? I think it is the latter for the simple
reason that here righteousness is the reason we will conquer death in
everlasting life, in contrast with the sin that brings death. The apostle is saying that sin leads to
death, and righteousness leads to life.
But in the apostle’s thinking, this is not because we are righteous, but
because Christ has been righteous for us: “For if, because of one man’s
trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive
abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the
one man Jesus Christ” (Rom. 5:17).
This righteousness is not simply
God’s saving action on our behalf (though it is not less than that), but it is
righteousness that is imputed to us on the basis of what Christ has done
for us (Rom. 4:6, 11). And it is this
imputed righteousness that becomes the basis of our justification, the
pronouncement that we are righteous in the eyes of God. This is no legal fiction but rests upon a
real status of righteousness given to us in Christ. As our redeemer, Christ did not live his
perfect life and die his sacrificial death for himself, but for others. He lived and died as a representative of all
who have been given to him by the Father.
Therefore, his righteousness is justly imputed to them and they are
justified.
It is important, however, that we
see how the resurrection is necessary for this.
Without resurrection, there is no righteousness, because without
resurrection there is no forgiveness of sins.
For if Christ had not risen from the dead, this would have meant that
his sacrifice had not been enough. It
would have meant that Christ had not defeated sin and death. “If Christ has not been raised, your faith is
futile and you are still in your sins” (1 Cor. 15:17). This is why the apostle writes, “But the
words, ‘It was counted to him’ were not written for his [Abraham’s] sake alone,
but for ours also. It will be counted to
us who believe in him who raised from the dead Jesus our Lord, who was
delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification” (Rom.
4:23-25).
Thus, our resurrection life
depends upon imputed righteousness which brings justification. And this, in turn, depends upon the
resurrection of Jesus from the dead.
Without the resurrection of
Jesus from the dead, there is no hope of a future bodily resurrection.
This is Paul’s argument in 1 Cor.
15. But it is also his argument
here. Note the logic of verse 11: it is
only as we are indwelt by the Spirit that we will experience future
resurrection. But the Spirit does this
by virtue of the fact that he raised Christ from the dead. Why does Paul say that? I don’t think Paul is saying, “Look, the fact
that the Spirit raised Christ from the dead means he can raise you from the
dead.” Rather, what he is saying is that
because we are united to Christ, and the Spirit is the Spirit of Christ, then
our being united to Jesus means that he will raise us also. As Paul puts it in verse 10, it is because
“Christ is in you” that “the Spirit is life because of righteousness.”
In other words, our future,
bodily resurrection depends completely upon the fact that Jesus rose from the
dead. This is why Paul calls our Lord
the firstfruits of those who have died (1 Cor. 15:20). He is not only the first of many, but just as
you cannot have a harvest without firstfruits, you cannot have resurrection
without Christ being risen from the dead.
It is his life from the dead that secures our life from the dead.
But why should we even want a
resurrection of the body? There are a
lot of religions both ancient and modern that claim we should actually want to
be freed from the body. Like the
characters in the Star Wars movies, we are told that you should want to be
absorbed into some impersonal “force.”
In fact, in the first century, this was one of the biggest stumbling
blocks to the Christian message: many people just weren’t interested in any
future bodily resurrection; in fact, it was repugnant (cf. Acts 17:32; 1 Cor.
1:23).
The Biblical answer to this
question is that we are incomplete without a body. Nowhere does the Bible teach that our spirits
need to be freed from the physical. In
fact, it is the separation of soul and body in death that is clearest sign that
things are not right. Physical death is
the result of sin, and therefore to be saved from sin is to be saved from this
rending of the spirit from the body.
Thus, Paul wrote to the
Corinthians, “For we know that if the tent that is our earthly home is
destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in
the heavens” (2 Cor. 5:1). The “tent” here
is our earthly body. It will be
destroyed, but Paul’s hope was that there is another building from God that
will replace this current tent. And we
should not think that this “building” is any the less substantial or physical
than the “tent” that will be destroyed.
When we are raised from the dead, our resurrection bodies, in continuity
with our present bodies, will be genuine physical bodies. He goes on: “For in this tent we groan,
longing to put on our heavenly dwelling, if indeed by putting it on we may not
be found naked” (2-3). In saying that he
did not want to “be found naked,” Paul was saying that it was not existence
as a disembodied soul that he desired.
Rather, “For while we are still in this tent, we groan, being burdened –
not that we would be unclothed, but that we would be further clothed, so that
what is mortal may be swallowed up in life.
He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who has given us the
Spirit as a guarantee” (4-5). Paul’s
longing and hope was to be raised from the dead, not as a disembodied,
unclothed, naked soul, but as an embodied, clothed soul, made new through
Christ, swallowed up in life.
This was the hope of the early
church and it should be our hope as well: “But our citizenship is in heaven,
and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our
lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power that enables him even to
subject all things to himself” (Phil. 3:21).
You must believe in the
resurrection but it’s not enough to believe in the resurrection.
Grace – justification –
resurrection, all hinge upon the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,
and are secured for all who believe on him for grace, justification, and
resurrection. I’ve been insisting that
we must believe in the resurrection to be authentically Christian. But it must with equal force be emphasized
that believing that Jesus rose from the dead doesn’t mean that you are
saved. The devils believe and
tremble. The noted Jewish scholar
Pinchas Lapide – who is not a Christian – is convinced that Jesus rose from the
dead. But he does not believe the Jesus
was the Messiah. He doesn’t trust in
Jesus as his Savior, though compelled by the evidence to admit his
resurrection.
Now he claims that the reason why
he doesn’t believe in Jesus as Messiah is because Jesus didn’t usher in the
final age, the Final Judgment, and the restoration of Israel.[3] I’m sure he would say that this is because of
the way he reads the OT. But given the
fact that Judaism puts repentance in the place of sacrifice, and thus creates a
religion where salvation is based on works, surely one of the reasons he can
affirm the resurrection without faith in Jesus as his Savior is because he
doesn’t see his need for redemption from sin.
He doesn’t see that in order for the restoration of this world to take
place, sin must be dealt with, not only on the level of repentance, but more
fundamentally on the level of propitiation and atonement. And that can only happen if there has been an
atonement for sin. But atonement for sin
cannot happen apart from a Savior who has conquered death and brought life and
immortality to light through the gospel (cf. 2 Tim. 1:10)
The resurrection is often given
as evidence that Jesus was who he said he was, namely the Son of God. And I think that is right. But resurrection not only proves the claims
of Jesus, it also points in the direction that what happened on the cross was
more than martyrdom. God does not need
to come down to suffer with us or show us the way. But in order for our sin to be atoned for –
this is only something that the incarnate God can do. In the resurrection we have both the proof
that Jesus is the Son of God, and we have proof that sin has been atoned for,
and therefore that forgiveness is available for all who will embrace Jesus as
their Savior and Lord.
But you must see your need for
atonement. You must see that you need a
Savior from sin, before the death and resurrection of Christ will be meaningful
to you. Do you? Do you not see that sin against God is
infinitely heinous? And that this
applies to the least sin as well as to the greatest? Remember that God does not just see our ways,
he also sees our hearts, our affections and our idolatries. He sees that we have loved other things rather
than him and that we have chosen to serve ourselves rather than to submit to
his good and rightful authority over us.
Every day we repeat the sin of Adam and Eve. And this is why we need the Second Adam,
Jesus Christ, to meet the demands of God’s holy law in our stead, by living the
perfect life and then giving his life a perfect atonement for sin. May God draw you to himself in faith and
trust upon his Son, our Lord and Risen Savior, Jesus Christ.
[2]
Quoted in When Harry Became Sally, by Ryan Anderson [Kindle Version],
p.xiv.
[3] I
haven’t read his book The Resurrection of Jesus: a Jewish Perspective;
but this observation is made by Michael Horton in his book, Justification,
Vol. 2, page 257, footnote 1.
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