“Yea, rather, that is risen from the dead” (Rom. 8:34)

 

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On this Sunday, in which we celebrate in a special way the resurrection of our Lord from the dead, I want to take us back to a verse that we recently looked at in Romans 8.  It’s verse 34.  We mentioned it then almost in passing, so I think it is appropriate to come back to it today and dwell upon it a little further.  It is part of Paul’s argument for the security of the believer in Christ.  He argues that no one can be against them, no one can successfully lay a charge against them, and no one can successfully condemn them.  

Now we noted then that Paul is not saying that no one will bring charges against the godly.  Many of God’s people throughout the ages have found themselves condemned by earthly tribunals and condemned, and some have even been killed for their faith in Christ.  Our Lord himself said that this would happen: “And ye shall be betrayed both by parents, and brethren, and kinsfolks, and friends; and some of you shall they cause to be put to death” (Lk. 21:16).  So Paul’s not saying that won’t happen.  Rather, what Paul was saying is that no one can prevent the glorification of the believer.  No one can successfully condemn them before God.  The world may condemn them, but their verdict will have no bearing upon God’s.  And that’s what matters.

William Tyndale is a remarkable example of this.  He’s on my mind because I recently finished David Daniell’s biography of him.  You may know that Tyndale was the man who first translated the Bible into English from Greek and Hebrew.  He was considered to be a holy and godly and incredibly learned man even by his enemies, and was almost single-handedly responsible for bringing God’s word into English.  Even later translations depended heavily upon his accomplishment: probably 90% of the KJV is really William Tyndale’s work (except for the poetical and prophetic books of the OT which Tyndale was not able to translate).  But he was finally betrayed by a man who claimed to be his friend, imprisoned, and finally executed for this faith in Christ.  They killed the body, but they did not destroy his soul.  They condemned him and God received him.  His work endures even to the present day.  

“In this world ye shall have tribulation,” said our Lord.  He was not talking about burnt toast for breakfast.  He was talking about things that press you down to the point of breaking.  “But be of good cheer” – how? – “for I have overcome the world” (Jn. 16:33).

The doctrine of the resurrection is the thing that makes it possible for us to be of good cheer in the face of crippling pain, tragic accidents, dying dreams, tangled relationships, and stabbing betrayal.  It is because Jesus overcame the world in his death and resurrection that we are able to confidently say that no one can successfully lay a charge against us – not in the sense of putting our eternal inheritance in any danger.  The world can kill the body of the saint, but it cannot touch the soul, and even the body Christ will one day reclaim for himself.  

This is the argument Paul is making here: “Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us.”  The apostle brings us, as it were, into a courtroom, where the enemies of the believer have gathered to bring their accusations against him.  But the defense for the believer then rises – who is none other than the Lord Jesus Christ (1 Jn. 2:2) – and he presents his evidence.  And this evidence, these witnesses, prove the innocence of the believer, not only beyond the shadow of a reasonable doubt, but beyond all doubt whatsoever.  

What is the evidence our Lord produces?  Who are these witnesses?  They are the death, resurrection, ascension and intercession of the Lord Jesus Christ for them.  I want you to notice something here that is maybe easy to pass over.  His first witness is the death of Christ for them.  That alone is enough to silence all enemies.  But Paul doesn’t stop there.  He produces another piece of evidence on their behalf.  Notice how Paul puts it: “yea rather.”  He goes on to say that the reason why no one can condemn the Christian before God is that not only did Christ die for them, but also that he rose from the dead for them.  However, that’s not quite the way he put it!  It’s not, “Christ died, and also rose,” but that it is “Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again.”  

I take this to mean two things at least.  One is that the death of Christ would be meaningless apart from the resurrection of Christ from the dead.  You can’t have one and not the other; if you don’t have both, you don’t have either, at least not in terms of the accomplishment of redemption.  There is no salvation in a Savior who only died.  Our salvation depends as much on the resurrection of Jesus as upon the death of Jesus.  Second, it means that the resurrection of Christ ought to therefore increase the confidence that we have that we will be finally saved by the work of our Lord.  Our confidence ought to increase as we meditate upon the death and then upon the resurrection of the Lord.  If the witness of Christ’s death for us is enough to prove our case, the witness of the Resurrection ought to silence them once and forever.  There is a “yea rather,” a “more than this,” aspect to the resurrection.  The death of Christ for us and for our sins ought in itself to give us comfort and security.  But a consideration of the resurrection of Christ ought to add to that confidence and sense of security.  So if we were to extract a lesson from this verse in terms of the way Paul puts his words to us here, it would be this: the resurrection of Christ ought to increase beyond all the contradictions and accusations against us, our confidence that we will never come into eternal judgment.  And that’s what I pray happens this morning as we consider this together.  

In doing this, I want to consider with you the testimony of the resurrection and the testimony to the resurrection.  Both are necessarily for us to grasp in order to receive the comfort that our Lord’s resurrection is meant to give us.  As we look at the testimony of the resurrection, we will see the reasons why it makes the answer to Paul’s question in verse 34 so obvious: no one can condemn us before God.  And then as we consider the testimony to the resurrection, and think about the reasons why the resurrection of Jesus from the dead should be taken seriously as a literal, real, historical event, and not merely as a theological category, we will see why our hope is not a vain, pie-in-the-sky hope, but more sure and real than anything else.  

The Testimony of the Resurrection

The resurrection testifies that our salvation is accomplished.  We see that in several ways: in its testimony to the definition of redemption, to the accomplishment of redemption, and then to the Author of redemption.

It testifies to the definition of redemption.

The resurrection is inextricably tied to our redemption, and when the Biblical writers talk about it, they remind us of what really happened on the cross.  The Biblical testimony of the resurrection is a reminds of what redemption is.

Now you may want to say, “But I thought redemption was finished on the cross.  How can the resurrection tell us what redemption is?”  Good question.  Yes, Jesus did say on the cross, “It is finished,” and by his suffering he did fully atone for our sins.  But Jesus died for our sins, not merely in terms of the guilt of sin but also in terms of cancelling out all the consequences of sin. And the primary consequence of sin, which we learn all the way back at the beginning of the Bible, is that death is the consequence of sin.  “The wages of sin is death” (Rom. 6:23).  So if Christ had not risen from dead, it would show that he had not really overcome death at all.  It would mean that his death was a farce.  It would show that he had not really done anything.  

So we can’t disconnect redemption from resurrection, and it shouldn’t surprise us that the Bible connects our redemption to the death and the resurrection of Jesus.  You see this in a number of Biblical passages.  For example, in Romans 4:25, Paul writes, “Who was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification.”  There is no justification apart from the resurrection of Christ. He was raised again for our justification.  Notice that Paul puts in parallel his death (“delivered”) and his resurrection (“raised again”).  Just as our Lord’s death procured our forgiveness, so his resurrection procured our justification.  Redemption is accomplished by the death and the resurrection of our Lord, which is what Paul is getting at when he says in the previous chapter, “Being justified freely through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 3:24).  We have seen in Romans just how central and pivotal justification is to salvation.  You cannot be saved apart from it, for we cannot go into the presence of God unless we are righteous.  Paul makes it clear that it is the death and resurrection of Jesus that brings the righteousness of God to us by which we are justified in his sight.

Now justification includes the forgiveness of sins.  In his letter to the Corinthians, Paul declared that this is impossible apart from the resurrection of Jesus.   There were people there in that church who were claiming that you could be a Christian without affirming the resurrection of Jesus.  But the apostle replies that there is no Christianity apart from resurrection because there isn’t even forgiveness without it.  He writes, “But if there be no resurrection of the dead, then is Christ not risen: And if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain. Yea, and we are found false witnesses of God; because we have testified of God that he raised up Christ: whom he raised not up, if so be that the dead rise not. For if the dead rise not, then is not Christ raised: And if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins.”

Then we see that there is no spiritual life apart from the resurrection of Jesus.  We have seen in Romans 6 that we have union with Christ not only in his death but also in his resurrection and that they go together: “Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death? Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection: Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin” (Rom. 6:3-6).  The power by which we are enabled to walk in newness of life is the power of the resurrection of our Lord.  Paul puts it this way in his letter to the Ephesians: “But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved;) And hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus: That in the ages to come he might shew the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus” (Eph. 2:4-7).  In order to go from being dead in sin to being dead to sin, we must be united to Christ, not only in his death but also in his resurrection.  The life of the Christian is lived out in the power of the resurrection of Christ.

Perhaps the most obvious connection in this regard is the fact that there is no future bodily resurrection of our own apart from the resurrection of our Lord.  As Paul puts it to the Corinthians, “But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept” (1 Cor. 15:20).  He is the first fruits, not only in the sense that he is the first to rise from the dead, but more importantly in the fact that his resurrection secures all the others.  Because Christ rose from the dead, all who belong to him will one day rise from the dead.

And then, the resurrection was of course necessary for what followed: “who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us” (Rom. 8:34).  You don’t have the ascension of Christ or the session of Christ (that is, his reign at the Father’s right hand) without the resurrection.  But this is also necessary for our salvation. Jesus told his apostles, “In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also” (Jn. 14:2-3).  We can put it like this: Jesus by his death prepares us for heaven and by his resurrection and ascension prepares heaven for us.  In the same discourse, he also said, “I tell you the truth; It is expedient for you that I go away: for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart, I will send him unto you” (Jn. 16:7).  The giving of the Spirit was dependent upon the resurrection and ascension of the Lord.  Everything that has happened to the church since his ascension is the consequence of his resurrection.  Every revival of the church, for example, is a gift of grace from the risen Lord.

So we see that there is no salvation apart from the resurrection of Jesus.  This is not an incidental article of faith.  You cannot be a Christian without it, for there is no Christianity without it.  Our freedom from condemnation depends as much upon the resurrection of our Lord as it does upon the death of our Lord.  The security of our final salvation depends equally upon both.  We worship a crucified and risen Savior.

It testifies to accomplishment of redemption.

The resurrection of Jesus is not only a part of the accomplishment of our salvation; it is also the preeminent evidence that our salvation has been accomplished.  Christ was victorious even in his death, but as long as he remained in the tomb it was not obvious.  But it was obvious when he rose from the dead.  The empty tomb declares what the score really is.  The devil has not won.  The world has not won.  The Pharisees and the priests and the scribes and the Romans did not win.  Christ won.  The victory of the resurrection is announcement of Christ’s victory and ours as well.

This is why the apostles focused so much on the resurrection in their preaching.  According to the law of Moses, anyone who hung on a cross was cursed.  How could the Messiah be cursed?  It would have been virtually impossible to convince anyone to follow a dead Messiah.  But not one that embraced death and then conquered it. This is the apostle’s Peter point in his sermon on the Day of Pentecost: “This Jesus hath God raised up, whereof we all are witnesses. Therefore being by the right hand of God exalted, and having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost, he hath shed forth this, which ye now see and hear. For David is not ascended into the heavens: but he saith himself, The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand, Until I make thy foes thy footstool. Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly, that God hath made the same Jesus, whom ye have crucified, both Lord and Christ” (Acts 2:32-36).  The house of Israel could know, and know assuredly, that God made the crucified Jesus both Lord and Christ because he had risen from the dead and given the Holy Spirit to his people.  

This the great point of the apostle in 1 Cor. 15.  He argues that if Christ is not risen, then our faith is vain and we are yet in our sins.  But since Christ is risen, for the Christian nothing is vain.  The victory of Christ is our victory.  It is the ultimate proof and the evidence that we will one day rise from the dead: “But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye stedfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord” (1 Cor. 15:57-58).

This is the reason, I think, why Paul tells Timothy, in a context where he talks about the Christian life and ministry as warfare and as enduring hardness, to “Remember that Jesus Christ of the seed of David was raised from the dead according to my gospel” (2 Tim. 2:8).  Remember that he was raised from the dead.  What does this do?  It gives us hope.  It gives us confidence.  Do you know why God’s people were encouraged over and over again the OT to look back to the Exodus?  It is because no matter where they were at in their history, whether at a high point or a low point, they could always look back to that event and know that God was their God and that all his future promises would come true.  Well, we have something even better.  We can look back, not at the shadow but at the thing the shadow pointed to.  Christ is our Passover.  He is our Exodus.  His death and his resurrection don’t just secure temporal deliverance from physical slavery but eternal redemption from sin and death.  It has happened.  The empty tomb is the victory of Christ and united to him it is our victory too.  All the promises of God are yes and Amen in him.  “Remember that Jesus Christ of the seed of David was raised from the dead”!

It testifies to the Author of redemption.

The resurrection not only testifies to the victory of Christ but also to the person of Christ.  Jesus testified that he was the Son of Man, meaning not merely that he was just another mortal, but that he was the apocalyptic figure that Daniel saw in his vision, recorded for us in the seventh chapter of his prophecy: “I saw in the night visions, and, behold, one like the Son of man came with the clouds of heaven, and came to the Ancient of days, and they brought him near before him. And there was given him dominion, and glory, and a kingdom, that all people, nations, and languages, should serve him: his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom that which shall not be destroyed” (13-14).  This is no mere mortal.  Nor is this a mere prophet.  This is a divine being with universal authority and power.  

Then Jesus declared that he was the Son of God.  When the high priest asked Jesus if he was the Son of the Blessed, that is, the Son of God, our Lord replied simply, “I am” (Mk. 14:62).  In saying that he was the Son of God, Jesus was in another way proclaiming his divinity, and his contemporaries understood his claim that way as well: “For a good work we stone thee not; but for blasphemy; and because that thou, being a man, makest thyself God” (Jn. 10:33).  

He made other claims as well, but the last one I want to point you to is his claim to Martha in John 11. After she told him, “I know that he [her brother Lazarus] shall rise again in the resurrection at the last day,” our Lord responded: “Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. Believest thou this?” (24-26).  Jesus is the resurrection and the life.  Martha believed in the resurrection, but what she didn’t realize at that time was that the one who had to power to raise the dead was standing in front of her.  How can you believe such a claim?  Well, he raised Lazarus from the dead!  But even better than that is that he raised himself from the grave.  He rose from the dead.

Our Lord’s resurrection substantiates all these claims.  He is the Christ, the divine Son of Man, the holy Son of God, the resurrection and the life, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.  We know this because he rose from the dead.  So Paul will write to the church at Rome about the gospel “Concerning his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, which was made of the seed of David according to the flesh; And declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead” (Rom. 1:3-4).

There have been others who have either claimed to rise from the dead, or men who have had followers that claimed they rose from the dead.  But there is no one else in human history whose claims will stand the test of history like that of Jesus.  Unlike so many other fables and legends, this is no fable and this is no legend.  Jesus really did rise from the dead.  His physical resurrection in a glorified body is a historical event.  If it were not so, we would have no religion.  Christianity cannot long exist on a resurrection that is only a metaphor or parable.  The oxygen of our faith has its source and sustenance in the resurrected Christ.

The Testimony to the Resurrection

Why should we believe that Jesus rose from the dead?  There have been others who have given more sophisticated arguments, but let me give an arguments based on the New Testament witnesses to it.  I want to consider the cumulative witness in terms of what was written, when it was written, by whom it was written, and to whom it was written.

What was written

The gospel tells the story of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection.  But here’s the thing.  The record of it in the canonical gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) is full of all sorts of details of people, places, and things.  This is not an event that took place in some far away imaginary land, but took place at a specific place at a specific time.  Specific people are mentioned, like Pontius Pilate, Ananias, Caiaphas, Tiberius Caesar, Herod the king, and many other local figures.  Places are mentioned like Nazareth and Bethlehem, Mount Olivet and the Garden in Gethsemane.  The death and resurrection of Jesus didn’t take place in a fictional place, but in a real place in a real point in history, with details that could have been easily checked by the people who first heard the gospel claims, all of which makes it implausible that the apostles just made it all up.

When it was written

The gospels were not written centuries after the fact.  It takes time for legends to develop, but the proclamation of Jesus risen from the dead goes back to the very beginning of the Christian movement, immediately after Jesus died.  The apostle Paul wrote his first epistle to the Corinthians in the middle of the first century, just a few decades after Jesus died.  In it he said this: 

Moreover, brethren, I declare unto you the gospel which I preached unto you, which also ye have received, and wherein ye stand; By which also ye are saved, if ye keep in memory what I preached unto you, unless ye have believed in vain. For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures: And that he was seen of Cephas, then of the twelve: After that, he was seen of above five hundred brethren at once; of whom the greater part remain unto this present, but some are fallen asleep. After that, he was seen of James; then of all the apostles. And last of all he was seen of me also, as of one born out of due time” (1 Cor. 15:1-8).

Here we are reminded what the essential gospel is: it is that Christ died for our sins, was buried, rose again, and was seen risen from the dead.  But the important thing I want to point out here is that Paul says that it didn’t start with him but that he received it, which is probably pointing back to the beginning of his ministry in the mid-30’s, right after the crucifixion of Jesus.  The resurrection, which is an essential part of the Christian message, has been so from the beginning.  This is not something the later church made up in order to deify Jesus.  It was there from the beginning.

By whom it was written

The message of Jesus Christ risen from the dead was preached by men like Paul, Peter, and John, apostles who had personally known the risen Christ.  Their message was not only that Jesus rose from the dead, but that they had seen him risen from the dead.  What is interesting to me is that even atheistic scholars who have looked at the evidence have concluded that the apostles at least had experiences of the post-mortem Christ.  William Lane Criag writes, “Even Gert Ludemann, the leading German critic of the resurrection, himself admits, ‘It may be taken as historically certain that Peter and the disciples had experiences after Jesus’ death in which Jesus appeared to them as the risen Christ.’”  Of course they then explain them away, but they don’t deny the experiences.

This explains why every one of the apostles was willing to suffer, and most of them apparently to the point of death, for the testimony of resurrection.  Few people will die for something that they claim to be true but know to be false.  The best explanation for their testimony to the resurrected Christ is that they really did see Jesus risen from the dead.

To whom it was written

Finally, the original audience is itself a pointer to the authenticity of the resurrection of Jesus.  The apostles didn’t go out and preach to people far away about events that took place in Judea.  They preached in the temple at Jerusalem, a few weeks after the crucifixion had taken place and Jesus had risen form the dead and ascended into heaven.  They preached to Jews about Jesus and the resurrection.  These people were able to investigate the claims of the apostles.  They could have marched right over to the tomb.  They could have checked for inconstancies in their testimony.  They could have checked the details of the gospel stories.  And yet this was the audience that built the early church: thousands of them.  Why did they believe such outlandish claims?  It was not because the culture prepped them for it.  I know people on the street today may think that first century people were just gullible in ways that we are not (and yet look at what people believe on the internet these days!), but this is what C. S. Lewis called “chronological snobbery”.  The reality is that first century people were not primed to believe in a resurrected Christ; in fact, it was just the opposite.  The Jews were primed to disbelieve in a crucified Christ, and the Greeks were primed against any idea of a physical resurrection.  This is why Paul had said, “For the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom: But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumblingblock, and unto the Greeks foolishness” (1 Cor. 1:22-23).  Why then did they believe the message?  Well, part of the reason, under God, is that Jesus really did rise from the dead!  God doesn’t testify to lies; it make the truth of the gospel powerful to change lives and bring deliverance and freedom.

“Yea rather, is risen from the dead.”  You couldn’t say that if it never happened.  But it did happen.  Jesus did rise from the dead.  And in dying for us and rising for us, he redeemed all the Father gave him to save.  The resurrection is necessary for our salvation.  Thank God it also testifies to the victory of Christ and the person of Christ.  

So what should our response to it be?  Believe it because it really did happen.  And believing it, let it cause you to embrace Jesus for who he is: Lord and Christ.  Let it fill you with hope, even in the darkest of times.  The tomb is empty.  Jesus is risen, and is now at the right hand of God reigning in power over all things.