The Reality And Relevance Of The Resurrection

The Resurrection proves Jesus to be the Son of God and brings us face to face with the fact that He is who He claimed to be, God. The founder of every other religion died and stayed dead. Jesus rose again. This is important to you because it forces you to make a decision in your life. Since Christ is who He claimed to be, how will you respond to Him?

B. The Resurrection makes your salvation possible

Without the Resurrection of Jesus Christ every person is still dead in their sins. Romans 4:25 NIV says, “He was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification.”

“If Jesus died and was never raised, then his death did nothing to accomplish justification. God raising him from the dead showed acceptance of Christ’s sacrifice. If God left Jesus in the grave, then the sacrifice was not accepted and no one has received cleansing from sin. The condemnation for sin is death (Romans 6:23). To still be under condemnation means that all people will be given the ultimate penalty for their sins.” -- Life Application Bible Commentary

Paul writes, “if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith … 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.”(1 Cor 15:14,17-18 NIV). If Christ did not rise then you are still dead in your sins and your Christian faith is worthless and anyone you’ve known who died a believer is just as damned as an unbeliever.

If there had been no resurrection, then Christ proved Himself nothing more than a self-deceived prophet or crazy man and all of us are fools for trusting Him. BUT, as we’ve already seen, thankfully, the resurrection of Jesus Christ is a historical fact. Faith in Christ is not in vain. This is important to you this morning because Jesus’ being alive means the way to God has been ‘paved’ by Christ and you can be made right with Him and have relationship with Him this morning.

C. The Resurrection makes your resurrection possible

You and I are spirit and body. We are spiritual and we have physicality. Unlike the beliefs of the Greek philosophers who thought the body was evil and something we should want to be released from, God made our bodies as part of who we are and they complete us. Right now our bodies are affected by sin and die, but God has a plan to resurrect our bodies to perfection. Listen to philosopher Peter Kreeft:

“We are better than angels at many things, and those things would be missing from us and those perfections missing from the universe if our souls were simply disembodied. Angels are much better than we are at intelligence, will, and power, but they cannot smell flowers or weep over a Chopin nocturne.” (Peter Kreeft quoted by Hank Hanegraaff in Resurrection, p. 72)

These resurrected bodies, our current bodies transformed, will be bodies completely perfect and dominated by the Spirit rather than the sinful nature. Granted, the resurrection will not take place until Christ’s Second Coming, and 2 Corinthians 5 lets us know that our disembodiment at death, for the believer, results in being in God’s presence. But the same passage also lets us know that Paul desired to be “clothed” with his heavenly dwelling and not “naked,” or disembodied. So we can conclude that while our family members and friends that have died who were believers are very much enjoying the presence of the Lord, this is not their final eternal state. God has their bodily resurrection planned because He never planned permanent disembodiment for us.