What’s So Great About the Resurrection?

I Corinthians 15: 19-22

Today marks the high point on the Christian calendar, for today we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior.  We may not think much about why we celebrate such an event.  Of course, we would.  After all, it is, to say the least, unusual.  What our entire experience and all of history, except for the gospel, teaches us is that life is temporary.  We all die.  Here is the wisdom of King Solomon:

Ecclesiastes 9:2-6

English Standard Version

2 It is the same for all, since the same event happens to the righteous and the wicked, to the good and the evil,[a] to the clean and the unclean, to him who sacrifices and him who does not sacrifice. As the good one is, so is the sinner, and he who swears is as he who shuns an oath. 3 This is an evil in all that is done under the sun, that the same event happens to all. Also, the hearts of the children of man are full of evil, and madness is in their hearts while they live, and after that they go to the dead.

So, the resurrection of Jesus Christ is to be celebrated because of its uniqueness.  Here is something that has never happened before or since.  But, despite our own experience of the universality and finality of death, the Bible mentions many resurrections from the dead:

Not one of these resurrections is celebrated like Easter.  Then when we ask what is so great about the resurrection, we must change the question to ask: “What is so great about the resurrection of Jesus Christ?  Why is His resurrection different from the others in the Bible.”

What Paul tells us on that point is this:  The resurrection of Jesus Christ is not merely the resurrection of a single individual to life here on earth (as was the resurrection of Lazarus or Jairus’ daughter).  Rather, the resurrection of Christ is an act of cosmic or universal consequence.  It marks the decisive battle against all things evil, including, and especially, death itself. 

The resurrection of Christ is first of all, a fact of history.  A real flesh-and-blood man, Jesus of Nazareth, was crucified, died and rose again and walked the shores of Galilee and appeared to 500 and sat on the beach and ate grilled fish with his friends.  But the resurrection of Christ is different from all the others in that it marks a new cosmic beginning.  The old order of death has been defeated.  Things have changed.

The resurrection of Jesus Christ is the pivotal event in all of history and in all of creation.  It is of ultimate importance to you and me because we need a place to go and we need a way to get there.

To say that we need a place to go is to say that our souls hunger for eternity.  Although the evidence for universal death is all around us – we are reminded of it every day – we are never comfortable with that.  We do not resign ourselves easily to the idea that when the lights go out at the end of our earthly days there is no more beyond. Human beings are built with a longing for eternity.  How do we experience that longing?

We may taste the longing for eternity in the experience of separation from loved ones.  When someone we have long loved passes, we come to realize that what we had with them, however good it was, was incomplete, that there was more to it – more promised – than we were able to complete in what Alfred Lord Tennyson called “this bourne of time and space.”  There was more to be had.  More to be said and done and felt. More to be expressed and explained.

And we feel this incompleteness not only in the passing or remembrance of loved ones.  We may feel it in any aspect of life.  In any experience, no matter how good, how perfect, it may have been, we may sense some incompleteness.  One poet has written that we cannot expect a friendship to flower fully “in such a nook as this”  In his famous song, “American Pie,” Don McClean  hints at the sense of incompleteness of life as it passes here:

We all got up to dance

But we never got the chance

We all know that there are roads we never traveled and never will this side of Jordan, that may have held more treasure for us.  We may see that, however successful we may have been in our work, it was at best an unfinished symphony. We know that we are not what we should be.  That our lives are not what they should be.  Our souls keep telling us: This world is not enough.  We hunger for eternity.

Lewis:

the human soul was made to enjoy some object that is never fully given – nay, cannot even be imagined as given – in our present mode of subjective and spatio-temporal existence

The resurrection of Jesus Christ is of ultimate importance for you and me because we need a place to go.  We die here, and yet we hunger for more, we hunger for eternity.

We need a place to go.  We hunger for eternity.  And yet we have no way of getting there.

Romans 5: 12

New International Version

12 Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned—

Romans 7:24

O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?

 We have no more power over any rebirth than we did over our first birth.  The Bible teaches that we are separated from God – from the eternal – by sin – by a power that is working in the world and in our very lives.  And this is confirmed by our experience of life.  Standing alone, we are a prisoner to this power, we cannot escape on our own.

The resurrection of Jesus Christ is of ultimate importance because it is through him that we may escape the fate of sin and death and enter into eternal life.  Christ’s death and resurrection have universal consequences.  Our Lord speaks of it Himself:

John 12:31-33

English Standard Version

31 Now is the judgment of this world; now will the ruler of this world be cast out. 32 And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” 33 He said this to show by what kind of death he was going to die.

Christ will draw all men to Himself.  He will draw all men to eternity.

And here is the Apostle Paul:

1 Corinthians 15:19-22

English Standard Version

19 If in Christ we have hope[a] in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied.

20 But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. 21 For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. 22 For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.

The resurrection of Jesus Christ is the most important event in all of creation.   It is the insurmountable evidence that all that Jesus said and all that He claimed to be is true. It is of ultimate importance to you and me because we need a place to go and we need a way to get there.  Heaven is that place, and Jesus Christ is the way.

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