Because Jesus Christ Lives

Paul once asked King Agrippa a jarring question. “Why should it be thought a thing incredible with you, that God should raise the dead” (Acts 26:8)? The living God made the world. He defines the limits of possibility. His word creates and controls reality, not unbelieving man’s word, science, and philosophy. He sent his eternal Son clothed in our flesh. He raised his Son from the dead. This is not impossible for him who “stretched out the heavens like a curtain” and whose “understanding is unsearchable.” He is “the God who raises the dead” (John 5:21; 2 Cor. 1:9; Heb. 11:19).

                Because Jesus Christ lives by the glory of the Father, justification is secure. This is the plain statement of Romans 4:25: “He was raised for our justification.” A dead Savior saves no one. Jesus Christ died to take the guilt and penalty of our sin upon himself (2 Cor. 5:21). His precious blood is the ransom price required by a holy God for our deliverance from sin. He paid the penalty in full. Having paid its wages in full, he rose in triumph over the grave. Alive, he makes us righteous before God by his obedience imputed to us. Alive, he secures us in righteousness by his heavenly intercession at the Father’s right hand.

                Because Jesus Christ lives, he has “abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel” (2 Tim. 1:10). By his resurrection, our Lord has rendered death inactive, deprived death of its influence and power over all who believe in him. This is a strong and strange claim. We have been to many funerals and wept over those whom we loved and lost. And yet, there is in the bosom of every believer an unquenchable flicker of hope that the death of the body is not the death of the loved one – not judicial death, not death as the gateway to everlasting hell, not death as a curse to be paid. Death is the Father’s last, loving chastening of his beloved child. He frees us from the perishing outer man so that the new inner man may soar to heavenly perfection. The decaying seed of physical life must be planted in the earth to sprout afresh on the resurrection morning as a glorious and immortal body.

                Because Jesus Christ lives, believers in him will never die. Our Lord was called “demon possessed” for saying this to the Jews (John 8:51). When he said this to Mary, she confessed he was the Son of God (John 11:26). The difference? Heaven-given faith. When we believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, all his shame in the grave, all his dying for us, all his suffering the hell and shame of death and burial, all of this is counted for us. Therefore, we shall never die. Upon the closing of your eyes here, you will open them upon him there. Never will death be for you an entrance to hell and judgment, misery and sorrow, fear and horror. Your Lord has the keys of death hanging from his belt, and you may confidently walk up to your tomb, holding the hand of the Prince of Life.

                Because Jesus Christ lives, you and I have a living shepherd to carry and protect us through every dark vale on the way to glory. We have a living wisdom to guide us so that we can serve him here body and soul. We have a living friend who cheers us by his Spirit so that we never lose all hope but have a strange and quiet comfort that picks us up when we are ready to give up. Because Jesus Christ lives, holiness is not a fearful, frustrated attempt to save ourselves, but an in-union with Christ sharing of his life so that we are progressively made like him through trials.

                You never need to ask a true believer if Jesus Christ is alive. We do not think it strange at all that the God who made his world and made so many promises should keep them and raise his Son from the dead. We believe he is alive because we believe the same Scriptures that he believed. We believe he is alive because we see his sanctifying, keeping work in our hearts and lives. We know he is not letting us go, for we would never believe his word, weep over our sins, aspire to godliness, witness so many answered prayers, receive immediately needed encouragements, and desire to be with him if he were dead. Dead men exercise no hold like this over the living. His living hand hold and grips us. His life has taken us over, delivering us from the fear of death, and filling us now with the joy of heaven anticipated.