Here are some of the riches of this blessed truth collected from the Pauline Epistles.
What does His resurrection mean to the Christian in his daily life?
John 19:31–37 tells us of His death, of the spear-thrust in His side, and of blood and water pouring out of that great gaping wound.
It is told in the plainest language that He died of a ruptured heart.
The blood flowed through the rupture in His heart into the sack that holds the heart, and as the body grew cold, the blood had separated and the white serum had settled to the bottom.
The red corpuscles had risen to the top and coagulated, and when that Roman spear pierced it, the white serum gushed out.
Then followed clots of coagulated blood rolling down His side to the ground. Jesus was dead.
And after this Joseph of Arimathaea, being a disciple of Jesus, but secretly for fear of the Jews, besought Pilate that he might take away the body of Jesus: and Pilate gave him permission.
He came therefore and took the body of Jesus. And there came also Nicodemus, which at the first came to Jesus by night, and brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about an hundred-pound weight. Then took they the body of Jesus, and wound it in linen clothes with the spices, as the manner of the Jews is to bury. (John 19:38–40)
Here is a drama worthy of inspiration. Joseph and Nicodemus showed their friendship openly after His death:
Now in the place where he was crucified there was a garden; and in the garden a new sepulchre, wherein no one was ever placed.
There laid they Jesus therefore because of the Jews’ preparation day; for the [tomb] was nigh at hand. (John 19:41–42)
John 20:1–10 gives us a picture of His resurrection:
20:1 Now on the first day of the week Mary Magdalene went to the tomb early, while it was still dark, and saw that the stone had been taken away from the tomb. 2 Then she ran and came to Simon Peter, and to the other disciple, whom Jesus loved, and said to them, “They have taken away the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid Him.” 3 Peter therefore went out, and the other disciple, and were going to the tomb. 4 So they both ran together, and the other disciple outran Peter and came to the tomb first. 5 And he, stooping down and looking in, saw the linen cloths lying there; yet he did not go in. 6 Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb; and he saw the linen cloths lying there, 7 and the handkerchief that had been around His head, not lying with the linen cloths, but folded together in a place by itself. 8 Then the other disciple, who came to the tomb first, went in also; and he saw and believed. 9 For as yet they did not know the Scripture, that He must rise again from the dead. 10 Then the disciples went away again to their own homes.
What a shock it must have been to Mary.
She had come to the sepulchre to finish the embalming and saw the stone rolled away.
She never stopped to look in but turned and ran back to the room where Peter and John were hiding for fear of the Jews.
Bursting in upon them she cried, “They have taken away the LORD out of the sepulchre, and we know not where they have laid him.”
Who had dared to desecrate the tomb?
No people among all the nations paid such reverence to the dead as the Hebrew nation.
The Romans had stripped Him; they had scourged Him; they had nailed Him to the cross, with a mock crown on His Head. That wasn’t enough.
Had they dared to desecrate the grave?
Peter and John would not wait; they both started toward the tomb. John outran Peter and arrived there first.
Stooping down, he looked inside the tomb and was staggered at what he saw.
Peter came behind him. He hadn’t the same feelings that motivated John.
He just bowed his head and stepped into the sepulchre and then John followed him.
Notice the language: “he saw the linen cloths lying there, 7 and the handkerchief that had been around His head, not lying with the linen cloths, but folded together in a place by itself.”
When Jesus came out of the grave clothes, there was no hurry. He picked up the napkin that had been upon His face, folded it up, and laid it in a corner in the tomb.
There is something about that act of the Master that reaches deep into my spirit-consciousness.
This is not something a man could do.
Only God would act like that in an hour of such triumph.
“Then went in also that other disciple, which came first to the sepulchre, and he saw, and believed.”
What did John see in the sepulchre that made him believe that Jesus was resurrected?
“For as yet they knew not the scripture, that he must rise again from the dead.”
You understand, Jesus’s body had been embalmed as the custom of the Jews was to bury.
Nearly every rich family had a slave who understood embalming.
They had one hundred pounds of a mixture composed of myrrh and aloes and a bundle of linen cloths.
They cut the linen up into strips, smeared it with this mixture as you would a bandage to wrap around a wounded finger, and then wrapped the body of Jesus.
Every finger was wrapped separately and then the hands and arms, until the whole body was wrapped as an Egyptian mummy.
When it was finished, they took the embalmed body and put it into the sepulchre, and it was sealed by Roman authority.
Notice, the body of Jesus likely weighed 180 to 200 pounds in his health. He would shrink about twenty pounds in the crucifixion.
There was a hundred pound weight of myrrh and aloes, besides the linen cloths they used in embalming. Then the body would weigh about 280 pounds.
When they had finished the embalming, His body was completely encased except for His face.
If Jesus had not died of a ruptured heart and the spear thrust, He certainly would have died in the three days and three nights of embalming.
No one could have lived through that. The embalming cloth had grown hard and stiff in that dry cell in seventy-two hours He was there.
The cloth had not been ripped or torn. He had come out of the grave clothes through the narrow aperture where His face had been.
What do you think Peter and John did?
No sooner had they left the sepulchre, than they rushed through the streets crying, “He is risen! He is risen!”
Their hearts were so overcharged with emotion they couldn’t resist proclaiming the fact.
The tremendous stir His resurrection made in the city, three thousand men that accepted Christ on the day of Pentecost, all prove the historic fact, the absolute certainty of His resurrection.
1 Corinthians 15:1–8 declares that five hundred people saw Him at His ascension.
The early church did not try to prove that Jesus arose from the dead. It was a self-evident fact.
They were there when it happened.
They saw the tomb and the empty grave clothes.
They knew Jesus had risen.
Now what does it mean to us today?
In Revelation 1:17–18, hear the resurrected Master speaking now:
17 And when I saw Him, I fell at His feet as dead. But He laid His right hand on me, saying to me, “Do not be afraid; I am the First and the Last. 18 I am He who lives, and was dead, and behold, I am alive forevermore. Amen. And I have the keys of Hades and of Death.
Satan had been conquered.
What a thrill went through the whole spirit world when Jesus came from the dark regions, a Master, holding up in His hand the keys of death and of hell.
He had stripped that foul spirit of his authority.
He had left him defeated before his own associates.
There was a spiritual earthquake in the region of the damned.
Hebrews 2:14 tells us: Inasmuch then as the children have partaken of flesh and blood, He Himself likewise shared in the same, that through death He might destroy him who had the power of death, that is, the devil.
Joseph B. Rotherham translates it as “that he might paralyze the death-dealing authority of the devil.”
Either translation is clear enough.
Before Jesus arose from the dead, He had conquered Satan and stripped him of the authority of which he had robbed man in the garden.
The story of the triumph of Satan’s defeat wouldn’t be fully described unless I gave you Colossians 2:15:
“Having disarmed principalities and powers, He made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them in it.”
He stripped Satan of his authority and left him paralyzed and broken. Then He arose from the dead.
Redemption was a fact. Satan was defeated.
Now we can quote Colossians 1:13–14 once more. I want you to become familiar with this Scripture. I want you to know it as you know two plus two equals four.
13 He has delivered us from the authority of darkness and translated us into the kingdom of the Son of His love, 14 in whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins.
That was the greatest moment in human history.
That was a moment that will be remembered through all eternity.
Father God—what could it have meant to Him?
Humanity, the hope of His love and the reason for all creation, was redeemed; the claims of justice were satisfied.
God had legally redeemed man.
All the ages of eternity will remember how the Father’s only begotten Son had redeemed them with His own blood.
Now God can on legal grounds give to humans eternal life.
John 5:24 can become a part of human experience:
“Amen Amen”, I say to you, he who hears My word and believes in Him who sent Me has eternal life, and shall not come into condemnation, but has changed place from death into life.”
John 6:47 “Verily, Verily”, I say to you, he who believes in Me has eternal life.
I wonder if you understand this?
There will be no judgment for us like there was for Jesus; there will be no cross and no crown of thorns.
There will be no suffering of our soul and body.
His soul was made a sin offering, he experience every repulsive, revolting, ghastly, horrible thought, feeling and actions of the entire human race, while he hung on that cross for three and a half hours.
Hear this Scripture: “He that believeth on me hath everlasting life” (John 6:47), or he that acts upon the Word that God has spoken has eternal life the moment that he acts.
The man outside of Christ cannot confess the lordship of Jesus and declare that he knows Christ died for his sins and arose when He was justified, without receiving the nature and life of God.
You ask, what is the greatest miracle of all the miracles connected with redemption?
It is not the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, because the Father and the Son were working together in that.
But the greatest miracle happens when a man receives eternal life, when a child of the devil becomes a child of God.
Notice again: when a man who is spiritually dead passes out of the realm of Satan into the realm of life (into the kingdom of the Son of God’s love) that is the miracle of miracles.
To the sense knowledge man, the resurrection is the greatest miracle, because that is something the physical senses can register.
But the new birth is an unseen miracle. It is in the realm of spirit. Mankind’s soul or reasoning faculties cannot be born again.
They cannot receive the nature of God independent of their spirit. The spirit is the part of human’s that is made alive unto God, becoming God conscious.
“2 Corinthians 5: 17″had become a reality the moment Jesus carried His blood into the Holy of Holies.
2 Corinthians 5:17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new. 18 Now all things are of God, who has reconciled us to Himself through Jesus Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation, 19 that is, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses to them, and has committed to us the word of reconciliation.
20 Now then, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were pleading through us: we implore you on Christ’s behalf, be reconciled to God. 21 For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.
Now a man or woman can accept Jesus as Lord over their spirit, and know that the moment they do, they become a new creation.
The old things of their life have passed away, and behold all are become new; and all these things are of God, who has reconciled that man or woman to Himself through Jesus Christ.
What a miracle the new creation is!
Think of taking a man out of the very dregs of our modern civilization and recreating him in a single moment from a convict to a Son of God.
And not only that but notice that verse 21. Here God’s still small voice says, “He hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.”
That is the Father speaking, and the moment you accept Jesus Christ as your Savior and confess Him as your Lord, that moment you become the righteousness of God in Christ.
We could stop here, for this is enough to thrill the ages, but we haven’t reached the climax of redemption yet.
God is faithful, by whom ye were called unto the fellowship of his Son Jesus Christ our Lord. (1 Corinthians 1:9)
It took a while before I could adjust my heart to the reality of that statement, that the great eternal Father God, the Creator of the universe, should call me, should call you, to fellowship with His Son, to become identified with that Son, to become one with that Son.
Think of a beautiful father and mother. They have a lovely boy, and oh, how careful they have been in his upbringing.
Could you think of them going down into the slums and finding a neglected child to be his associate, to fellowship with that boy? No!
But here is the miracle.
The Father knows when a man or woman accepts His Son as their Savior, and confesses Him as their Lord, that moment He command the light of life to shine within that person’s spirit, and make him absolutely a new creation. They will be in the same generational line with Jesus.
They will be an actual child of God, the same species.
The old fallen nature that links them with Satan has ceased being, and a new nature, God’s own nature, is imparted to them.
Now they really are the Father’s male or female son just as Jesus was in His earth walk, and they are as righteous as the first begotten, because that first begotten is their righteousness.
You may talk about miraculous things, but I declare to you, this new creation miracle outstrips everything in all of creation.
Taking a child of the devil with his hands wet with the blood of his brother and changing that man’s nature!
Giving that person a new nature, destroying the old nature; giving them the position of a son; giving them the rights and privileges of a son; giving them the very place of a Son in the Father’s heart and family here is grace; here is love let loose.
This is a picture of Paul.
This is the climax. Now you are ready to turn to 2 Corinthians 2:14:
14 Now thanks be to God who always leads us in triumph in Christ, and through us diffuses the fragrance of His knowledge in every place.
Now take notice of this:
15 For we are to God the fragrance of Christ among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing. 16 To the one we are the aroma of death leading to death, and to the other the aroma of life leading to life. And who is sufficient for these things? 17 For we are not, as so many, peddling the word of God; but as of sincerity, but as from God, we speak in the sight of God in Christ. (2 Corinthians 2: 15–17)
The metaphor is taken from the triumphal procession of a victorious general.
God is celebrating His triumph over His enemies; Paul, who had been so great an opponent of the gospel, is now following in the train of the triumphal procession, yet at the same time, by a characteristic change of metaphor, an incense-bearer, scattering incense, which was always done on these occasions, as the procession moves on.
Some of the conquered enemies were put to death when the procession reached the capitol; to them the smell of the incense was an odor “of death unto death”; to the rest who were spared, an odor “of life unto life.”
The heart can hardly grasp the significance of it.
We now reign as Lords and kings.
Once more I want to give you Romans 5:17, for it fits here perfectly:
17 For if by the one man’s offense death reigned through the one, much more those who receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the One, Jesus Christ.
We are now reigning as kings in the realm of life.
We have become masters. We are conquerors.
What does the resurrection mean to us?
It means that He has taken us from slavery to the throne. We were defeated, conquered, and held in captivity.
Now we are set free, and in the name of Jesus we become the bondage-breakers for the rest of “the human race”.
He has made us rulers where once fear of death held us in captivity.