1.03.2008

The Resurrection of Christ

If you have not read the previous post (posted about 10 hours ago) it would be helpful to read that first.

The last post addressed the cross of Christ, and this post will hopefully shed light on the resurrection of Christ. It is important when considering the resurrection to remember why and how exactly Christ died. Isaiah 53:6 “All of us have gone astray, each of us to his own way, but the Lord has caused the iniquity of us all to fall upon Him.” Christ died on the cross because of our iniquity. “He was bruised for our transgressions, and He was crushed for our iniquities.” The first a most important thing when considering the resurrection is recalling that Christ died under the penalty of our sin.

The Father loves the Son more than anything, and yet the Son died under the wrath of the Father because the Son was indwelt with our sin. That puts us in a very precarious spot. Without the death of Christ we stand naked before God with all of the weight of our sin bearing down upon us, and the wrath of God inevitably before us. However with the death of Christ we are no longer under the condemnation of our sins, but do not start the celebration yet. With Christ’s death alone we are worse off than we started. Think about it, at one point we were guilty of all of our sins, the next moment that guilt is lifted, but it is replaced with the guilt of killing the very Son of God. We no longer stand before a righteous judge guilty of all of our transgressions; we now would stand before Him guilty of murder, and murder of His very own Son at that.

There is great hope though, and one hundred percent of that hope lies in the resurrection of Christ. If a man is on trial for a murder that he obviously committed, and all the evidence is against him what is the only thing that will get him off the hook. We could say a wicked judge that lets the guilty go, or a rigged jury, other than that he is stuck. There is one other way that the penalty could be avoided, and that is if the person who was murdered would walk into the court room and present themselves to the judge and jury as an alive man. A man cannot be punished for the murder of a person that is still alive. Do you see how our hope lies in the resurrection of Christ?

Christ died under the penalty of our sin, taking our sin and enduring the punishment that it deserved. He drank down the cup of God’s wrath against our sin to the bitter last drop. If it had ended there we would have been worse off than were before hand, but instead not only did Christ pay for all our sin, He rose from the dead defeating sin, and living to intercede for us. In other words Christ took our iniquity making us guilty of His death but not guilty of our iniquity, but rose from the dead defeating even death itself leaving us with no guilt at all, but instead with right standing before the father.

I hope that makes sense.
Lord willing the next post will be about praying in Jesus’ name.

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