The Beauty of Easter: Resurrection and Justification
a collaborative piece by Andy Shurson and Clint Patronella
Sundays are made for sleeping in, yard work, playing golf, attending brunch, and relaxing before beginning another week of commitments, responsibilities, and stress. Yet every Spring, people abandon their usual activities and flock to churches to fulfill their duty in recognition of the most important day in our liturgical calendar: Easter or Resurrection Sunday.
Donning their “Sunday Best” they attend the obligatory Easter church service and having placated their own conscience they leave with their box checked, only to repeat the task come Christmas. Pastors, priests, and clergy are certainly aware of this phenomenon, so they encourage members and parishioners to invite friends, co-workers, and family to Easter. They even spend extra time on their sermons, making sure to preach the resurrection of Jesus Christ with gusto, though the term is seldom heard on any other Sunday. Ah, the beauty of Easter.
In recent years, the resurrection has become an enigma of sorts. It is of such great importance that people who otherwise would not enter a church come to celebrate, while at the same time it is rarely mentioned outside of Easter sunrise services. The great irony is that far too many people both in the seats and the pulpit do not fully understand the significance of the resurrection which they are supposedly celebrating.
Christianity has become cross-centric. Now before you go and call the dogma police understand what I mean. I mean that the focus is not on the entire event but merely on the one aspect, namely Jesus Christ’s death on a cross for sinners. By no means is the cross not important (for it is vitally important), but if it is the pinnacle event then why is Good Friday not the day of celebration that twice-a-year attendees go to? Why do girls wear their pretty new dresses for Sunday and not Friday? Have pastors failed to communicate the day that truly matters?
No. Easter is surely the day of celebration and has been since the earliest days of the church. Paul demonstrates the importance of resurrection in Romans 4:23-25:
“But the words ‘it was counted to him’ were not written for his sake alone, but for ours also. It will be counted to us who believe in him who raised from the dead Jesus our Lord, who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification.”
Jesus Christ died for our sins and was raised for our justification. Paul did not take the cross without the resurrection. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:17 “if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins.” Without the resurrection, the death of Jesus on the cross would have been just another man tortured under the thumb of Rome. The death on the cross and the resurrection are two moments of one event.
The cross is the place of substitution, where Jesus Christ took on the sins of the world, past, present, and future. Any man can die, but substitution requires more than death. It requires a sacrifice that is perfect and infinite. The Hebrew Scriptures are full of sacrifices for sin but none bore every sin because they were temporary and finite. The only sacrifice that could take on the sins of everyone from every age was “the Lamb of God,” perfect, sinless and infinite. The resurrection is the validation that Christ is the more perfect Passover Lamb who was slain so that death would Passover us.
This emphasis on cross AND resurrection has been deeply rooted in the history of the church. A brief survey of a few voices from the past is important to hear this Easter season:
Ignatius in his Letter to Smyrnaeans 1.2 wrote, “that he might raise a banner for the ages through his resurrection for his saints and faithful people.”
Theodoret, wrotes in his Interpretation of Romans 4.25 that “Christ underwent suffering for our sins in order to pay our debt and so that his resurrection might prefigure the general resurrection of us all.”
Athanasius in The Incarnation for the Word puts it thus: “the Word Who is above all, might be worthy to die in the stead of all, and might, because of the Word which was come to dwell in it, remain incorruptible, and that thenceforth corruption might be stayed from all by the Grace of the Resurrection.”
Cyril of Alexandria in his Catechism Lecture 13 wrote, “I confess the cross because I know of the resurrection.”
Gregory of Nazianzus, in an Easter sermon, “We needed an Incarnate God, a God put to death, that we might live. We were put to death together with Him, that might be cleansed; we rose again with Him because we were put to death with Him; we were glorified with Him, because we rose again with Him.”
Pope Leo I, in his Easter Serm. 71.1 said, “Our participation in the cross of Christ, whereby the life of believers contains in itself the mystery of Easter.”
Martin Luther, in his Brief Explanation, wrote “I believe that He rose on the third day from the dead, to give me and to all who believe in Him a new life; and that He has thereby quickened us with Him, in grace and in the Spirit, that we may sin no more, but serve Him alone in every grace and virtue.”
John Calvin wrote in his Commentary on Romans, “The resurrection of Christ is the most important part of this, for it is the ground of our hope in the life to come. Had he simply said that we believe in God, it would not have been so easy for us to gather who this could serve to obtain righteousness. But when Christ comes forth and offers us a sure pledge of life in his own resurrection, we see clearly from what source the imputation of our righteousness flows.
Calvin also writes in his Romans Commentary, It would not have been sufficient for Christ to expose himself to the wrath and judgment of God, and undergo the curse due to our sins, unless He also emerged as victor over the curse, and having been received into the glory of heaven, reconciled God to us by His intercession. The power of justification, therefore, which overcame death is ascribed to His resurrection, not because the sacrifice of the cross, by which we are reconciled to God, has in no way contributed towards our justification, but because the perfection of this grace is revealed more clearly in His new life. Christ died for our sins because He delivered us from the calamity of death by suffering death as a punishment for our sins, so now He is said to have been raised for our justification, because he fully restored life to us by His resurrection. He was first struck by the hand of God, so that in the person of a sinner He might sustain the misery of sin, and afterwards was exalted into the kingdom of life, so that He might freely give His people righteousness and life.”
There are certainly many more texts from the saints who have gone before highlighting the fact that the cross without resurrection is meaningless. A dead savior does not save from death and does not save to life. The risen savior saves not only from death but unto life.
The crucifixion and the resurrection and intimately tied together. The cross without the resurrection is a death; nothing more, for any man can die. Without the resurrection, faith is in vain and hope is lost. The resurrection without the cross bears no sin, and leaves the world without saving grace. Together the cross and the empty tomb bring salvation and justification. This sacrifice is only perfect and infinite when it is the Son of God, the God-man, truly God and truly man. We are justified because his sacrifice was worthy, and his resurrection is our hope that one day we shall be raised with him. He was raised so that “he might raise a banner for the ages through his resurrection for his saints and faithful people” (Ignatius in his Letter to Smyrnaeans 1.2).
So may you remember the cross. Remember the death that Jesus died for you, the death that you would never have overcome. But also, remember the resurrection for it brings forth the blessings of His death to life. It is not simply remembering. The resurrection brings a tangible hope that God will complete what he has begun. Salvation began on the cross and was completed in the empty tomb. Now today we have a firm hope that the work that God has done in saving, redeeming, and reconciling us to him, will be brought to completion.
