Lifted

As a summary of the gospel Paul writes: ‘Jesus was delivered over to death for our sins, and raised to life for our justification’ (Romans 4.25).

Notice the connection between his resurrection and our justification.

To justify something is to declare it to be right. In an exam we might be challenged to ‘justify our answer’, in other words, to show it to be right. Paul is speaking of being justifed by God: as far as God is concerned, we are entirely in the right. There is nothing to be said against us.

Paul has already shown us that we are justifed freely through God’s grace as we trust in the death of Jesus. Now he shows us how this justification is related to the resurrection. He is not saying that we are half-saved by the cross and half-saved by the resurrection. Rather, Paul is saying that the resurrection is both the consequence and demonstration of salvation through the death of Jesus. His blood saves because he is risen. The resurrection is necessary for justification — for our salvation

Why?

Why do we need the resurrection for these things to be certain? Why does the resurrection, as opposed to something else, indicate that the death of Jesus has paid for our sins? Presumably God could have yelled down in an audible voice that the sacrifice of Jesus had been accepted. Why is this his signature — his signing off on our salvation?

In the logic of Scripture, there is a reason why the resurrection functions in this way. The raising of Jesus from death is significant because death itself is significant.

What we need to see is this: the resurrection is the consequence and demonstration of our salvation because death is the consequence and demonstration of our sin.

The punishment for sin

Sin leads to death. We must go back to the Garden of Eden and to Adam and Eve. God said that if humans ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil they would ‘surely die’. When they did so, it was an act of rebellion against God’s rule. We cannot go up against God and expect to live, not just because God is bigger and we won’t succeed (though he is and we won’t), but because God is the life-giver. To turn from him is like sawing off the branch you’re sitting on. Sin is a form of suicide, for it cuts us off from the source of our life and breath.

This is seen in what happens to Adam and Eve. The consequence of their sin is that they live under the certainty of death. They will return to the ground. They are barred from access to the tree of life. Death is inevitable.

The wages of sin

This connection between sin and death is reflected elsewhere in the Bible. Paul tells us that ‘the wages of sin is death’ (Romans 6.23). Death is what sin deserves.

It doesn’t quite have the same ring for us today. Our wages tend to be delivered automatically, directly into our bank account. We don’t physically handle or touch them. In my first ever job — working weekends in a local coffee shop — I was paid with cash in an envelope at the end of the week. It was so much more tangible. The wages weren’t much, but to physically receive them seemed to mean something. It was there in my hand — physical recognition that I had actually done that work. I’d earned it. This was my reward and — bar a few cappuccinos spilt down people’s shirts — I really deserved it.

Death is just as physical, just as tangible, and just as deserved a wage for our sin. We really did earn this. It is there: an inevitable reminder that our lives, shorn of the goodness and safety of following God’s ways, are now finite and ultimately very fleeting.

James shows us graphically how this relationship between sin and death works: ‘When tempted, no one should say, “God is tempting me”. For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone; but each one is tempted when, by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed. Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death’ (James 1.13-15).

James is thinking primarily about temptation here, but in the process of doing so reminds us of the seriousness of sin and its relationship to death.

Death the intruder

I think this is why we have a strange perception of death. It puzzles us. Death is, when we think about it, one of the most normal things about life in this world: it is finite and it ends. This happens to everyone. It’s not unusual, and when it happens to people sufficiently far removed from us we can even manage to be indifferent to it. But for all its commonality, close up, death never seems natural. It seems wrong, something that shouldn’t really belong to human experience — an unwelcome intruder in our world. And as much as we cover it with euphemisms — a loved one has ‘passed away’, or ‘moved on’, or ‘left us’ — it is deeply uncomfortable for us even to think about. And so we don’t. The best we can do is not think about it, pretend it isn’t there, live as though it’s not going to happen. We don’t welcome being reminded that we will all have to face it one day.

Our unease with death is a reflection that we know more than we realise. Death, like sin, does not belong here. Sin leads to death. The existence of death proves the reality of sin. It is the consequence and demonstration that we have sinned against God. It is something we were never intended to experience.

Understanding resurrection

As we grasp the significance of death we can begin to see the significance of resurrection. Raising Jesus from the dead was not an arbitrary power-miracle. It has meaning. The death Jesus dies is a result of sin, yours and mine. The proof that he has paid for sin in full is his resurrection, his coming to new life.

New life, notice. I once heard of a missionary working in Thailand who gave a Buddhist friend of his a New Testament to read through and think about. Some time later when they next met, he was confused to discover that his friend had concluded from doing so that Jesus was an exemplary Buddhist. It took the missionary a long time to work out how someone could draw this conclusion from reading through the four Gospels. But it eventually dawned on him. The Buddhist had read the Gospels through, assuming they were sequential, not parallel, accounts of Jesus. He read each as if it was the next incarnation, and was therefore impressed that after merely four incarnations Jesus had achieved nirvana. He’d finally broken out of this cycle of reincarnation and death, and left this world.

The cycle broken

The life Jesus was raised to was not the same kind of life he’d lived before his death, as if he was about to go through the process again. Resurrection is being raised to new life, not normal life. As we shall see later, Jesus’s post-resurrection body was radically different from his pre-resurrection body (even if there was also some continuity). His new life shows us that the cycle of sin and death in which we naturally live has finally been broken. He has triumphed over sin once and for all. It is a victory over sin and its consequence that is definitive, not temporary. There is new life to be had. Sin has been conquered.

It is, therefore, the resurrection of Jesus, and can only be the resurrection of Jesus, that assures us of salvation. It is the sign that Jesus has achieved for us all that he claimed he would. Only the resurrection can show us that our sins have been fully dealt with, and that death is now no longer our destination, but a gateway to new and perfect life.

The resurrection shows us that there is nothing we need to add to the death of Jesus to find acceptance with God. The cross is not a starter pack. It is not God stumping up even most of what we need so that we can fish around in our pockets and make up the rest. By dying and rising for us Jesus has closed the deal. God has signed for it, and his signature is the resurrection.

This article is an edited extract from Sam Allberry’s new book Lifted - experiencing the resurrection life, published by IVP (cost £6.99), and is used with permission.

Experiencing the resurrection life