The resurrection

The third day he rose again

Week by week, in many churches, Christians confess that Jesus "was crucified, dead, and buried" and that "the third day he rose again from the dead" The Apostles' Creed. The Nicene Creed adds a phrase: "according to the Scriptures" The Nicene Creed. Those words come straight from one of the oldest Christian texts we have, a summary Paul says he himself received.

For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that He was buried, that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that He appeared to Cephas and then to the Twelve.

1 Corinthians 15:3-5

Many scholars think Paul is handing on a confession the church was already reciting before he wrote. He goes on to list more witnesses: more than five hundred at once, James, all the apostles, and last of all Paul himself (1 Corinthians 15:6-8).

The Gospels tell the story of that morning. Women came to the tomb at dawn with spices, found the stone rolled away, and "did not find the body of the Lord Jesus" (Luke 24:3). Two men in shining clothes asked them, "Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here; He has risen!" (Luke 24:5-6). When the women told the apostles, "their words seemed like nonsense to them" (Luke 24:11). That evening Jesus stood among the frightened disciples, and they thought they were seeing a ghost.

Look at My hands and My feet. It is I Myself. Touch Me and see — for a spirit does not have flesh and bones, as you see I have.

Luke 24:39

Then he asked for something to eat, and ate a piece of broiled fish in front of them (Luke 24:42-43). A week later he invited Thomas, who had refused to believe, to touch his wounds, and Thomas answered, "My Lord and my God!" (John 20:28). Gregory the Great saw a mercy even in that doubt: "The unbelief of Thomas is more profitable to our faith, than the belief of the other disciples" Gregory. Within weeks Peter, standing with the Eleven who had hidden behind locked doors, was telling Jerusalem, "God has raised this Jesus to life, to which we are all witnesses" (Acts 2:32). Whether their testimony can be trusted is the subject of Did Jesus really rise from the dead?, and where Christ was between his death and his rising is taken up in Where was Jesus during the three days?

What the resurrection means

First, it shows who Jesus is. He "was declared with power to be the Son of God by His resurrection from the dead" (Romans 1:4). The world condemned him as a criminal, but "it was impossible for death to keep Him in its grip" (Acts 2:24).

Second, it is God's verdict on the cross. Paul writes that Jesus "was delivered over to death for our trespasses and was raised to life for our justification" (Romans 4:25). The Father has accepted the Son's offering, and so the resurrection is part of the gospel, not an appendix to it. Without it, "your faith is futile; you are still in your sins" (1 Corinthians 15:17). How that righteousness becomes ours is the subject of Faith and justification.

Third, it is the beginning of our own future.

But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.

1 Corinthians 15:20

"Firstfruits" is aparchē (ἀπαρχή). When Israel reaped its harvest, the first sheaf was brought to the priest and waved before the LORD (Leviticus 23:10-11). That first sheaf was a promise of the whole harvest to come. Matthew Henry draws the comfort: "All that are by faith united to Christ, are by his resurrection assured of their own" Matthew Henry. How our bodies will be raised belongs to Resurrection, judgment and the new creation.

Fourth, death has lost. "Where, O Death, is your victory? Where, O Death, is your sting?" (1 Corinthians 15:55). And the new life starts now. Those baptized into Christ's death were buried with him "in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may walk in newness of life" (Romans 6:4); since we have been raised with Christ, we "strive for the things above" (Colossians 3:1).

A body, raised and glorified

The Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant churches, all the historic churches, confess that Christ rose bodily. In modern times, though, some theologians have described Easter less as something that happened at a tomb than as an experience of the disciples after Jesus' death: the dawning conviction that he lives and that his cause goes on, the birth of their faith. They wanted to protect two things: that faith does not hang on historical proof, and that the risen Lord is met today in faith, not only in the past.

The New Testament's language is hard to fit to that account. It speaks of an empty tomb. It tells us that the disciples first had exactly that thought, "thinking they had seen a spirit" (Luke 24:37), and that Jesus corrected them. Peter calls the apostles the witnesses "who ate and drank with Him after He rose from the dead" (Acts 10:41). Even the order of Paul's creed, "that He was buried, that He was raised on the third day" (1 Corinthians 15:4), points to something that happened to the body laid in the grave.

Yet this was not a corpse revived for a few more years, like Lazarus. Christ's body was the same body, glorified: he came among the disciples "with the doors locked" (John 20:19), and he cannot die again (Romans 6:9). Gregory notes why the wounds remained on that glorified body: "He who destroyed death would not blot out the signs of death" Gregory. The risen Lord is recognisably the crucified one.

The day of resurrection

Jesus rose "on the first day of the week, very early in the morning" (Luke 24:1), and from the beginning the church gathered on that day. "On the first day of the week we came together to break bread," Luke writes (Acts 20:7), and John calls it "the Lord's day" (Revelation 1:10). Every Sunday is a small Easter, and Easter itself is among the oldest and greatest feasts of the church. Through the whole Easter season Orthodox Christians sing again and again that Christ has risen from the dead, trampling down death by death and giving life to those in the tombs. For more on the Lord's Day, see Worship and prayer.

Peter blesses God, who "has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead" (1 Peter 1:3). That is why Christians can grieve at a grave without despair. For more on this hope, see What is hope?; for where the risen Christ is now, the next lesson.

Practice