The resurrection of Christ

Raised on the third day

The resurrection was the church's message from the very beginning. Paul reminds the Corinthians of what he himself had 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 this is a confession the church was already handing on before Paul wrote. The New Testament speaks of Jesus being raised, egeirō (ἐγείρω), and of his resurrection, anastasis (ἀνάστασις), a standing up again. The women found the tomb empty, and when the frightened disciples thought they were seeing a ghost, Jesus said, "Touch Me and see — for a spirit does not have flesh and bones, as you see I have" (Luke 24:39). Men who had locked themselves away became bold witnesses.

The risen body was the same body that had been laid in the tomb, and yet glorified. He came through locked doors, and he will never die again. Cyril of Alexandria says that in showing his hands and feet the Lord was "testifying that death was overcome, and human nature had now in Christ put on incorruption" Cyril. Paul calls the resurrection body imperishable, glorious and "a spiritual body" (1 Corinthians 15:44). Many interpreters take this to mean not a body made of spirit, but a body wholly alive by the Holy Spirit.

What the resurrection means

The resurrection shows who Jesus is: he "was declared with power to be the Son of God by His resurrection from the dead" (Romans 1:4). It is God's verdict that the work of the cross is accepted: he "was raised to life for our justification" (Romans 4:25). So "if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile" (1 Corinthians 15:17). And it shows our future: he is "the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep" (1 Corinthians 15:20). The Heidelberg Catechism names its benefits:

First, by his resurrection he has overcome death, that he might make us partakers of the righteousness which by his death he has obtained for us. Secondly, we also are now by his power raised up to a new life. Thirdly the resurrection of Christ is to us a sure pledge of our blessed resurrection.

Heidelberg Catechism, Q. 45

The church's confession

The Apostles' and Nicene Creeds confess that he rose again on the third day, and the Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant churches alike confess that he rose bodily. Early in the second century Ignatius of Antioch wrote that the risen Christ was still in the flesh Ignatius, Letter to the Smyrnaeans. The church has gathered on the first day of the week, the day he rose, and the Orthodox sing all through Easter that Christ has trampled down death by death.

In 1835 David Friedrich Strauss read the Gospels' miracle stories as myths formed in the early church Strauss, The Life of Jesus, and some later theologians explained the resurrection as the rebirth of the disciples' faith rather than something that happened at the tomb. The church has not accepted these accounts, because the New Testament speaks of an empty tomb and a body that could be touched, and tells how Jesus corrected the very thought that the disciples had seen a spirit (Luke 24:37). Christ's resurrection is the pledge of the resurrection of the body, and it leads on to the ascension. See also the lesson The resurrection and Did Jesus really rise from the dead?