The power of resurrection (Phil 3:10) is nothing less than God’s renewing, life-giving capacity — his energy of recreation and new creation at work in the world.

In raising Jesus from death and elevating him to his right hand, God announced the inauguration of the long-promised transformation and glorification of all things.

‘The Last Days have arrived. His resurrection is the firstfruits of the harvest.’

Remaking, Not Repairing

That transformation is cosmic in scope — not the mending of a fallen order but its remaking:

‘Heaven and earth will become one. In the book of Revelation we notice that there is no longer any distinction between them. God’s dwelling will be with humans forever. Again, it is not less than natural but supernatural, not beyond the reach of matter but beyond the reach of sin and death.’¹Michael Horton, Recovering Our Sanity: How the Fear of God Conquers the Fears That Divide Us (Zondervan, 2022), 117.

Catch the last phrase, because it corrects a common assumption. The new creation isn’t less physical than this one. It’s beyond the reach of sin and death, not beyond the reach of matter.

Firstfruits

Jesus’ rising from the dead was the ‘firstfruits’ of resurrection for all the dead (1 Cor 15:20). As he was made alive again, so shall all those who are ‘in Christ … be made alive’ (1 Cor 15:22).

This isn’t simply a private hope for individual believers. It’s an event of cosmic and ultimate scope, one that resets the timetable and goal of history:

Against the Old Testament expectation, the resurrection of Jesus can clearly be seen as an ultimate event. Jesus’ resurrection refocuses that expectation of the great end time general resurrection of all men and women. The Last Days have arrived. His resurrection is the firstfruits of the harvest. This means that his resurrection marks the arrival of the new age: the resurrection has begun with Jesus (John 11:25).

So Where Is Everyone Else?

If Jesus’ resurrection marks the arrival of the new age, a question naturally follows. What about the rest of us — those who haven’t yet risen?

The answer lies not in a different kind of resurrection, but in a different moment within the one resurrection already under way:

‘According to God’s plan, not everyone rises at the same time. There is an order — Jesus now, we at his coming again. But that does not alter the fact that sin has been dealt with and resurrection has come. Therefore the Kingdom — the new creation — has come in power. Christ’s resurrection initiates and proclaims this.’²Seccombe, The Gospel of the Kingdom, 167.

That order — Christ’s resurrection then, ours to follow — doesn’t leave believers merely waiting on the sidelines in the meantime.

Even now, those who have ‘shared in the Holy Spirit’ are in Christ — believers united and joined to him, with him bound and united to them — and already share in the reality of the age to come, whether they live or die.

Dead or alive, we are taken up to taste ‘the heavenly gift … the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the age to come’ (Heb 6:4-5).

The Cross Remains Primary

Through his own atoning death, Jesus dealt decisively with the sin, guilt, death and Divine judgment that otherwise lie upon all human beings.

The cross remains primary in the gospel, for Jesus’ propitiation ‘by blood’ is the basis, mass and weight of his entire saving work (Rom 3:25). It’s ‘by his blood’ that we are justified before God (Rom 5:9), and his death ‘for our sins’ (1 Cor 15:3) is God’s foundational and irreplaceable saving act.

The depth of what the cross accomplishes shouldn’t be underestimated. The atonement tells us ‘the very fact that God himself has to descend into our bottomless pit of evil and guilt in order to construct continuity between us and God.’³T. F. Torrance, Atonement: The Person and Work of Christ (IVP Academic, 2009), 4.

Without the cross of Christ, there is neither relationship nor unity between humanity and God.

Never Mentioned Alone

Yet Scripture doesn’t let the cross stand by itself. In the same breath that Paul speaks of Jesus’ death, he speaks also of his rising.

Jesus ‘was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification’ (Rom 4:25) — a pairing worth pausing over: ‘In other words, he was raised in order to justify us (highlighting his role as the Judge who vindicates those who are his).’⁴Thompson and Doyle, ‘Risen and Triumphant,’ 5.

That justification carries immediate, practical consequence. The forgiveness of our sins means the legal position of sinners in relation to God has been overturned in favour of innocence, acceptance, reconciliation, and adoption as the Father’s beloved children.

God’s gift of righteousness to us — justification, being put right with him — is thus established as a result of both Christ’s crucifixion and his resurrection together.

With reconciliation and adoption, atonement and resurrection accomplish their ultimate objective in Christ: ‘union with the Father, in peace … communion with the life of God.’⁵Torrance, Space, Time, and Resurrection, 67.

Deeper Than Forgiveness

That objective — relationship restored forever — reaches beyond the forgiveness of individual sins to the very reconstitution of what it means to be human before God:

‘It is in the resurrection, then, that the ultimate content and purpose of the atonement and reconciliation come to fruition and to view — in the recreation of man in communion with God. This involves the restoration of true creaturehood to man, the affirmation of man in the fullness of his human existence and reality. This is the ontological side of redemption, the healing and restoring of being in relation to the creative Source of all being.’⁶Torrance, Space, Time, and Resurrection, 79.

‘Ontological’ is a heavy word for a simple point. Redemption doesn’t merely change your legal standing. It repairs what you are.

Everything Downstream

But the main point here is this. Everything that follows Christ’s dying for our sins — his resurrection, ascension, gift of the Spirit, intercession, glorious return, the resurrection of the dead, and the regeneration of the entire cosmos — is on account of it and consequent upon it.

His death was the cost of his everlasting Kingdom.

—

• 1
  Michael Horton, Recovering Our Sanity: How the Fear of God Conquers the Fears That Divide Us (Zondervan, 2022), 117. ↩︎
• 2
  Seccombe, The Gospel of the Kingdom, 167. ↩︎
• 3
  T. F. Torrance, Atonement: The Person and Work of Christ (IVP Academic, 2009), 4. ↩︎
• 4
  Thompson and Doyle, ‘Risen and Triumphant,’ 5. ↩︎
• 5
  Torrance, Space, Time, and Resurrection, 67. ↩︎
• 6
  Torrance, Space, Time, and Resurrection, 79. ↩︎