The apostolic preaching of the gospel frequently led with the assertion of Jesus’ resurrection — and for good reason. It ‘demonstrates that Jesus had perfectly conquered death and its consequences’¹Thompson and Doyle, ‘Risen and Triumphant,’ 1. (Rev 1:18).

Few voices have stated the logic of that victory more forcefully than this:

‘If any man doubt of this victory, let Christ’s glorious resurrection declare him the thing. If death could not keep Christ under his dominion and power, but that he rose again, it is manifest that death’s power was overcome. If death be conquered, then it must follow that sin, for which death was appointed as the wages, must also be destroyed. If death and sin be vanquished away, then is the devil’s tyranny vanquished, which had the power of death, and was the author and brewer of sin, and the ruler of hell. If Christ had the victory of them all by the power of his death, and openly proved it by his most glorious and valiant resurrection, as it was not possible for his great might to be subdued by them; and then this is also true, that Christ died for our sins, and rose again for our justification; why may not we, who are members of true faith, rejoice and boldly say with the prophet Isaiah and the apostle Paul, Where is your sting, O death? Where is your victory, O hell? Thanks be to God, they say, who has given us the victory by our Lord Jesus Christ.’²The Second Book of Homilies, 14, ‘Of the Resurrection,’ 431-32; language slightly updated.

Follow the Chain

Notice how that argument works. It’s a chain, and each link pulls the next.

Death couldn’t hold Christ, so death’s power is overcome. If death is conquered, then sin — for which death was the wage — must also be destroyed. If death and sin are vanquished, then the devil’s tyranny is vanquished too, since his power was the power of death.

One resurrection, and the whole apparatus collapses.

Resurrection declares Christ’s victory and rule and, therefore, the certain prospect of creation’s restoration and everlasting human renewal. It announces a sure and ‘living hope’ (1 Pet 1:3) focused on the final phase of God’s Kingdom — yet to be completed, due in the future, ushered in at Jesus’ return.

Not Just for Souls

That hope is not for the soul alone. Future hope is not merely spiritual — it’s bodily, rooted in the physical nature of Jesus’ own rising.

That his whole Person — body and soul — left the tomb empty may strike some as madness (Acts 17:32; 26:25). But the reality is otherwise:

‘Because Jesus’ death was physical, a complete victory over death requires physical resurrection. The whole Christ died to restore whole men. What is not raised is not redeemed. … The resurrection emphasises the fact that Jesus did not shed his humanity to simply return to his pre-incarnate state. The reality of the incarnation is thus affirmed. The human and the Divine are inseparable in Christ. The risen Lord possesses a full humanity. Again there is great significance in the fact that his resurrection was not merely a spiritual resurrection. He rose from the dead “with flesh and bones.”’³Thompson and Doyle, ‘Risen and Triumphant,’ 1-2.

‘What is not raised is not redeemed’ is the sentence to hold. If only the soul rises, only the soul is saved — and half of you was never rescued at all.

Confirming the Incarnation

Far from being a new claim, this inseparability of human and Divine in the risen Christ is simply the resurrection’s confirmation of what the incarnation had already established.

As the Word became incarnate to dwell among us (John 1:14), we must attend to both sides of the full mystery. The man Jesus of Nazareth is ‘God without reserve, man without reserve, the eternal truth in time, the Word of God made flesh. … God in time, God as man, God active in history.’⁴T. F. Torrance, Incarnation: The Person and Life of Christ (IVP Academic, 2008), 3.

The Lord Jesus is ‘God acting as man, from both the Divine and human side for us.’⁵Molnar, ‘Resurrection and Atonement,’ 58. In Jesus Christ, God’s reality and human reality ‘intersect and overlap.’⁶Torrance, Space, Time, and Resurrection, 72.

Because a Man Was Raised

It’s this same full humanity, taken up into resurrection life, that becomes the ground of our own hope.

Because he was raised as a man — ‘by a man has come … the resurrection of the dead’ (1 Cor 15:21) — his resurrection is the firstfruits of humanity’s own resurrection ‘at his coming’ (1 Cor 15:20, 23).

But the firstfruits language points to something more than sequence. It points to likeness. If Christ’s resurrection is the pattern for our own, then the kind of body he rose with matters for the kind of hope we hold:

‘Christ came back from the dead with the same body in which he was crucified, which is an important point. Salvation is not the casting off of what we have in order to receive something entirely new and different. Rather is it the transformation of our present reality into something which stands in direct continuity with it but which is made perfect by being cleansed of all sin. In Article 4 of the Thirty-Nine Articles “perfection” does not refer to sinlessness because Jesus was sinless already. It refers instead to the fullness of his human nature. There have always been people who have been tempted to regard matter as evil or inferior to the spiritual side of our being, and so have been inclined to view the resurrection as an exclusively spiritual affair. But Christians believe in the redemption of matter as well as of spirit, and the resurrection affects the body as much as the soul. … [S]alvation touches every aspect of our being, and … no part of us will be ignored, detached or left behind in the resurrection.’⁷Bray, Faith we Confess, 33; cf. Bray, God is Love, 593-97.

Continuity, Not Replacement

That’s the word worth carrying away: continuity.

Salvation isn’t a trade-in — this body discarded, an unrelated one issued. It’s the transformation of what you already are into what it was always meant to become, cleansed of everything that spoiled it.

‘Because Christ is risen bodily, everything united to him must be raised as well.’⁸Horton, Recovering Our Sanity, 115.

We ‘will appear with him in glory’ (Col 3:4).

—

• 1
  Thompson and Doyle, ‘Risen and Triumphant,’ 1. ↩︎
• 2
  The Second Book of Homilies, 14, ‘Of the Resurrection,’ 431-32; language slightly updated. ↩︎
• 3
  Thompson and Doyle, ‘Risen and Triumphant,’ 1-2. ↩︎
• 4
  T. F. Torrance, Incarnation: The Person and Life of Christ (IVP Academic, 2008), 3. ↩︎
• 5
  Molnar, ‘Resurrection and Atonement,’ 58. ↩︎
• 6
  Torrance, Space, Time, and Resurrection, 72. ↩︎
• 7
  Bray, Faith we Confess, 33; cf. Bray, God is Love, 593-97. ↩︎
• 8
  Horton, Recovering Our Sanity, 115. ↩︎