If the cross were the whole of Paul’s gospel, his letters would read very differently.

Alongside his relentless focus on ‘the cross of Christ’ stands an equally relentless insistence on the Lord’s resurrection.

‘It is the whole complex of life, death and resurrection which secures our redemption.’

The Most Compressed Definition He Gives

In what is perhaps the most compressed definition of the gospel Paul provides, he bluntly tells his protégé Timothy: ‘Remember Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, the offspring of David, as preached in my gospel’ (2 Tim 2:8).

If the cross of Christ expresses the cost and price of the good news of salvation, the resurrection declares its value and validity.

Very often in apostolic preaching, the announcement — breaking news — concerning Christ finds its cutting edge and climax in the resurrection. For it’s there that we encounter God’s definitive word declaring the worth and significance of Jesus’ Person and work.¹See Benjamin Dean, Great Truths – The Resurrection of Jesus Christ, Part I, ‘The Priority of Jesus’ Resurrection – The Gospel of Resurrection,’ https://www.greattruthsglobal.org/the-resurrection-of-jesus-christ-part-i/

The resurrection, as it were, displays the full implication and accomplishment of Christ’s incarnation, life, mighty miraculous acts, teaching, passion and crucifixion.

Of One Piece

With the good news of Jesus, crucifixion and resurrection are of one piece.

The message of his death assumes his rising from the dead. The news of his resurrection presupposes his prior death.

Neither, properly preached, can be separated from the other: ‘What we must affirm is that the character of his death would be altered if there were no resurrection and that it is the whole complex of life, death and resurrection which secures our redemption.’²Thompson and Doyle, ‘Risen and Triumphant,’ 5.

Read that carefully, because it’s a stronger claim than it first appears. Without the resurrection, the crucifixion wouldn’t merely lack its sequel — the character of the death itself would be different. It would be the death of a failed claimant rather than the death of a vindicated Saviour.

Calvin’s Rule for Reading

Calvin counselled wisely on the same point:

‘Let us remember that whenever mention is made of his death alone, we are to understand at the same time what belongs to his resurrection. Also, the same … applies to the word “resurrection”: whenever it is mentioned separately from death, we are to understand it as including what has to do especially with his death.’³Calvin, Institutes, 2.14.13; 521. Again, see Benjamin Dean, Great Truths – The Resurrection of Jesus Christ, Part I, ‘The Priority of Jesus’ Resurrection – Crucifixion and Resurrection,’ https://www.greattruthsglobal.org/the-resurrection-of-jesus-christ-part-i/

That’s a practical rule for reading Scripture, and it saves a good deal of confusion. When a text names only the cross, the resurrection is implied. When a text names only the resurrection, the cross is implied.

The New Testament writers never intended either term to travel alone.

Two Preoccupations, One Gospel

The gospel of Jesus Christ is thus preoccupied, on the one hand, with the saving substance of the Lord’s suffering as a substitute for sinners — his death as the required cost of bearing our sins and bearing away God’s judgment and wrath toward them.

At the same time, the constant main business of the gospel concerns the saving significance and weight of the Saviour’s resurrection and exaltation — as demonstration and proof beyond doubt that his crucifixion satisfied retributive divine punishment for human hostility and rebellion.

He is ‘the propitiation for our sins, and not for our sins only but for the sins of the whole world’ (1 John 2:2).

What the Leiden Professors Added

Four leading seventeenth-century professors at Leiden University in Holland offer a summary of key aspects of the Bible’s teaching on the resurrection — an expansion of some points, and corrections to misunderstandings still with us today.⁴Translated and edited by William Den Boer and Riemer A. Faber (Davenant Press, 2023). To aid the reader, all paragraph headings here and elsewhere below are mine.

The Synopsis of a Purer Theology, composed between 1620 and 1625, ‘gives a full yet compact summary of theology as it was understood in the years after the Synod of Dort which was held between 1618 and 1619.’⁵(‘A Brief Introduction,’ in Den Boer and Faber eds., vii).

Its value for us lies partly in its date. Written close enough to the Reformation debates to be precise about what was at stake, and far enough from them to state matters calmly, it addresses questions that still surface whenever Christians think carefully about the resurrection.

The authors were Antonius Thysius (1565-1640), Johannes Polyander (1568-1646), Andreas Rivetus (1572-1651), and Antonius Waleus (1573-1639).

A Real Body, Not a Phantom

‘3. Contrary to the Marcionites, Libertines, and men of similar ilk, who dared to attribute to Christ a phantom body and phantom actions, we define Christ’s resurrection from the dead as his true and actual resuscitation to life, whereby his body, which really had been separated from his soul and had been kept for a three-day period in the grave with no natural decay, was truly and naturally reunited with his soul which had spent the entire time of his death in Paradise, and was brought back to this same life (in the proper sense of the word), although it has obviously put aside mortality and the other weaknesses of this life.’

Weaknesses Removed, Humanity Kept

’4. Those infirmities which Christ laid aside with his resurrection are of two kinds: to some of them the human nature is subject by virtue of the first creation into this life as a human being (and the apostle deals with them in 1 Cor 15:44 and elsewhere in Scripture). Other infirmities are the particular ones to which Christ on account of our sins subjected himself as our surety, “having been tempted like us in everything, sin excepted” (Heb 4:15).

5. However, we state that Christ did not therefore lay aside the essence (or the essential properties) of human nature by his resurrection — no more than we shall lay them aside after this life. For our bodies will be conformed unto his glorious body (Philippians 3:21), just as after his resurrection Christ himself bore witness to his disciples that his body consisted of flesh and bones, and accordingly it was exposed to sight and touch (Luke 24:39).’⁶Synopsis of a Purer Theology, Volume 1, Disputations 1-31, eds. William Den Boer and Riemer A. Faber, trans. Riemer A. Faber (Davenant Press, 2023), 318-319.

The distinction there is worth holding. Weakness went; humanity stayed. And the same will be true of us.

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• 1
  See Benjamin Dean, Great Truths – The Resurrection of Jesus Christ, Part I, ‘The Priority of Jesus’ Resurrection – The Gospel of Resurrection,’ https://www.greattruthsglobal.org/the-resurrection-of-jesus-christ-part-i/ ↩︎
• 2
  Thompson and Doyle, ‘Risen and Triumphant,’ 5. ↩︎
• 3
  Calvin, Institutes, 2.14.13; 521. Again, see Benjamin Dean, Great Truths – The Resurrection of Jesus Christ, Part I, ‘The Priority of Jesus’ Resurrection – Crucifixion and Resurrection,’ https://www.greattruthsglobal.org/the-resurrection-of-jesus-christ-part-i/ ↩︎
• 4
  Translated and edited by William Den Boer and Riemer A. Faber (Davenant Press, 2023). To aid the reader, all paragraph headings here and elsewhere below are mine. ↩︎
• 5
  (‘A Brief Introduction,’ in Den Boer and Faber eds., vii). ↩︎
• 6
  Synopsis of a Purer Theology, Volume 1, Disputations 1-31, eds. William Den Boer and Riemer A. Faber, trans. Riemer A. Faber (Davenant Press, 2023), 318-319. ↩︎