“…and to wait for His Son from heaven, whom He raised from the dead, even Jesus who delivers us from the wrath to come”
whom He raised from the dead,
We establish our confidence in the rapture (v.10) by the resurrection of Christ. Jesus defeated death by His resurrection. We will defeat death in the rapture. Jesus said, “Because I live, you shall live also.”
“Truly, these times of ignorance God overlooked, but now commands all men everywhere to repent, “because He has appointed a day on which He will judge the world in righteousness by the Man whom He has ordained. He has given assurance of this to all by raising Him from the dead” (Acts 17: 30-31).
The resurrection of Jesus from the dead puts Christianity into a different league from all other religions of the world. Every other architect of religion is dead. Buddha is dead, buried, and gone. Confucius is dead. Mohammed is dead. Jesus did not die as a mere martyr. He died deliberately for those who violate God’s righteousness. Now Jesus is alive and well by resurrection. He lives in Heaven. Christianity is exclusively true because Jesus lives in Heaven.
Principle:
The genius and glory of Christianity is the resurrection of Jesus from the dead.
Application:
God bases everything on the resurrection of Jesus Christ. By His resurrection, God delivered us from sin, the Tribulation, Hell, and the power of sin in the believer’s life. Jesus can set us free from any sin.
If Jesus did not rise from the dead, then Christianity is a farce. There is no hope or Heaven. An eternally dead Jesus would give no one hope. He would have nothing to offer us. However, He rose from the dead giving hope to the hopeless.
“Him, being delivered by the determined purpose and foreknowledge of God, you have taken by lawless hands, have crucified, and put to death; whom God raised up, having loosed the pains of death, because it was not possible that He should be held by it” (Acts 2:23-24).
“But you denied the Holy One and the Just, and asked for a murderer to be granted to you, and killed the Prince of life, whom God raised from the dead, of which we are witnesses” (Acts 3:14-15).
“If we this day are judged for a good deed done to a helpless man, by what means he has been made well, let it be known to you all, and to all the people of Israel, that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead, by Him this man stands here before you whole” (Acts 4:9-10).
“Therefore, having obtained help from God, to this day I stand, witnessing both to small and great, saying no other things than those which the prophets and Moses said would come—that the Christ would suffer, that He would be the first to rise from the dead, and would proclaim light to the Jewish people and to the Gentiles” (Acts 26:22-23).
“It shall be imputed to us who believe in Him who raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead, who was delivered up because of our offenses, and was raised because of our justification” (Romans 4:24-25).
“Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life” (Romans 6:4).
“Therefore, my brethren, you also have become, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father who raised Him from the dead)…” (Galatians 1:1).
“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His abundant mercy has begotten us again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead…” (1 Peter 1:3).
“He indeed was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you who through Him believe in God, who raised Him from the dead and gave Him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God” (1 Peter 1:20-21).
“For Christ also suffered once for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive by the Spirit…” (1 Peter 3:18).
The resurrection of Jesus is the receipt that Jesus paid the price for our sins. We cannot add anything to this. We cannot improve perfection.
