RAISED BECAUSE WE ARE JUSTIFIED

Romans 4:25 – He who was delivered over because of our wrongdoings, and was raised because of our justification.

The death and resurrection of Jesus were both essentially involved in our redemption story. Christ suffered and died on the cross becoming the substitute for each of us. He carried away our sin in His body on the cross. It’s hard to imagine the magnitude of His suffering. It is impossible for us to comprehend what it meant for the sins of all of us to fall upon Him. Today’s verse shows us the major role that the resurrection plays in our redemption story. The resurrection was God’s necessary response to the Lord’s substitutionary death. Christ boldly proclaimed “it is finished” as He breathed His last on the cross. He declared sin’s price had been paid. The resurrection is the Father’s amen to the work of His Son on the cross. Here is how Calvin describes this.

“This is as if He had said, ‘Sin was taken away by His death, righteousness was revived and restored by His resurrection.’ For how could He, by dying have freed us from death if He Himself succumbed to death? How could He have acquired victory for us if He had failed in the struggle? Therefore, we divide the substance of our salvation between Christ’s death and resurrection as follows: through His death, sin was wiped out and death extinguished; through His resurrection, righteousness was restored and life raised up, so that—thanks to His resurrection—His death manifested its power and efficacy in us…So then, 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.”

Without the resurrection we are still dead in our sins. Not only is the resurrection God’s proclamation of the acceptance of His Son’s offering for sin, but it is also the release of His infinite power toward all of those who believe in the work of Jesus on the cross and His resurrection. We believe that Christ died for our sins and was raised from the dead as our representative. I died with Him on the cross and I am raised with Him in His resurrection. Easter is our day of Victory. Death and sin have been finally defeated, today our job is just to witness in this world about what Christ has done for us. He is not dead, but He has risen.