Fundamental 4. 

The Death and Resurrection of Jesus

 

His Death:  Did Jesus have to Die?  Why couldn’t God just Forgive? And why the Cross?

The cross of Jesus Christ has been called “the central fact of human history.” 

To the entire world the cross is the primary symbol of Christianity.

It is this spotlight on the cross that God declared his planned purpose for the coming of Jesus Christ into human history.  

For both God and our world, the cross carried and carries monumental significance, “the weight of glory” as Paul put it in 2 Corinthians 4:17.  The Cross was the climatic fulfillment of God’s covenant.  It was His design to close the gap between Himself and all humanity.

Jesus Himself said the cross was His intentional, redemptive goal.  “The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many”. Mark 10:45)  “The Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost. (Luke 19:10)  All of mankind!

Every other religious system in the world is essentially a “do-it-yourself” proposition.  Only in Christianity is salvation a free gift, not because we deserve it, but only because of the goodness of God’s love. 

Christ’s death was foretold in the Old Testament.  It is the central theme in both the Old and the New Testaments. 

“We all like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.” (Isaiah 53:5-6)

Jesus Himself spoke of the Old Testament prophecies declaring He would suffer.  He specifically said, “These are the scriptures that testify about me” (John 5:39; 12:41)

God’s plan of deliverance, bringing us back into fellowship with Himself, was built on the sacrificial system.  God, Himself, instituted the blood sacrifice. 

And final deliverance came with Christ’s sacrifice, explained this way in Hebrews: “When this priest [Jesus] had offered for all time one sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God” (Heb.rews10:12) For He had accomplished what the Old Testament priests could only hope for.

Jesus did not fall victim to anyone or anything.  He had come for the specific purpose of dying to atone for sin (Luke 19:10), John 1:29).  His crucifixion was a vivid display of his authority over circumstances, people, and even death.  Far from being a tragic end to his earthly ministry, it was the culmination of all he had set out to do.

These prophets, who lived 700 to 500 years before Christ, were writing about these events without knowing firsthand whom Christ was or when He would come.  Can that be said about anyone else?

The death of Christ is linked to the Old Testament covenant when God first announced to Abram:   (Genesis 12:3)“ I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

After that, God repeatedly unfolded Himself and His promise throughout Israel’s history.  Two factors underlie His plan.

Our insistence to sin separates us from a holy God.  “But your iniquities have separated you from our God; your sins have hidden his face from you, so that he will not hear” (Isaiah 59:2)

So God, in His mercy, takes the initiative and provides the way by which our estrangement can be ended.

The first record of man and woman sinning was followed by a need for “covering.”  Adam said “I was afraid because I was naked” (Genesis 3:10) that is, “I am no longer innocent,” and God provided animal skins to cover him and Eve.

Then Cain and Abel are recorded as bringing an “Offering” to the Lord.   Cain brought of the fruit of the ground as a sacrifice to the Lord.  And Abel, he also brought of the firstlings of his flock and of the fat thereof.  And the Lord had respect unto Abel and to his sacrifice but not for Cain’s.

The idea of sacrifice was divinely revealed and directed toward the goal of personal holiness, reconciliation with God.

In the Old Testament, forgiveness is usually said to be obtained by the sacrifices, but it must never be forgotten what God says of the atoning blood in Leviticus 17:11, “For the life of a creature is in the blood, and I have given it to you to make atonement for yourselves on the altar; it is the blood that makes atonement for one’s life.”

The Sacrificial System:

The whole sacrificial system of the Old Testament was a symbolic portrayal to be fulfilled in Christ.  The Passover, celebrated at the time of the Exodus of enslaved Israelites from Egypt, provides the fullest picture of Christ’s sacrifice.   

Remember the story:  Each believing family slew a perfect lamb and put the blood on the doorposts and lintels of the house.  The angel of death, when he saw the blood passed over that household.  Those believers then escaped the judgment of having their firstborn die. 

As with other sacrifices, the elements of the perfection of the lamb, the shedding of blood and substitution were all present.

Christ was the fulfillment of all that the Passover lamb stood for.  He was “the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world”. (John 1:29)

Those who on faith offered animal sacrifices in Old Testament times “looked forward” to the coming Messiah, just as we by faith “look back” to the cross of Christ.

The animal sacrifices did not save, but faith in what they symbolized did.

We by faith see Jesus as the fulfillment of the symbols.

Christ’s death was “forecast” in the Old Testament and became a “reality” in the New.

The remedy for sin, a sacrifice or penalty, continued to be the central theme of the New Testament. Several terms to explain the significance of Christ’s crucifixion were used.

• Christ’s death is spoken of as the atonement for our sin.  It has been suggested that atonement means, basically, “at-one-ment” – that is to say, a bringing together of those who are estranged.  But the Old Testament word means, essentially, “to cover”.

The animal sacrifices provided a “covering” for sin until the death of Christ would forever destroy sin’s power.

• The Atonement is spoken of as a reconciliation:  “When we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him [God] through the death of his Son. (Romans 5:10; 2 Corinthians 5:18-19; Ephesians 2:16; Colossians 1:20)

Reconciliation implies former hostility between the reconciled parties.  Sin separated and separates us from a holy God.   The death of Christ did away with the cause of God’s enmity by taking away our sin.  We have been reconciled to God, the root cause of alienation having been removed.

• Appeasement or propitiation is also used to describe the atoning death of Christ.  Propitiation is used only in the King James Version, but carries the same idea.  Both of these words have within them the concept of “the removal of wrath by the offering of a gift.”

(Romans 3:25) “God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood.”  He did this to demonstrate his justice, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished.

Jesus, in this case, laid down His life for us, fully and perfectly satisfying God’s holy and just standards.  It could be said Jesus appeased God’s wrath against evil.

• Ransom, the word used by Jesus Himself to define His death is closely linked to the idea of redemption – buying back or restoring.”  [Christ] gave himself as a ransom for all men – the testimony given in its proper time” (1 Timothy 2:6; 1 Peter 1:18)

Let us never forget God does not first reconcile us, ransom us, and then love us.  Rather, because He loves us, He opened the way for reconciliation, appeasement, and ransom.

Our Substitute:

Among the various terms that give the clearest explanations of the death of Christ is the word substitute.  “Christ died for sins once, and for all. For the righteous and the unrighteous, to bring us to God”. (1 Peter 3:18).  Christ died for us – that is, in our place.  “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21).

There is no ambiguity in God’s intention throughout the Bible.  From the beginning of creation His desire is to have a relationship with those whom He created.  Reconciliation, ransom, and sacrifice are all the result of God’s unceasing desire to bring each one of us close to Himself.

Thus Jesus’ death was an act of the Son’s submissive obedience to the Father’s will.  And Jesus himself was in absolute control.  He said, “I lay down My life that I may take it up again.  No one has taken it away from Me, but I lay it down on My own initiative.  I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again.  This commandment I received from My Father.” (John 10:17-18)

Do not think for a moment that anyone could kill Jesus against his will.  The divine plan could never be short-circuited by human or satanic plots.  Jesus even told Pilate, “You would have no authority over Me, unless it had been given you from above” (John 19:11).  Mobs tried to murder Jesus.  They once sought to hurl him off a cliff (Luke 4:29-30) and repeatedly attempted to stone him (John 8:59; 10:31). Again and again he simply passed through their midst because his time had not yet come (John 7:30; 8:20)

Attempts to Minimize Christ’s Death:

Throughout history and even today there are many people who have tried to discredit or discount Christ’s death on the cross.  Some of the most prominent theories and objections are:

1. The moral influence or example theory: states that man needs only to repeat and reform to be reconciled to God. Advocates of this view believe the death of Christ was merely a powerful example, and we are redeemed as we allow His example to have a determining influence on our own efforts at moral improvement.

There is great moral influence in Christ’s example.  It is true that “Christ suffered for us, leaving us an example, that we should follow in his steps” (1 Peter 2:21).  Scripture also undeniably teaches not only that sin has defiled us personally, but also that we are guilty before a holy God.

Many Scriptures are unequivocal about Christ coming to die for our sins.  However, the Moral influence theory ignores these passages entirely.

So many of us look for an easy out. We seek scripture and misrepresent scripture in order to support our own preconceived notions and ideas.

2. The governmental theory: holds that Christ’s death was necessary to preserve God’s divine law and authority with “some exhibition of the high estimate which God places upon His law and on the heinous guilt of violating it.”

But why is Christ necessary, if this is all there is to His public sacrifice?  And why should one who is perfect suffer, rather than one who is guilty?

It is true that the cross shows vividly the destructive nature of sin, and it is an eloquent testimony that man may not ignore or toy with the Law of God.

In this view, sacrifice is surely not in agreement with the Apostle Paul’s words,  “God made him [Jesus] who had no sin to be sin for us, so in him we might become the righteousness of God

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That biblical truth, unfortunately, is often overlooked.  People have for centuries argued about who was to blame for killing Jesus.  Sadly, some have even used the issue to justify anti-Semitism, blaming the entire Jewish race for Jesus’ death.

Certainly the Jewish leaders who condemned him were culpable.  They plotted, concocted false charges against Him, and blackmailed the Roman governor Pontius Pilate into carrying out their will.  They were by no means innocent.

And the Roman government must also share in the guilt.  Those who represented Rome in Jerusalem set aside justice to appease an angry crowd.  They executed an innocent man.

But Jesus was not ultimately a victim of either Rome or the Jewish leaders.  The apostle Peter says in Acts 2:23 that Jesus was “delivered up by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God.” The Jewish leaders and the Roman officials who carried out his crucifixion undeniably bear guilt for the sin of what they did, but God himself had foreordained how Jesus would die.

3. Christ’s death was an accident of history: unexpected and unforeseen.  Another proposal Scripture certainly doesn’t support.  Christ Himself assured His disciples that it was for this purpose that He had come into the world (John 12:27)

The prophets had predicted the Messiah’s sacrificial death, and in fact, all scriptural evidence opposes the idea that Christ’s death was accidental.

The truth is Christ did not have to die, but He voluntarily endured the cross for us.  This is one of the central and most moving aspects of His sacrifice.

4. Christ was merely another martyr of history. This theory would suggest that the gathering storm of political and religious turmoil during his stay here on earth might have been responsible for Christ’s death.

If this were the case, how could forgiveness come from His death and how do we account for Jesus’ statement, when He first celebrated the Lord’s Supper?  He stated, “This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.” (Matthew 26:28)

A knowledge of scripture opposes any view of the cross being less than supernatural. 

Why Couldn’t God Just Forgive?

Why couldn’t God just forgive; did Christ have to die?  There have always been some objections to the substitution concept of Christ’s death.

Is not God all-powerful? Is not God all-loving and able to pardon sin without requiring sacrifice?  “Why can’t He simply forgive sin out of His pure mercy?  Skeptics want to know.  “Could not an all-powerful God, in His omnipotence, have redeemed the world as easily as He created it?  Since God commands man to forgive freely, why does He Himself not freely forgive?” 

This logical question came to Archbishop Anselm in the twelfth century who crystalized the biblical teaching, focusing on forgiveness from God’s viewpoint: “

“God’s will is not His own in the sense that anything is permissible to Him or becomes right because He wills it….God cannot deal with sin except as in His holiness He perceives it. If He did not punish it, or make adequate satisfaction for it, then He would be forgiving it unjustly.”

“God operates according to the law of His own nature.  That is to say, God never acts in such a way that would contradict His own holiness, His own righteousness, His own justice, His own omnipotence, and so on.  God never compromises the perfection of His own being or character in what He does.”

God’s holiness is majestic, undiluted righteousness, and this is our basis for understanding why we need to be forgiven.  We tend to look at only outward acts to judge what is sin.  Holiness means NO sin.  God looks on the heart.  That is where goodness and holiness reside.

God exercises all His attributes in harmony with each other.  His holiness demands atonement or, as we call it, a penalty for sin.  God’s attributes of love and holiness never violate one another, nor or they antagonistic to each other.  They work together in full and complete harmony.

In the cross of Christ, “Love and faithfulness meet together; righteousness and peace kiss each other” (Psalm.85:10).  The New Testament speaks of the “wedding”, or coming together of the attributes of God’s love and holiness in the cross of Christ.  Through the cross, God can be “just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus”. (Romans 3:26).  James Denney, a Scottish Theologian and preacher, explains it this way:

“In the very act of forgiving sin, or, to use Paul’s daring phrase of “justifying the ungodly”, God must act in harmony with His whole character.  He must show what He is in relation to sin – that evil cannot dwell with Him because He refuses to tolerate sin in any form.

In the very process of making forgiveness available to men, of necessity, His complete abhorrence of sin is shown.  In other words, God must not merely forgive men, but must forgive in a way which shows that He forever hates evil and can never treat it as other than completely hateful.  Sin makes a real difference to God, and even in forgiving, He cannot ignore sin or regard it as other or less than it is.  If He did so, He would not be more gracious than he is in the Atonement– He would cease to be God.”

Was Christ an Innocent Victim:

Some have alleged that the very idea of God permitting Christ to die for our sin, as an innocent victim for guilty sinners, was an act of injustice rather than justice.  Some even go so far as to call it immoral.  But such charges would be true only if Christ were an unwilling victim.

The glory of the Cross is in the voluntary nature of Christ’s coming to earth, keeping in mind He and the Father are one.

One Person Die to Save The Whole World:

How could the death of one person possibly atone for the innumerable sins of the whole world?

From man’s narrow perspective, such atonement would obviously be impossible.

One person may die for one other, but for no more than one other.

But the effectiveness of the death of Christ all depended on whom it was that died!!!  This was no mere man.  Jesus Christ was the God-man: “God was…. in Christ” (2 Corinthians 5:19).  Christ’s life had infinite value, and His death likewise had infinite worth.

My study while giving me clarity, and I hope will give you clarity if you take the time to really delve into it, also made me ask questions and made me challenge myself as to how I would answer questions if asked.  So, I’m going to ask this question of you: Is it true or accurate to say, “God died” when Christ died?

Robert J. Little, in his book, Here’s Your Answer, points out, that “….Christ became a man in order to die, for without dying as a man, He could not have delivered men from the penalty of sin…Yet when He died, His divine being did not die.  And when He died as a man, it was only His body that died. 

Scripture makes it clear that when any human being dies, it is the body that dies.  The soul and spirit live on.  Hence, when Christ died, we do not say that God died, though He who died on the cross was God.  No finite mind can fully understand everything about the infinite God but we can have some understanding of what is involved.”

His Resurrection

Not only did Jesus Christ live and die, but also the triumphant dynamic of Christianity is that He also rose from the dead.  The common greeting of the early church was the dramatic reminder “He is risen!” (Matthew 26:70, 72, 74)

Both the death and the resurrection of Christ show his supremacy and His uniqueness among all the religious leaders of the world.  How many do you know of in History that this has been written about?  Their death and resurrection? 

Throughout the Crucifixion, Jesus Christ was on a divine timetable.  God was sovereignly directing every incident.  Step by step, each detail of Old Testament prophecy was fulfilled.  Psalm 22 and Isaiah 53 in particular outlined prophetically the specific features of his death.  All of them were carried out precisely.

As he hung on the cross, Jesus knew that “all things had already been accomplished” (John 19:28) – all, that is, but one final prophecy, Psalm 69:21, where Christ speaks prophetically of his own death, says, “For my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink.”  And so, “in order that the scripture might be fulfilled, he said, ‘I am thirsty’” (John 19:28) the soldiers responded.  They were under divine impetus; God was moving to fulfill the prophecy.

Some have maintained that Jesus was simply a man who purposely engineered details of his life and death to coincide with selected Old Testament prophecies.  A well-known book, The Passover Plot by Hugh Schoenfield, of the 1960s made precisely that argument.  The author pointed to phrases like “in order that the Scripture might be fulfilled”(John 19:28) as proof that Jesus manipulated circumstances to give the appearance of fulfilling Scripture.

But a mere man trying to mislead people could not have had the kind of sovereign control over events Jesus repeatedly displayed.  This verse proves why.  It was not Jesus alone, but everyone around him – his enemies included- who fulfilled precisely the details of Old Testament prophecy: “A jar full of sour wine (vinegar) was standing there; so they put a sponge full of the sour wine upon a branch of hyssop, and brought it up to His mouth” (John 19:29).  Exactly as the prophecy had predicted. 

It is important to understand that the resurrection of Christ was a bodily resurrection, not one of spirit or influence as some have suggested.  Remember the disciples on first seeing Jesus after He had risen thought they were seeing a ghost and were terribly frightened.

Jesus’ resurrected body differed from our bodies and from His own previous body.  For instance, our risen Lord passed through closed doors when He met with the disciples for the first time in the Upper Room (John 20:19)

Many attempts have been made to explain away the Resurrection.  But the Resurrection is Fact, Not Fiction. 

Some false theories of the Resurrection revolve around denial of Christ’s actual death. (Such as the swoon theory).  Other views hold that the disciples made an honest error which led them sincerely but wrongly to proclaim that Jesus had risen from the dead! 

But all attempts to explain away the Resurrection flounder on the rocks of the actual evidence.  Christ would have been a deceiver had He only swooned and allowed the disciples to think He had actually risen from the dead.  The disciples were not prepared for a hallucination.  They didn’t expect He would rise, and they didn’t believe He had risen from the dead. 

They had to be persuaded against their “better judgment” that it was so (Luke 24:36-45)

Furthermore, Christ appeared ten times, in ten different places and in one case to more than 500 people at once.  ( 1 Corinthians 15:4-6)  Such events cannot be explained by an “hallucination.”  

Also, the disciples would have been deceivers if they had stolen Christ’s body.  Nearly all of them died for their faith as martyrs. People will die for what they mistakenly think is true, but they don’t die for what they know is a lie.  The inability of the enemies of Christ to produce His body is further evidence that it had not been stolen.

Scripture links the death and resurrection of Christ, and we must maintain that link.

Jesus’ entrance into the tomb is as equally important as His exit from the tomb.  In 1 Corinthians 15:3-5, Paul defines the gospel as the dual truth that Jesus died for our sins (proved by His burial) and that He rose again the third day (proved by His appearances to many witnesses).

It is impossible to separate the death of Christ from His resurrection.  And in order for His death to have a true meaning for us, He must have a true resurrection.  We cannot have one without the other,

The empty tomb, the revolutionized lives of the disciples, the Lord’s Day (worship being shifted from Saturday to Sunday because of the Resurrection), the existence of the Christian church which can be traced back to approximately A.D. 30) – all conclusive evidence that the Resurrection is fact, not fiction.

The final evidence is the transformed lives of countless people today who have met and been given new life by the risen Christ.

Four Resurrection Benefits to us:

The implications of the Resurrection are enormous.  We should understand them as fully as possible and enjoy them

1. First, as we have seen, the Resurrection fully confirms the truth and validity of what Jesus taught and did.  Paul says, “And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins” (1 Corinthians 15:17)

Because of the Resurrection, we know we are not trusting in a myth; we know that our sins are actually forgiven through the death of Christ.

Christ is the only one who has ever come back from death to tell men about the beyond.  In His words we know we have the authoritative Word of God Himself.

2. Second, Christ’s resurrection is the guarantee of our own resurrection.  Jesus said,  “Because I live, you also will live.” (John 14:19)

3. Third, we know that the body is in itself good, not inherently evil, as some have mistakenly thought,  The fact that Jesus became flesh and took a physical body in the Incarnation shows this.  It is confirmed by the Resurrection, which tells us that in the eternal state, body and soul will be reunited, though the body will be a glorified body like Jesus’, Christ is the one “who will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like His glorious body” (Philippians 3:21)

4. Fourth, we have the assurance of the contemporary power of Christ in life today.  We do not believe in a dead Christ hanging on a cross or lying in a grave, but in the risen Christ of the empty tomb.  Christ gave us His life in salvation.  This is the contemporary power, the dynamic, of Christian faith. 

Only the omnipotent God who is Lord of all could do that.  Death could not claim Jesus apart from His own will.  He died in complete control of all that was happening to him.  Even in his death He was Lord.

To the human eye Jesus looked like a pathetic casualty, powerless in the hands of mighty men.  But the opposite was true.  He was in charge.  He proved it a few days later by forever bursting the bonds of death when he rose from the grave (1 Corinthians 1:20-57).

And Jesus is still in charge.  “For to this end Christ died and lived again, that He might be Lord both of the dead and of the living (Romans 14:9).

This, then, is the gospel our Lord sends us forth to proclaim:  That Jesus Christ, who is God incarnate, humbled himself to die on our behalf. Thus he became the sinless sacrifice to pay the penalty of our guilt.  He rose from the dead to declare with power that he is Lord over all, and he offers eternal life freely to sinners who will surrender to him in humble, repentant faith. 

This gospel promises nothing to the wicked and unrepentant, but for broken, penitent sinners, it graciously offers everything that pertains to life and godliness (2 Peter 1:3).

 

05 Man and Sin – Summary Fundamental

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