What if Christ had not promised that He would rise again from the grave? What if His death had secured our redemption, but His body was to lie dead for all time as the punishment for our sin?
What would this do to all our hopes, to our confidence, to our security?
Were this the case, surely Jesus' promises to us to raise us from the dead would be called into question. If He never rose, how could we rely upon His promises to raise us up?
That would mean that we would not have a real, live savior, but only One Who made promises He knew He wouldn't actually be around to keep in person.
In our feebleness, how much hope could we place in a dead man to deliver us from death?
This uncertainty could be seen more clearly in Jesus' promises to Martha at the resurrection of Lazarus. "I am the resurrection and the life," Jesus declared to her. But if Jesus were never to rise from the dead, how could He claim to be the resurrection and the life for us?
You see, Martha already believed in the resurrection from the grave by the power of the spirit of God, but Jesus was promising her something far better: HE IS the resurrection and the life! It's not just a promise of the power of God, but guaranteed by Jesus personally!
Christ is urging Martha, and us all, to put our trust in Him Personally, in His flesh and blood, to make it so.
Our hope is vouchsafed in the incarnate Son of God, but how worthless would that be if the Incarnation itself were to be destroyed in death?
How could Jesus claim to be Life itself to us, if physical life were forever extinguished for Him?
If Jesus had not risen, we could never quote these verses at funerals as our great comfort! |
