BECAUSE HE LIVES, EVERYTHING CHANGES

But if there be no resurrection of the dead, then is Christ not risen: And if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain.

1 Corinthians 15:13-14

There is a question that stands above every question humanity has ever asked. It is not a question of philosophy or science. It is not a question of politics or economics. It is the question upon which every other question ultimately rests: Did Jesus Christ rise from the dead? If the answer is no, then the Apostle Paul tells us plainly that we are, of all people, the most to be pitied. Our preaching is empty. Our faith is meaningless. Our sins remain unforgiven, and those who have died believing in Christ have simply perished. But if the answer is yes, then everything changes. Death is defeated. Sin is conquered. The grave has lost its sting. And the God who spoke the universe into existence has given us the single greatest proof that He is exactly who He says He is.

The Empty Tomb: God’s Signature on History

The enemies of Jesus had every reason to produce His body. The chief priests paid the Roman guards to spread the lie that the disciples had stolen it while they slept (Matthew 28:12-13). Consider the absurdity of that claim: Roman soldiers, who faced execution for sleeping on watch, supposedly all fell asleep at the same time, and a band of terrified fishermen rolled away a stone that weighed hundreds of pounds without waking a single one of them. The story collapses under the slightest scrutiny. The tomb was empty because no human power could keep the Son of God in the ground.

The angel’s words to the women on that first Easter morning remain the most triumphant sentence ever spoken: “He is not here: for He is risen, as He said” (Matthew 28:6). Notice those last three words. As He said. The resurrection was not an accident. It was not an afterthought. Jesus told His disciples repeatedly that He would be killed and that on the third day He would rise again (Matthew 16:21, Mark 9:31, John 2:19). The resurrection is the fulfillment of a promise, the completion of a plan that was established before the foundation of the world.

Who verily was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you.

1 Peter 1:20

What the Resurrection Proves About Who Jesus Is

Paul, writing to the church in Rome, made a declaration that cuts through centuries of debate. He said that Jesus was “declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead” (Romans 1:4). The resurrection is not merely an event. It is a declaration. It is God the Father placing His unmistakable seal of approval on everything Jesus said, everything He taught, every claim He made about Himself.

When Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me” (John 14:6), the resurrection proves He was telling the truth. When He said, “I and my Father are one” (John 10:30), the resurrection validates the claim. When He told the thief on the cross, “Today shalt thou be with me in paradise” (Luke 23:43), the resurrection confirms that He had the authority to make that promise.

Every religion in the world has a founder whose body lies in a tomb. Every philosophy has an author whose bones have returned to dust. Only Christianity makes the audacious, outrageous, world-shaking claim that its Founder walked out of the grave under His own power, and that the tomb where they laid Him stands empty to this day.

The Resurrection and Our Justification

The cross and the resurrection are two halves of a single act of redemption. We cannot separate them. Paul understood this with perfect clarity when he wrote that Jesus “was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification” (Romans 4:25). On the cross, the penalty for our sin was paid. In the resurrection, the receipt was issued. The cross is where the price was settled. The resurrection is where God declared the payment accepted.

If Jesus had died on the cross and never risen, we would have no assurance that His sacrifice was sufficient. We would not know whether the debt was truly cleared. But because He rose, we know. The resurrection is the Father’s verdict: the offering was enough. The blood was sufficient. Justice is satisfied, and mercy now flows to all who believe.

Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Romans 5:1

The Same Power That Raised Him Lives in Us

Paul’s letter to the Ephesians contains one of the most staggering prayers in all of Scripture. He prayed that the believers would know “the exceeding greatness of his power to us-ward who believe, according to the working of his mighty power, which he wrought in Christ, when he raised him from the dead, and set him at his own right hand in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 1:19-20).

Let that settle for a moment. The same power that tore open the grave, that reversed death itself, that lifted Jesus Christ from the cold stone slab and seated Him at the right hand of Almighty God, is the very same power that now dwells in every believer. We are not operating on our own strength. We are not fighting in our own ability. The resurrection power of the living God is at work within us.

This is why Paul could write from a Roman prison cell, “I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me” (Philippians 4:13). He was not reciting a motivational slogan. He was speaking as a man who had experienced the power of the risen Christ in chains, in shipwrecks, in beatings, in stoning, in hunger and thirst and sleepless nights. The resurrection was not an abstract doctrine to Paul. It was the engine of his entire ministry.

Our Resurrection: The Promise That Awaits

The resurrection of Jesus is not merely something that happened two thousand years ago. It is a living promise that reaches into our future. Paul calls the risen Christ “the firstfruits of them that slept” (1 Corinthians 15:20). In the agricultural language of ancient Israel, the firstfruits were the initial portion of the harvest, offered to God as a guarantee that the rest of the crop would follow. Jesus is the firstfruits. His resurrection is the guarantee of ours.

For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him.

1 Thessalonians 4:14

This is the hope that has sustained believers through persecution, through loss, through suffering that would break ordinary men and women. The early church did not grow because it offered comfortable services or appealing social programs. It grew because ordinary people, transformed by the Holy Spirit, went out into a hostile world and proclaimed with absolute certainty that Jesus Christ was alive, and because He lived, they too would live. Many of them sealed that testimony with their own blood. People do not die for something they know to be a lie. The disciples who had cowered behind locked doors after the crucifixion were transformed into bold, fearless proclaimers of the resurrection, and nearly all of them paid for it with their lives.

He Is Risen Indeed

On this Easter morning, the invitation remains the same as it was on that first day when the stone was rolled away. Come and see the place where the Lord lay. Then go and tell the world that He is alive. The grave could not hold Him. Death could not keep Him. And because of that single, glorious, history-altering fact, nothing in this life, and nothing in the life to come, can ever separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 8:38-39).

O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

1 Corinthians 15:55-57

He is risen. He is risen indeed. And because He lives, we shall live also.