Second, the resurrection of Jesus Christ proves the deity of our Lord. When He lived upon earth Jesus claimed to be equal to God and that God, this same God, would raise Him from the dead three days after His execution by the Roman authorities. If He was wrong in this, His claim was either the raving of a deranged man or else blasphemy. If he was right, the resurrection would be God’s way of substantiating the claim.
Did he substantiate it? Did Jesus rise from the dead? Yes, he did! So the resurrection is God’s seal on Christ’s claim to divinity. This is why Paul, who knew that Jesus had been raised, writes that Jesus was “declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead” (Rom. 1:4).
This is good news. If Jesus Christ is God, then God is like Jesus Christ. It means that God is not distant, arbitrary, or unreal. He is a God who loves you and who came to earth to give Himself a ransom for your sins. We see this through the cross and resurrection.
Then, too, the resurrection proves that all who believe in Jesus Christ are justified before God. Paul teaches this in Romans also, for he states that Jesus “was delivered for our offenses, and was raised again for our justification” (Rom. 4:25). How does this happen? Well, Jesus had claimed that His death would atone for man’s sin. He said that he had come “to give his life a ransom for many” (Matt. 20:28). He died as he said. But the question still remained: Could it be true that the death of this one man would be acceptable to God for others? Suppose He had sinned? In that case, He would have been dying for His own sin rather than the sins of others. Did he sin? Or was His atonement accepted? Three days pass. Christ rises. And thus His claim is established. For God has shown by the resurrection that Christ was sinless and that God has accepted His atonement forever.
Torrey wrote on this point:
When Jesus died, he died as my representative, and I died in him; when he arose, he arose as my representative, and I arose in him; when he ascended up on high and took his place at the right hand of the Father in the glory, he ascended as my representative, and I ascended in him; and today I am seated in Christ with God in the heavenlies. I look at the cross of Christ, and I know that atonement has been made for my sins; I look at the open sepulcher and the risen and ascended Lord, and I know the atonement has been accepted. There no longer remains a single sin on me, no matter how many or how great my sins may have been.1
The resurrection of Jesus Christ also proves that the believer in Christ can have a supernatural victory over sin in this life, for Jesus lives to provide the supernatural power to do it. This is an argument developed in the sixth chapter of Romans, for in the opening verses of that chapter Paul writes, “Therefore, we are buried with him by baptism into death, that as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life” (Rom. 6:4). This means that by faith all who believe in Christ are united to Christ so that His power becomes available to them.
1R. A. Torrey, The Bible and Its Christ: Being Noonday Talks with Business Men on Faith and Unbelief (New York: Revell, 1904-1906), 107-108.
