Resurrection

The resurrection is not a figure of speech for a changed life or a memory that lives on. Scripture speaks of it as a bodily event: God raising the dead, corruptible bodies made incorruptible, mortal bodies clothed with immortality. The ground of this hope is not human longing but the fact that Christ himself has already been raised, in the same body that was laid in the grave.

The Old Testament anticipates this hope before it is fully unveiled. Job, in the middle of his suffering, says, “I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last he will take his stand on the earth. Even after my skin is destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God.” Daniel is told that “many of those who sleep in the dust of the ground will awake, these to everlasting life.” Isaiah promises Israel, “Your dead will live; their corpses will rise. You who lie in the dust, awake and shout for joy.” Ezekiel’s vision of the valley of dry bones pictures Yahweh restoring his exiled people to the land, but the image only works because it borrows the greater hope standing behind it: Yahweh is a God who raises what is dead.

Paul makes the resurrection the hinge of the gospel in 1 Corinthians 15. If Christ has not been raised, preaching is empty, faith is worthless, and the dead in Christ have perished. But Christ has been raised, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep, and his resurrection guarantees the resurrection of everyone who belongs to him. The articles below trace this hope through several of its key passages.