He Is Risen

KEY VERSE: “Ye seek Jesus of Nazareth, which was crucified: he is risen.” —Mark 16:6

SELECTED SCRIPTURE: Mark 15:31-39; 16:1-7

THE account of the resurrection of Jesus is well documented in the Scriptures. The circumstances, as related in the Selected Scripture texts and the companion texts in the other Gospels, are wonderful assurances to the Christian’s faith, and are the most far-reaching and meaningful demonstrations of God’s power given to us in the Bible. Jesus did not raise himself from the dead; he was raised by the mighty power of God. The Apostle Peter, in his sermon on the day of Pentecost, said, speaking of David, “Therefore being a prophet, and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him, that of the fruit of his loins [Jesus was the offspring of David through the line of Nathan, Luke 3:31], according to the flesh, he would raise up Christ to sit on his throne. He seeing this before spake of the resurrection of Christ, that his soul was not left in hell, neither his flesh did see corruption. This Jesus hath God raised up, whereof we all are witnesses.” (Acts 2:30-32) The Apostle Paul in Ephesians 1:19,20, speaks of “the exceeding greatness of his [God’s] 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.” When we understand the reason why Jesus, who was a great Spirit Being in his pre-human existence, came to earth, we can discern why it was necessary for him to go to the Bible hell (the grave) where his flesh, figuratively, returned to the dust of the ground and can never be restored. It was obligatory that Jesus, if he were to have life, be resurrected a Spirit Being, or he would have gone out of existence.

The Bible informs us that Adam is the father of the human race. When God created and placed him in the Garden of Eden, he was a perfect man. He was capable of obeying God’s commandments perfectly, and God expected perfect obedience from him. We know that he willfully disobeyed (I Tim. 2:14), and because of this he suffered the penalty previously pronounced for willful sin—death. God said to him, “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.” (Gen. 3:19) There was no promise of an after-life; the sentence was to extinction. And because we are Adam’s offspring, we all inherited this sentence. But God in his love and foreknowledge planned that in the fullness of time he would send his only begotten Son, who in his pre-human existence was the Logos, to become a man and give his perfect human life as a ransom for Adam, who was also perfect before he sinned. (Gal. 4:4,5; I Pet. 1:18-20; John 1:1,2; 17:24; 3:16,17; Mark 10:45; I Tim. 2:4-6) Since the whole race was genetically in Adam when he sinned, by taking Adam’s place in death, a perfect man for a perfect man, Jesus provided the means for lifting, in God’s due time, the condemnation that rests upon Adam and his posterity, the human race.—Rom. 5:18,19; I Cor. 15:29,21

It was God’s purpose that Jesus should live in order to be the mediator of the New Covenant; under its terms Adam and the rest of mankind can be reconciled again to God under much more favorable conditions. (Heb. 8:6-13) To resurrect Jesus to the divine nature, it was necessary that he be begotten to that nature, and this was accomplished at the time of his baptism in the river Jordan. (Matt. 3:16,17; Isa. 61:1-3) For the three-and-one-half years of his ministry he was tested and proven worthy to receive the divine nature, the very level of life enjoyed by God himself.—Heb. 5:7-9; Phil. 2:5-11

The Apostle Paul, in Acts 13:30-34, speaking of Jesus, said, “God raised him from the dead, … and we declare unto you glad tidings, how that the promise which was made unto the fathers, God hath fulfilled the same unto us their children, in that he hath raised up Jesus again; as it is also written in the second psalm, Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee.” (The correct thought according to the context and the Greek is, “This day have I brought thee to birth.”) Jesus was brought to birth as a divine being at his resurrection, capable of accomplishing all that had been prophesied concerning him.

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