There is so much to unpack regarding what took place on the first Easter. For Christians who have accepted Jesus as Lord and Savior—He: paid our penalty, washed us clean of our sins, restored us to a right relationship with God, darkness and death were defeated, resurrection to life took place, Jesus was crowned as King of Heaven and earth, and He secured our future a New Heaven and New Earth with Him… in resurrected bodies. But that is way too much to cover in one sitting; therefore, this article will focus on “resurrection.”
Although Jesus resurrected people from the dead during His ministry, they were resurrected back into bodies that eventually decayed and died. The first Easter was the first resurrection to life! Jesus’ resurrected body was the first body resurrected that will not decay, nor die, nor have disease. He was the first being resurrected to eternal life, and He promises that one day we will be resurrected as well.
With the Nicene Creed we declare, “I look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come.” Let’s take a moment and contemplate what that means.
Romans 8:11 states, “and if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies because of his Spirit who lives in you.”
Jesus himself states, “Very truly I tell you, a time is coming and has now come when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God and those who hear will live. For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself. And he has given him authority to judge because he is the Son of Man. ‘Do not be amazed at this, for a time is coming when all who are in their graves will hear his voice and come out—those who have done what is good will rise to live, and those who have done what is evil will rise to be condemned” (John 5:25-29, NIV).
In a book titled Surprised by Hope, N.T. Wright states, “when Paul speaks in Philippians 3 of being ‘citizens of heaven,’ he doesn’t mean that we shall retire there when we have finished our work here. He says in the next line that Jesus will come from heaven in order to transform the present humble body into a glorious body like his own and that he will do this by the power through which he makes all things subject to himself. This little statement contains in a nutshell more or less all Paul’s thought on the subject. The risen Jesus is both the model for the Christian’s future body and the means by which it comes about.” [1]
I will conclude this article with Paul’s explanation of the resurrection of the body in his letter 1 Corinthians 15:51-57, “Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed— in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality. When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: ‘Death has been swallowed up in victory.’ ‘Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?’ The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
[1] Wright, N. T. 2008. Surprised by Hope. New York: HarperOne, 148-149.