THE RESURRECTION — A CONSUMMATED VICTORY

Acts 2:23

^“Him, being delivered by the determinate will and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken and by wicked hands have crucified and slain.”

In undertaking the reconciliation and redemption of the world, God obligated Himself to deal fully and finally with sin and all its consequences. Every man was a sinner and the sinner’s greatest need is a Savior.

In the incarnation, God provided a potential Savior in the Holy One who was always everywhere Victor. But to make this potential Saviorhood effectual for man’s salvation it must be actualized. Christ’s personal victory must become a racial victory if it avails for the sinner. But the only way in which the benefit of Christ’s victory over sin could be bestowed upon the sinner was by having the guilt, penalty, and judgment of sin borne by the Savior. If the sinner were to take Christ’s place of holiness, victory, and obedience, Christ must take the sinner’s place of sin, death, and judgment. If any sinner were ever saved Christ must take upon Himself the sin of all sinners and bear its full responsibility. To pay the wages of sin, the Author of life died. In the deep and unfathomable mystery of the Cross, His Spirit was separated from God and went into Hades, and from His body which went into the grave (Acts 2:27).

The eternal Son becoming the incarnate Son had given the world a perfect Man; the incarnate Son becoming the crucified Son had given to the human race a perfect Savior. He had been victorious in the wilderness temptation, in the Gethsemane struggle, and finally in the Calvary conflict. But now what? He lies buried in a tomb and a stone sealed His grave. Has He been conquered at last? Was His victory but a seeming victory? Has the world been bequeathed to it nothing but the example of a sinless, perfect life that is impossible to follow and the memory of a well-meaning but futile sacrifice for sin? Will the Author, Preserver, and Upholder of all life Himself succumb to death, and will the palm of victory after all belong to him “who has the power of death, that is the devil”? Such will surely be the case if the God-man remains in the grave.

But this is unthinkable. Christ had said that He would not only lay down His life but that He would take it again (John 10:17-18). And He did rise from the dead. Death could never hold Him who had said, “I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live” (John 11:25). 

“Death could not keep his prey —
Jesus, my Savior,
He tore the bars away —
Jesus, my Lord!
Up from the grave He arose,
With a mighty triumph o’er His foes;
He arose a Victor from the dark domain,
And He lives forever with His saints to reign.
He arose! He arose! Hallelujah, Christ arose!”

The victory over death was complete.

1 Corinthians 15:55-57

⁵⁵ “O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?⁵⁶ The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law.⁵⁷ But thanks be to God, who giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ!

The victory of the resurrection gathered up into its embrace all the other victories in His life and death and gave to them meaning and power. The victories of incarnation and crucifixion were merged into THE VICTORY; perfect, powerful, permanent victory over the triumvirate of hell: sin, death, and Satan. 

THE RESURRECTION — THE DIVINE SEAL

Acts 2:24

“Whom God raised up, having loosed the pangs of death: because it was not possible that he should be holden of it.

Upon the life of the perfect Man and the work of the perfect Redeemer, God, the Father set His divine seal of approval and appraisal by raising the God-man from the dead. Christ Jesus had cried from the Cross, “It is finished,” and it was the cry not of a victim of Satan, but of a Victor over Satan; not of one vanquished by death, but the cry of the Vanquisher of death. In that cry of victory, Christ showed that He anticipated His resurrection; He expected the Father to raise Him from the dead. Had He a right to expect His Father to act? Most assuredly.

To His perfection of life as God’s second Man the Father had set His seal of approval both at His baptism and at His transfiguration by opening the heavens and saying, “This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.” Would the Father remain silent now? Would there be no witness to the Father’s satisfaction in the all-sufficiency of the Son’s sacrifice of Himself upon Calvary’s Cross to save men? To Christ’s death on the Cross as the perfect Savior, God would set His seal by opening the tomb and raising His Son from the dead, thus expressing in language more eloquent than words, His satisfaction with the Savior’s redemptive work and its sufficiency for the sinner’s salvation. “Upon all the virtue of His life and the value of His death and the victory of His conflict, God set the seal in the sight of heaven and earth and hell, when raising Him from the dead” (G. Campbell Morgan, The Crises of the Christ, p. 364). “The resurrection is the Father’s ‘Amen’ to the Son’s exclamation ‘It is finished.'” 

Source: “Life on the Highest Plane” by Ruth Paxson

Lord, we thank and praise You. Even though we may die, the grave will not be able to hold us. We too will be resurrected because we have believed into You. Hallelujah!