Nothing matters if God can’t raise the dead

For too many Christians, talk of the resurrection is restricted to a few songs and a family meal once a year on Easter Sunday. And, for many, even those few songs feel just a tad melodramatic. Yeah, yeah, up from the grave he arose, but what about my marriage? What about my ministry? What about the building fund?

I’m telling you, none of it matters without the resurrection. In fact, if the resurrection isn’t real, save your energy. Go have a latte.

But the resurrection is real, and you know it! In fact, our once-a-year Easter celebrations are only as good as our awareness of the centrality and power of the resurrection on every other day of the year.

Jesus’ resurrection in the Gospels is not merely another story. It is the climax towards which the rest of the Bible builds. According to Paul, if our relationship with Christ and his word gives us hope for this life, and nothing beyond, then “we are of all people most to be pitied” (1 Cor 15:19). Nothing in the Bible matters without the resurrection of Christ and the vision of eternal life beyond death.

Each of the key players in God’s redemptive plan had a firm faith that God was in the process of undoing the curse and restoring life fully. The promise and hope of eternal life drives the big-picture story of the Bible; it is this hope that binds us together with Old Testament believers (Heb 11:39-40).  

Abraham believed God could raise the dead

When Abram was 99 years old, God informed him that he and his wife would have a child of their own. That child, God said, would be the first of many offspring. Accordingly, Isaac was born to a 100-year-old father and a 90-year-old mother. They were as good as dead, and God brought life from them. 

Maybe this is why Abraham was so sure things would work out when God told him to offer as a sacrifice to him that very child. Long before Isaac had grown old enough to have any children of his own, Abraham put him on the altar. Why? How could he do it? “He considered that God was able even to raise him from the dead” (Heb 11:19). 

Without this hope, Abraham wouldn’t have done what he did. None of it—the sacrifice, the suffering, the waiting, the faith—would have mattered without the resurrection.

Moses believed God could restore our purpose

Moses had told the Israelites that, if they obeyed God in the land of promise, their work would last. It would be fruitful. It would bring them long life and joy together (Deut 11:13-17, 28:1-6, 11-12) When the people disobeyed, their life’s work would become a joke (Deut 28:37).

All our running around, paying bills, getting degrees, building houses, bank accounts, investments, trying facials, manicures, diets, health food, supplements, late nights, early mornings, trophies, awards, and medals—all of it will, the day we die (or sooner), begin to fade away into irrelevance and obscurity (Eccl 2:15-17; 3:16-22). This is the curse: not just death at the end, but the futility of life all along the way to the end. Life itself is rendered meaningless by the inevitability of death.

But Moses believed God could restore man’s purpose to his life. How? By establishing the permanence—the eternalness—of life and human work in creation once again.

“Establish the work of our hands“ Moses pleads (Ps 90:17). Established means stable. Secure. Enduring. And the gospel answers his plea with the resurrection of Christ. Because of it, Paul tells us to be “always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labour is not in vain” (1 Cor 15:58).

David believed life in the land of rest would be eternal

David’s forward-looking faith was identical to Abraham’s: they both hoped in a future inheritance in the presence of God and his people in a land free from sin and death.

This beautiful hope is found, among other places, in Psalm 16. Here David abandons all his accomplishments as rubbish in the light of the promises of God: “I have no good apart from you” (Ps 16:2; cf. Phil 3:7-10). For David, the presence of God implied certain other realities. Love and fellowship between the children of God (Ps 16:3). A beautiful land of joy, not futility or frustration (Ps 16:6). And (key point here!) all of this love, fellowship, joy, and life will be unthreatened by death (Ps 16:9-11).

All commendable faith is faith in the coming resurrection

The word faith has become a cliché. Even unbelievers who reject Christ like to wear necklaces that tout the charming notion of faith. The question is, faith in what? In whom? Does God merely commend any kind of faith in anything?

Of course not. Hebrews 11 gives us a long list of people whose faith was commended and approved by God as saving faith, and that faith is specifically focused on the gospel hope of resurrection and eternal life:

• There’s the story of creation, which assures us that God is able to bring life from nothing (Heb 11:3).
• There’s Abel, who, “through his faith, though he died, he still speaks” (Heb 11:4).
• There’s Enoch, who never saw death at all (Heb 11:5).
• There’s Abraham, who looked ahead to a redeemed, heavenly city in a better land (Heb 11:10), and who knew that God could bring life from death (Heb 11:12, 19).
• There are Isaac and Jacob, who invoked “future blessings” on their sons which contained the hope of the blessings of a redeemed land (Heb 11:20-21, see also Gen 27:27-29, 48:16-20).
• There’s Joseph, who “gave directions concerning his bones”, demonstrating his faith that those bones had a future (Heb 11:22).
• There’s Moses, who counted all the treasures of Egypt as nothing because “he was looking to the reward”  (Heb 11:26).
• There’s Rahab, who by faith “did not perish” (Heb 11:31... ring a bell? See John 3:16). She was “saved alive” (Josh 6:25) because she knew the power of the Lord to give his people what he had promised them.
• There are many more, who, among other things:
• “received back their dead by resurrection. Some were tortured, refusing to accept release, so that they might rise again to a better life.” (Heb 11:35-36)

The point is clear: an active hope in God’s power and intent to raise the dead is at the heart of biblical faith and at the centre of the Bible’s message. The hope of eternal life is the bottom line of our faith.

To “believe in Jesus”—to be a Christian—is, when boiled down to its most essential ingredient, to be absolutely convinced that Jesus rose from the dead for real. Those who, like so many others, find this scientifically preposterous, theologically offensive, or just plain out of the question, lack biblical saving faith. Ultimately, the ‘story’ of Easter will be their condemnation rather than a nice time of swapping chocolate. 

Along with faith in Christ’s resurrection, you must also be persuaded that as a believer you yourself are headed for eternal life in an undying body, and that everything you do in this life should be done in light of it. This is faith that pleases God: “if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved” (Rom 10:9).

Nothing in the Bible matters—nothing in life matters—if God can’t raise the dead. But God can raise the dead, and the whole Bible testifies to it:

But this I confess to you, that... I worship the God of our fathers, believing everything laid down by the Law and written in the Prophets, having a hope in God... that there will be a resurrection of both the just and the unjust. (Acts 24:14-15)