We continue once again with our subject,

Death and Resurrection

From a review of the position held by many in the professing church concerning the bodily resurrection of our Lord (as noted in the comments quoted in our previous post) it is evident that most have little understanding of the ransom price, viz., the death of our Lord and its necessity for our deliverance from the death penalty.

We will not here go into the specifics of the Ransom as this has been thoroughly covered in our blog posts entitled, “The Ransom” and “The Divine Economy in the Ransom”, nevertheless…

“The facts of history are that our Lord was crucified, died, was buried, and rose from the dead on the third day. (1 Cor. 15:3, 4) This is what all the Apostles preached, this is what the early Church believed, this is the truth. On this truth, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, hangs the whole argument respecting our justification from original sin, our justification through faith in his blood, through faith that he really died, that he really gave his life as our redemption price.

The Scriptures declare that the life of Adam and his race was forfeited, and that Christ took the place of Adam and redeemed him, dying the Just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God. If he did not die—really die—then we are not redeemed, for in that event the price, the penalty against us, has not been paid.

The Scriptures are properly very explicit on this subject of the necessity for the death of Christ for our deliverance from the death penalty. They show that there would have been no future life for any member of the human race had it not been that Christ became our Redeemer, purchasing our lives by his own life. More than this, they explicitly tell us that even after Jesus had died, had he not risen from the dead we would have been without hope of a future life. In that event all who have died should be reckoned as having perished absolutely, completely, just as a beast perishes in death.

Not only was it necessary that our Lord Jesus should be raised from the dead—not again to fleshly conditions, fleshly nature, but to the divine nature, that he as a quickened Spirit, a life giving Spirit, might legally and justly confer upon humanity the blessings secured judicially through the merit of his sacrifice on our behalf. In other words, it was necessary that he should die for our redemption and necessary also that he should arise from the dead, be clothed with glory, honor, immortality and divine power, to be the active agent of Jehovah God in establishing righteousness in the world and in bringing back from the power of sin and death all the families of the earth—assisting to perfection all who will avail themselves of his favor and seek to do his will.

From this standpoint the death of Jesus and his resurrection from the dead are of equal importance, neither one being efficacious in our salvation without the other. A dead Savior could deliver no one, could assist no one, because there is no wisdom nor knowledge nor device in the tomb.”

“The Scriptures refer to our Lord glorified as the Son of man, this being one of his many titles. As a matter of fact, he was not the son of Joseph, nor of any other man directly. Through his mother Mary he was the son of Adam, the only one of his race who was holy, harmless, undefiled and separate from sinners, and thus qualified to be the Savior of father Adam and his race. He was thus the foretold seed of Abraham who should crush the serpent’s head, who should eventually gain the victory over sin and all its consequences, for the race. All this he will eventually accomplish, because he is of human nature no longer, but in divine power and glory shall reign to bless those whom he redeemed with the sacrifice of his flesh, given for the life of the world. (John 6:51)

To have taken back the flesh (to have experienced a bodily resurrection) would have been to have taken back the ransom price, to have left us as a race un-redeemed. Thank God that his soul was not left in Hades, and that in its resurrection it was clothed with a spiritual body.”

(Excerpts taken from Harvest Gleanings 2, “I Am He That Liveth, And Was Dead”)

We will continue with the importance of the ransom and how it is made effective in our next post.