“If Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins” (1 Cor. 15:17).
As important as the substitutionary death of Christ is, His bodily resurrection is of equal importance, for the gospel message, by which we are saved, is “how that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures; and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures.” Would it not be an awful thing for us believers to contemplate that we “are yet in [our] sins”? But we “by Him do believe in God, that raised Him up from the dead, and gave Him glory; that [our] faith and hope might be in God.” For “He was delivered for our offenses, and was raised again for our justification.” And His resurrection not only assures our salvation, but assures us also strength to live for His glory, for when we trusted in Christ as Savior, we were by the Holy Spirit “baptized into His death ... that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. For if we have been planted together in the likeness of His death, we shall be also in the likeness of His resurrection,” “that I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection.”
We shared His death, and we share His life,
Jesus, our Savior and Lord;
He gives us the strength to live for Him,
Strength by the Spirit and Word.
1 Cor. 15:3-4; 1 Peter 1:21; Rom. 4:25; 6:3-5; Phil. 3:10.