What the Resurrection means

We know that He was raised from the dead. We know that He did not die for Himself, and that His death was not the death of a martyr, but as we read the four gospels we obtain no inkling of what the death and resurrection of Jesus meant.

We turn to the Revelation given Paul by the Father about Jesus. You remember that in the four gospels Jesus is giving us a revelation of the Father, but in Paul’s epistles we are getting a revelation of Jesus by the Father. That revelation tells us what the Resurrection means.
    
In the four gospels we cannot see God laying our sin upon Jesus. We cannot see ourselves put on Christ, the sin substitute, on the cross; but in the mind of the Father you were laid upon Jesus while He was nailed upon the cross…
    
You say, “I cannot understand it.” Sense Knowledge cannot grasp it. Faith light must guide us from here on. We go on with the Spirit into this vaster Revelation with Jesus. We hear Paul whisper, “I was crucified with Him.” He tells us he died with Christ, was buried with Him, was Justified with Him, made alive with Him, in that great substitutionary battle. Then he was raised with Him, and now is seated with Him. That is identification. That is substitution.
    
Paul gives us the whole drama in his Revelation. He says what John could not say, what Peter could not say, nor what Mary, His mother, could not say.
Paul is looking beyond the cross, but they are only looking up and seeing the Master hanging upon the cross. Paul is looking, with the eyes of God (in his revelation), upon Christ.   So I ask you, what did the Resurrection mean? It meant that God was in Christ redeeming the world, that in Christ there was a redemption from Satan’s dominion and Satan’s power, and that in that redemption there was deliverance from fear and bondage.
    
There was not only a perfect redemption in Christ, but there was more. There was a New Creation offered, made possible, so that all a man had to do was to receive Christ as his Saviour and Lord, and when he did this, on legal grounds God could give Eternal Life to him and make him a New Creation. Out of that empty sepulchre there was born a new race, a new creation, a new kind of men.
    
What does the Resurrection mean? It means that we are New Creations, sons and daughters of God, heirs of God and joint heirs with Jesus Christ.
    
We are absolutely freed from the dominion of the adversary. Satan has no dominion over this New Creation. Jesus is the Lord and head over this New Creation, and He does not divide His dominion with the adversary.
    
It means that we are free from the dominion of want and fear and weakness. Our God supplies every need of ours according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus. No one has been able to compute His wealth. These riches are beyond compre- hension, and we are blessed according to that. “Of His fulness have we all received, and grace upon grace.”