Is Jesus alive, and what does that mean?
Christianity does not rest on a memory but on a Person the first witnesses met after His burial, and the claim behind every Christian hope is that the One who died is not dead now. That raises two questions: is it actually true, and what difference does a living Christ make today?
The tomb was found empty
The earliest opponents had every reason to disprove the resurrection and every opportunity to do so. One writer traces the chain of evidence step by step:
Messiah and PrinceThe Lord had so often foretold His resurrection that, although His disciples had forgotten it, His enemies could not. This explains all their plans to prevent it. That He was dead before being taken down from the cross is proved by Pilate's refusal to allow the body to be removed until his own centurion assured him that the Lord was already dead. The priests also testified to the fact when they demanded the guard. Now they knew He was dead. They themselves, or their servants, sealed His body in the tomb, and they set a cordon of sixty soldiers around it. Yet in spite of all these precautions, early on the morning of the third day the stone was rolled away and the tomb was seen by everyone to be empty. The frightened soldiers announce it. The priests confess it. Fifty days later the disciples proclaim it throughout the city, and the priests never once challenge their truthfulness.
Raised never to die again
Others in the Bible were brought back to life and later died. What happened to Christ belongs to a different order:
F. B. HoleNow the resurrection of the saints will match the character of their Lord's. Lazarus clearly died again, or he would be on earth today. But "Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him" (Rom. 6:9). And of the saints it is said, they "who are considered worthy to attain to that age and to the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage, for they cannot die anymore" (Luke 20:35-36).
The receipt for a finished work
If the grave had held Him, the sins He carried would still be unpaid. His being alive is God's public answer:
J. A. TrenchAgain, "if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins." But if He has been raised, it is the magnificent proof to everyone who believes in Him that the sins He bore on the cross are gone for ever.
He holds the keys
Part of what He says about Himself is that He now carries the keys of death. One writer draws out the comfort of that for anyone facing the end of life:
H. H. SnellAnd as to death and the grave, who holds the keys? Did not Jesus say to His servant at His feet, "I have the keys of Death and Hades"? What a comforting truth this is for the child of God! How impossible that anyone can sleep in death, or be laid in the grave, until Jesus unlocks the gates. We may be sure He will open the gates for His loved ones at the best time, and it will be neither too soon nor too late.
(Older translations read "the keys of hell and of death.")
Not an ideal — a Person
"Living Christ" can be used to mean very little. One writer draws a sharp line between two very different things:
H. J. VineThere are, however, many who speak of a "living Christ" who show by what they say that it is not the Christ of Scripture in their thoughts. It is a mere experience they are seeking, or an ethical ideal that fills their imagination; with some it is simply an example or a moral principle. The Son of God, a living, loving, personal Saviour, who having died for our sins has been raised again from among the dead, and who now lives, the Man Christ Jesus, in the glory of God — to Him they are strangers.
What His life secures for His people
His life is not simply His own possession. It guarantees two things for those who belong to Him — a future beyond death, and constant care right now:
J. Wilson SmithAs certainly as He lives on the other side of death, so will each and all of His beloved and believing people. For He is their life. So we read in Hebrews 7:25, "He ever lives to make intercession for us." Such is the present activity of His life in glory — our High Priest and Intercessor.
Summary
- He lives — the tomb was sealed and guarded, and it was still found empty; the priests confessed it and never disputed the disciples' preaching.
- He lives on — unlike Lazarus, who died again, Christ raised from the dead will never die again; death has no more claim on Him.
- He lives as proof — if He were not raised, faith would be futile and sin unforgiven; because He is raised, the sins He bore are gone for ever.
- He lives holding the keys — death and the grave open only at His word, and He opens them for His own neither too soon nor too late.
- He lives for us — He is a real Person in glory, not a moral ideal, and He is active there as High Priest, so that those who are His will live where He lives.