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"...The church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth."
I Timothy 3:15
Why Is the Resurrection of
Jesus Christ So Important?
The late Nick Nichalinos
From the Baptist Challenge, August 2014
Question: Why is the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ so important to the thinking of some?
Answer: The resurrection of our Lord is the very foundation of our salvation and our hope. Unbelievers have long sought to shut down the tomb of Christ and keep Him therein.
They know how vital His resurrection is to Christianity. There would be no Christianity if Christ be not raised from the dead. Let me briefly show the great tragedy if Christ be not raised from the dead:
(1) It would dishonor God and His Word, because He had promised to raise Him from the dead (Psa. 2:7), and therefore His “flesh (in the tomb) rested in hope” (Psa. 16:9-10). But if He didn’t raise Him from the dead, He (Father) failed to keep His Word to His Son. A person’s word is his honor. If we don’t keep our word, we are dishonest and dishonorable. Thus, if the Father didn’t raise up Christ from the dead, then He has disgraced Himself because He didn’t keep His Word.
(2) It would make Christ an impostor and a deceiver because He had promised many times He would be raised from the dead (Matt. 12:40; 17:22-23; John 2:19; 10:17-18). If He wasn’t raised as promised, He lied, and therefore all of His claims about Himself were false. He had instilled a false hope in His followers if He be not raised from the dead.
(3) It would make the Bible writers of both the Old Testament and the New Testament equal impostors and masters of deception. All these men are low, contemptible men if our Lord’s resurrection was only a made-up story.
(4) Believers in Him as Savior would yet be unsaved and in their sins (1 Cor. 15:12-19). We would be of all men most miserable. His death then becomes of no value at all. It was a needless tragedy. A “dead” Christ cannot come back for us (John 14:1-3); a “dead” Christ cannot be the Head of the church (Col. 1:18), our advocate (1 John. 2:1), our High Priest (Heb. 10:21), give us strength (Phil. 4:13), keep us safely in His hand (John 10:26), be the future judge of the lost (Rev. 20:11), etc. Baptism pictures His death while the Lord’s Day speaks of His resurrection. I hope by now you can see the importance of the resurrection of Christ.
Thanks be unto God, He has “risen from the dead, and has become the first fruits of them that slept” (1 Cor. 15:20).
By His resurrection, we have the assurance that He is the Christ (Rom. 1:4), and that it is safe to trust Him as Savior (Acts 16:31), and that He will keep us by His divine power (John 10:28), and as saved ones we have the promise that we shall be raised as certainly as He was (John 14:19), and the ordinances do symbolically speak the Truth. “If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved” (Rom. 10:9).
Christianity stands or falls with regard to the resurrection of Christ. “Why should it be thought a thing incredible with you, that God should raise the dead?” (Acts 26:8)