Nena Arias | April 10, 2023
“He is not here, for He has risen, just as He said.
Come, see the place where He was lying.”
(Matthew 28:6)
Without the Resurrection of Christ, the Christian faith loses all strength. Anyone can die and live sacrificially for a purpose they strongly believe in, and many have. But only one has resurrected from the dead. This is why Jesus is the only one that can truly offer faith, hope, and redemption from sin. The resurrection of Jesus has solidified itself in history. Only in him is found eternal life.
In Jesus’s death, burial, and resurrection, he defeated sin and death forever. The Holy Scriptures also promise Christ’s eventual return, which captivates believer’s faith in him for life.
The New Testament includes many Bible verses about Easter that predict and explain in detail Jesus’s resurrection. The Bible is the maximum authority on this. Here are some of the most powerful Easter Bible verses. This first one is directed at Lazarus’s sister when Jesus is about to bring him back from the dead:
Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?” – John 11:25-26 (NIV)
As I mentioned, the Easter story totally rests on our Lord Jesus Christ who died for our sins and was raised from the dead. In this verse, Jesus referred to himself as “the resurrection” even before his crucifixion and promised that those who believe in him would never die but have eternal life. Some people can and do reason away the fact of the entire person of Jesus, especially his resurrection but the above verse forces us to pit our reasoning against the very words of Jesus’s life, death, resurrection, and ascension, which is the promised truth of our salvation. He even challenges us by asking “Do you believe this?”
Jesus announced his death to his disciples in these next two verses:
He then began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and after three days rise again. – Mark 8:31 (NIV)
Now Jesus was going up to Jerusalem. On the way, he took the Twelve aside and said to them, “We are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be delivered over to the chief priests and the teachers of the law. They will condemn him to death and will hand him over to the Gentiles to be mocked and flogged and crucified. On the third day he will be raised to life!” – Matthew 20:17-19 (NIV)
Our Lord Jesus Christ never lost sight of who he was and what he had come to earth to fulfill. He was fully aware of what would happen to Him, yet he pressed on in full obedience to the Father’s will. When Jesus told his disciples what was to happen it confused them and they were not sure what it all meant. Even though the disciples had recognized that Jesus was the promised Messiah, they had not yet fully grasped that Christ’s crucifixion would mean that he had to die for our sins. But Christ knew the end result and conveyed it to his followers in hopes they would have faith and wisdom in fully understanding this key factor since they were to carry on with the work of the kingdom after his departure.
Being God, Jesus manifested the ultimate humility as he submitted himself to suffering and even allowed himself to be mocked. “Those who passed by hurled insults at him, shaking their heads and saying, “So! You who are going to destroy the temple and build it in three days, come down from the cross and save yourself!” In the same way the chief priests and the teachers of the law mocked him among themselves. “He saved others,” they said, “but he can’t save himself! Let this Messiah, this king of Israel, come down now from the cross, that we may see and believe.” Those crucified with him also heaped insults on him. – Mark 15:29-32 (NIV)
The treatment of Jesus shows the depths of peoples’ sinful nature manifested in the hatred and ridicule of him. He was grossly mocked. But why would our Lord Jesus Christ put himself through this mockery? Because he knew his mission was to save humanity from their sin, otherwise it leads to their eternal death. God’s plan had to include not only death for our sins but to be raised from the dead to complete the victory. His sacrifice, which allowed mockery and pain reminds us of God’s deep love for all of us.
The supernatural darkening of the world at Jesus’s death followed by light showed the awesomeness of Father God witnessing the divinity of his Son. It was now about noon, and darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon, for the sun stopped shining. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two. Jesus called out with a loud voice, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.” When he had said this, he breathed his last. The centurion, seeing what had happened, praised God and said, “Surely this was a righteous man.” – Luke 23:44-47 (NIV)
The impact on nature of Jesus’s death on the cross shows us the magnitude and the impact of what his death meant for humanity and all of creation. It was up until this moment that it fully became known that this man was truly the Lamb of God who died for our sins. His identity was reaffirmed in his death. The centurion, for his part, realized that something profound happened, as the above verse shows.
As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man dressed in a white robe sitting on the right side, and they were alarmed. “Don’t be alarmed,” he said. “You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified. He has risen! He is not here. See the place where they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter, ‘He is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.’” – Mark 16:5-7 (NIV)
The resurrection is the most important event in human history. This above verse shows us what happened when the disciples went to Jesus’s tomb. They discovered it was empty and that Jesus was raised from the dead. He fulfilled his promise to die, rise again and ensure salvation for his people. His fulfillment continues to change lives around the globe in all generations.
For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly also be united with him in a resurrection like his. For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body ruled by sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin. – Romans 6:5-6 (NIV)
Because Jesus resurrected we are “no longer slaves to sin”. We have been equipped to walk away from our sinful nature to be more like Jesus. If we do this to the end of our earthly life, we will be reunited with Jesus and God in heaven. That is our true and blessed hope.