“We need to be clear about the nature of the relation between the death and resurrection of Jesus, and careful not to ascribe saving efficacy to both equally…It is by the blood of Jesus that God’s wrath against sin was propitiated, and by the same blood of Jesus that we have been redeemed, justified, and reconciled. For it was by his death, and not his resurrection that our sins were dealt with…Nowhere in the New Testament is it written that ‘Christ rose for our sins’…Of course, the resurrection is essential to confirm the efficacy of his death…But we must insist that Christ’s work of sin-bearing was finished on the cross, that the victory over the devil, sin and death was won there, and that what the resurrection did was to vindicate the Jesus whom men had rejected, to declare with power that he is the Son of God, and publicly to confirm that his sin-bearing death had been effective for the forgiveness of sins. If he had not been raised, our faith and our preaching would be futile, since his person and work would not have received the divine endorsement. This is the implication of Romans 4:25, which at first sight seems to teach that Christ’s resurrection is the means of our justification: ‘He was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification.’ Charles Cranfield explains: ‘What was necessitated by our sins was, in the first place, Christ’s atoning death, and yet, had his death not been followed by his resurrection, it would not have been God’s mighty deed for our justification.’ In addition, because of the resurrection it is a living Christ who bestows on us the salvation he has won for us on the cross, who enables us by his Spirit not only to share in the merit of his death but also to live in the power of his resurrection, and who promises us that on the last day we too will have resurrection bodies.
“James Denney expresses the relation between Jesus’ death and resurrection this way: ‘There can be no salvation from sin unless there is a living Saviour: this explains the emphasis laid by the apostle on the resurrection. But the living One can be a Saviour only because he has died: this explains the emphasis laid on the cross. The Christian believes in a living Lord, or he could not believe at all; but he believes in a living Lord who dies an atoning death, for no other can hold the faith of a soul under the doom of sin.’”
–John R W Stott, The Cross of Christ (Downer’s Grove, InterVaristy Press, 2006), pp,237-238
Worship for Easter Day
Join us online for the live stream of our Easter Day Eucharist from 10am, or catch up later today on our website.
You can watch the service here >> https://t.co/qxjpLWgFGv pic.twitter.com/6Ek389CvFd
— Hereford Cathedral (@HFDCathedral) April 4, 2021