The benefits of Christ's resurrection

1. 0:00Heidelberg Catechism, Lord’s Day 17.
2. 0:13How does Christ's resurrection benefit us?
3. 0:16First, by his resurrection he has overcome death.
4. 0:20so that he might make us share in the righteousness he obtained for us by his death.
5. 0:25Second, by his power we too are already raised to a new life.
6. 0:30Third, Christ's resurrection is a sure pledge to us of our blessed resurrection.
7. 0:36If you were to go and ask a number of Christians to give you a summary, a one-line summary of what the gospel means to them.
8. 0:47I think you would probably hear something along these lines from most of the people.
9. 0:52Something like, "I believe that Jesus was nailed to the cross and that he was crucified so that I could have the forgiveness of sins. And that certainly is a fundamental truth of the gospel. But I think it's interesting
10. 1:08for us to consider actually what the major message was that the apostles first brought to the contemporaries of Jesus' day when they went around proclaiming the
11. 1:20gospel of Jesus Christ. They proclaim to everyone that, yes, this Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified,
12. 1:28he not only died, but he rose from the dead. And the weightiness of the resurrection of Jesus Christ that is given throughout
13. 1:39the New Testament should probably make us think that an amended, simplified answer of the gospel is perhaps appropriate. I think we tend to think of the forgiveness of sins as
14. 1:54particularly a benefit that we receive from the death of Christ.
15. 1:59and that the resurrection of Christ accomplishes something completely different from that.
16. 2:06But as we see here in the very first part of answer 45, we see that our righteousness before God depends somehow on Jesus' resurrection
17. 2:19We read there, "By his resurrection, he has overcome death so that he could make us share in the righteousness
18. 2:26which he had obtained for us by his death." If he didn't rise from the dead, somehow we would not be able to have the benefit of the forgiveness of our sins. Paul makes this point very clear in
19. 2:391 Corinthians chapter 15: "If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins.
20. 2:47Then those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished.
21. 2:51If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied."
22. 2:59for a moment, what would be the case if Jesus didn't rise from the dead?
23. 3:06Well, our conclusion would have to be that if Jesus was crucified and died and remained in the grave, his body didn't rise from the dead, that he was not successful in paying for sins.
24. 3:22Because if he finished paying for sin, then that means that death has no hold on him anymore.
25. 3:29Death cannot hold Christ, and he necessarily must rise from the dead.
26. 3:34The fact that eyewitnesses saw the resurrected Christ following his death That's a testimony and a proof.
27. 3:41And of course, it's an amazing comfort for us that our sins were completely paid for.
28. 3:47The second benefit that's listed there is we too are raised up to a new life.
29. 3:53In Romans chapter 6, Paul is encouraged us to really understand the reality of the new nature that we all necessarily have as those who are united to Jesus Christ. We read that in Romans chapter 6
30. 4:16verse 4: "We were buried with Christ by baptism into death, so that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. And he continues in verse 7, "So you
31. 4:31also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Jesus Christ." The domination of sin sin over us, like that's gone. We're not slaves to sin anymore. And more and more, all the
32. 4:47time, we're being remade after the image of our Savior Jesus Christ. And more and more we're taught to live as we were designed to live in a state of love with God and love with our neighbor.
33. 4:59And that third and final benefit that our catechism mentions, it has to do with what happens in the future.
34. 5:09Christ's resurrection is to us a sure pledge of our glorious resurrection.
35. 5:14Because of Christ's resurrection, we're able to have a confidence that we and all of our loved ones who are in Christ, who belong to him, we're going to be raised from the dead.
36. 5:27And not only that, the resurrection to that new life means that we're not going to rise into the same very hard arduous state of life that we're born into, but we're going to be raised in a
37. 5:44state of glory. We have this amazing thing to look forward to in 1st Corinthians 15 verses 51 and 52. "Behold I tell you a mystery: we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be
38. 5:59changed in a moment in the twinkling of an eye at the last trumpet for the trumpet will sound and the dead will be raised imperishable and we shall all be
39. 6:10changed Philippians 3 verses 20 and 21 we await a Savior the Lord Jesus Christ who will transform our lowly body to to be like his glorious body.
40. 6:22So when we confess that on the third day that Jesus rose from the dead, we're making this amazing, triumphant, victorious and really comforting confession about our past,
41. 6:39past, it's confession about our present, it's a confession about our future. We have already been justified because of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. We now today and for the
42. 6:59remade more and more after the image of Christ because of his resurrection.
43. 7:04And we, of course, are looking forward to the resurrection of the dead and the beginning of our most glorious life with him because of his resurrection.
44. 7:19you

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