“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to His great mercy,
He has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection
of Jesus Christ from the dead.”
(1 Peter 1:3)
A true child of God treasures the cross, for it represents the depths of God’s love and grace and our redemption from sin. But when we focus all our attention on the cross, we miss the deep significance of Christ’s resurrection and its essential role in the foundations of our faith. For as the apostle Paul declares, “if Christ be not raised, your faith is in vain, you are yet in your sins,” (1 Cor. 15:17).
The resurrection of Christ from the dead must necessarily follow His crucifixion because a dead Savior cannot save. Therefore, both His crucifixion and His resurrection are equally essential.
In His death we have an effectual completion of salvation and reconciliation to God. Divine justice is satisfied, the curse is removed, and the penalty is paid. And yet it is not by Christ’s death, but by His resurrection, that we are born again to a living hope (1 Peter 1:3). For how could He, by dying, free us from death if afterward He had yielded to its power and remained dead?
Paul affirms this truth in Romans 4:25, “Who (Christ) was delivered for our offences and was raised again for our justification.” By His death sin was taken away; by His resurrection righteousness was restored. Christ claimed victory over death through the power of the resurrection, which means the victory of our faith is rooted in His resurrection. God “raised Him up from the dead, and gave Him glory, that your faith and hope might be in God,” (1 Peter 1:21).
Believers must remember that when the death of Christ is mentioned in Scripture, everything peculiar to the resurrection is at the same time included. And when resurrection as a teaching is given, everything peculiar to death is also included. In other words, there can be no resurrection without a death. There can be no Savior without a resurrection. And there can be no living hope without both. Martyn Lloyd Jones said, “This is how a man gets the living hope. It comes because he is joined to Christ. He is in this blessed state of union with Christ, so that what happened to the Lord Jesus also happens to him. Christ and His people are one. He is the Head; we are the body. When He died, we died. When He was buried in a grave, we were buried with Him. When He arose, we arose.”
- Paul tells me that, “… as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so I also should walk in newness of life,” (Rom. 6:4). Because while my old nature is considered “dead with Christ,” (Col. 3:5), my new nature is “also risen with Him.” Help me then, Lord, to “seek those things which are above, where Christ sits at the right hand of God,” (Col. 3:1).
- By Christ’s power I am renewed to righteousness. Such a power in the resurrected Christ assures me of my own resurrection. Paul discusses this at length in 1 Corinthians 15, and You, Lord, make all Your promises yes and amen in Christ.
- Lord, I desire that living hope to be alive in me. The truth and necessity of this doctrine press me to consider the final resurrection. There is an inseparable connection between me and my risen Savior, and so the resurrection of Your Son, the Christ, is a wonderful pledge to me of all Your promises of eternal life. In all this I have a living hope.
Further References for 1 Peter 1:3
2 Cor. 1:3; Eph. 1:3; Titus 3:5; John 1:13; Heb. 3:6; James 1:18
