Articles
He Is Risen - Mark 16:6
He Is Risen - Mark 16:6
“And he said to them, "Do not be amazed; you are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who has been crucified. He has risen; He is not here; behold, here is the place where they laid Him. (Mark 16:6).
To be raised, he had to be buried. To be buried he had to die. In dying, he was crucified. To be crucified he had to live in a fleshly body. To live in such fleshly body, he was incarnated. To be incarnated, he existed before his birth.
His resurrection was the “stamp of approval” that He was indeed the Son of God as He claimed (and which caused Him to be crucified). He “was declared the Son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead, according to the Spirit of holiness, Jesus Christ our Lord” (Romans 1:4).
This was the heart of the preaching of the apostles. (cf. Peter in Acts 2:24–28, 32, 3:15, 26; 4:10; 5:30; 10:40; 1 Pet. 1:13, 3:18, 21, and Paul, Acts 13:30, 33, 34, 37; 17:31; Rom. 4:24, 8:11; 10:9; 2 Cor. 4:14; 1Cor. 15:1-4, ) It is at the center of the Lord’s supper which has been celebrated since the beginning of the church. It is the foundation of baptism where believers are ‘raised with Him.”
We don’t just ‘believe’, we believe SOMETHING! We believe that He was raised from the dead. This fact is at the center of our conversion: “that if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved;” (Romans 10:9).
This is not only the crux of our faith, it is the point of attack by unbelievers. He wasn’t raised because he never lived? He wasn’t raised because we “KNOW” that ‘dead men don’t come back to life’? He did not REALLY come back to life, it was just a ‘figure of speech’, like people often say at funerals: “he isn’t really dead, he lives in our hearts and will not be forgotten”? He only ‘appeared’ to have been raised? OR: HE IS RISEN (Mark 16:6)!
This is the foundation of the hope of our own resurrection at the coming again of Jesus (read again 1 Thess. 4:13-18 and 1 Cor. 15). In the face of a certain death, we have the assurance of life with God.
