Four ways the resurrection of Jesus changes things

If God in Jesus conquered rebellion, death, and the forces of spiritual darkness by raising Jesus from the dead, putting him in authority over all things in the universe, things can't just be normal.

If Jesus rose from the dead, everything changes.

If this climax of the story of the Bible is true, beginning with a good God creating a good universe which was then grossly corrupted and distorted and violated by the rebellion of humanity—

—and if this God was really good enough to interrupt the violation of his creation by sending his own Son Jesus the Messiah to redeem humanity and all of creation by execution through crucifixion—

—and if God in Jesus conquered rebellion, death, and the forces of spiritual darkness by raising Jesus from the dead and putting him in authority over all things in the universe —

—then we can’t just live life normally after a day of sitting in church and enjoying some ham with the fam.

If this is true, everything changes.

If Jesus rose from the dead, Jesus is the Lord and King over everything and everyone

Jesus says in Matthew 28:16, after he got up from the dead and met with over 500 of his disciples, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.” All authority: he rules over all things, and all people. His Kingdom has broken through the dark night of brokenness and is shining into our created world. And he is the King of his kingdom.

When the founders of our nation were putting things together, they created three branches of government. Now, I know you probably weren’t paying attention in civics class, but if you had been paying attention you would have learned about Congress, the President, and the Supreme Court. The founders purposely designed our nation’s government so that the President’s authority would be checked by Congress and the Supreme Court.

There’s a big difference between a President and a King. A President has measured authority, but a King has total authority. If Jesus rose from the dead he is not sworn in as President but enthroned and coronated as King. Jesus rules as King with unmeasured authority over all nations and all creation. It’s a massive claim but that’s what the Scripture says: “God raised Jesus and seated him far above all rule and authority and dominion and power…he put all things under his feet…” (Ephesians 1:20).

If Jesus rose from the dead, you can live life without fear, and with hope

The resurrection of Jesus from the dead means that God is making all bad and broken things come untrue. He is killing death, and he is breaking brokenness. He will restore, repair, remake and renew the world. As someone has said, “What God did for Jesus, he will do for all creation.”

God says , “Behold — I’m putting you on notice — I’m making all things new” (Rev 21:5). Jesus’ resurrection is “the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep” ( 1 Cor 15:20). Jesus’ resurrection is the prototype of what will happen to all humanity and all creation. Death will be stepped over like a doorstep, and we will enter into life if we are in Christ through repentance and faith.

Some folks find Christianity boring, thinking it’s just about spiritual living and avoiding bad things. Nope. Christianity is a vision of a full spiritual life a life of holiness and the hope of life in a resurrected world and a new created order. The resurrection of Jesus in his physical body, means that he will save us soul and body from destruction. He will raise our physical bodies at the climax of his kingdom's dawning on earth.

AS NT Wright says,

The resurrection of Jesus offers itself, to the student of history or science no less than the Christian or the theologian, not as an odd event within the world as it is but as the utterly characteristic, prototypical, and foundational event within the world as it has begun to be. It is not an absurd event with the old world but the symbol and starting point of the new world. The claim advanced in Christianity is of that magnitude: Jesus of Nazareth ushers in not simply a new religious possibility, not simply a new ethic or a new way of salvation, but a new creation.

If this is true, you don’t have anything to be afraid of. Your relationships, your money, your everything have been nested into the hollow of the hands of the risen Lord who is moving toward something so much better than we can even imagine. Even in our darkest, hardest, most heartbreaking and faith-shaking times, we believe and “hope in God who raises the dead (2 Cor 1:9). If Jesus is alive, we have nothing to fear but God himself and every reason to hope in God.

If Jesus rose from the dead, your life can have true meaning

If Jesus is still dead, we have no hope of anything more than right here and right now. As good as life might be, or as bad as life can get, it’s just all there is if there is no resurrection. Without resurrection, we’re living our lives under a shadow of death with [blank] number of years, or days, or moments left to live. If Jesus didn’t rise from the dead then the shortness of our lives is only matched by the meaninglessness of our days. We’re doing things that evaporate into nothing in the long run. We bristle, because we crave significance, meaning and purpose.

Here’s the happy news: if Jesus is alive, your life can have true meaning. You can belong to something and give yourself to something eternally and infinitely significant, the glory of God in the Kingdom of Christ. The everyday stuff you do in the presence of God to the glory of God has become epic and eternal: sweeping floors, collecting trash, teaching preschoolers, highschoolers, or collegians, stocking shelves, answering calls, nursing patients, hitting the books, building fences, trading stocks, handling packages, changing diapers, giving timeouts, cooking meals, hanging with grandkids, booking cruises, recording hiphop records, writing curriculum, representing clients, selling real estate—all of these things can have eternal meaning in the presence and power of the resurrected Jesus who is making all things new.

We see the significance of the supposedly insignificant in the Easter story. The gospels all call a startling primary witness to the stand in the case of the resurrection: a woman. A woman’s testimony wasn’t admissible in a secular court, but it was enough for the gospel of heaven. The gospel dignifies women and elevates them to their rightful place as equal image bearers of God and equal sharers in the glory of the gospel. We know this story is authentic, because no one would have included women as key witnesses in a falsified account. But women are there as central figures, star witnesses with decisive testimony. The God who raises the dead is the God who centralizes the marginalized.

Maybe you feel insignificant? If Jesus rose from the dead, your feelings of insignificance are lying to you. If Jesus rose from the dead, your life has true meaning. If Jesus rose from the dead, then you might be the very person God is going to use to speak truth into the world. Jesus himself, God the Son in human flesh, worked as a construction worker in obscurity until he was in his early thirties. You are not too old, or too young, or too rich or too poor, or to anything. If Jesus is alive, your life can truly matter.

If Jesus rose from the dead, we can live a wholehearted life

Think about whatever gets you pumped up: when your favorite musician drops a new single or album, or when you get that new job, or make an important connection, or the Giants (or Dolphins, or whoever) wins, or a grandkid is born, or you get your new iPhone, or your tax refund deposits—Jesus is better than that. Better than everything and everyone. If he is truly alive from the dead and has brought the story of God’s redemptive plan to a climax and brought a new created order into our present world, then he is worth everything we have.

Often, though, we respond with partially hearted agreement rather than wholehearted worship. “Yes, I agree” is not a language of love. We respond not with less than agreement, but with much more. Too often we treat Jesus like an Instagram post, tapping “Like” and that’s that. The resurrected Jesus, though, isn’t a meme that captures our attention for 40 seconds before we move on to other things. Following Jesus is a whole lot more like covenanting in marriage before God and everyone than it is like friending someone on Facebook.

Social and mental health expert Brené Brown has described a moment where she was looking for a way to categorize the files for the small stack of healthy and well-adjusted folks in her study. She recounts almost instinctively on the top tab of the manila file folder “wholehearted.” Brown has ridden a rocket to fame and influence that has been in part fueled by this vision of helping people live a healthy and “wholehearted” life.

How much more can the resurrection offer us a “wholehearted” way of life. If Jesus rose from the dead, Jesus’s literally dead heart started to pump blood through narrow channels that had congealed closed. Talk about a new wholehearted vision for life. In this wholehearted resurrection way, God calls us to both reverence and intimacy in union with Christ. Eugene Peterson says,

Falling to our knees before Jesus—an act of reverence—is not in itself resurrection worship. Touching and holding the feet of Jesus—an act of intimacy—is not in itself resurrection worship. The acts of reverence and intimacy need each other. The reverence needs the infusion of intimacy lest it become a cool and detached aesthetic. The intimacy needs to be suffused in reverence lest it become a gushy emotion.

Jesus wants our whole heart, only because he has given his whole heart already to us.

Jesus rose from the dead, things are different now.