Easter is often explained as God's proof that the cross worked. The New Testament and the early Church say something larger: the resurrection is part of what saves.
In brief
A familiar way of explaining the gospel runs like this: Christ died for our sins, and the resurrection shows that his sacrifice was accepted. That is true as far as it goes. The New Testament, though, speaks of the resurrection as doing things, not only as proving them. Paul says Christ “was raised for our justification”, that without the resurrection believers are “still in your sins”, and that the risen Christ is the “first fruits” of the dead. This article sets out those claims and the early Christian reading of them. It does not argue that the resurrection happened. That case is made in The Historical Evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus and in step six of The Case for Christianity. The question here is what the resurrection means for salvation if it did.
On this page
- Raised for our justification
- The verdict on who Jesus is
- The firstfruits of the dead
- Death defeated from the inside
- Why the body matters
- New life now
- A living high priest
- The renewal of creation
- What we can say confidently
- What remains disputed
- Notes
Raised for our justification
Paul's letter to the Romans contains a compact statement that puts the resurrection alongside the cross in the work of salvation. Christ, he says, “was delivered up for our trespasses, and was raised for our justification.”1 The two halves are parallel. The death deals with trespasses; the resurrection has its own part in putting people right with God.
Paul makes the same point negatively when he argues with Corinthians who doubted the resurrection of the dead. If there is no resurrection, he says, the consequences reach much further than a mistake about the future. “If Christ has not been raised, your faith is vain; you are still in your sins.”2 A dead Messiah would leave sin where it was.
Interpreters describe the connection in different ways. For some, the resurrection is God's public verdict on the one who died, vindicating him and with him all who are united to him. For others, justification includes the gift of new life, which only a living Christ can give. Both readings agree on the main point: Paul does not treat Easter as a sign added to a salvation already complete on Good Friday. The death and the resurrection belong together.
The verdict on who Jesus is
The resurrection also settles a question the cross left open. Jesus was condemned by the high priest's council for blasphemy3 and executed by crucifixion, a death Paul connects with the curse pronounced in the Law on “everyone who hangs on a tree”.4 If the story had ended there, his claims would have ended with him. Paul opens Romans by describing God's Son, “who was born of the offspring of David according to the flesh, who was declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead”.5 Philippians traces the same movement from humiliation to vindication: Christ “humbled himself, becoming obedient to death, yes, the death of the cross. Therefore God also highly exalted him”.6
This matters for salvation, and not only for apologetics. The one who died for others is shown to be who he said he was, so his death cannot be read as the failure of a well-meaning teacher. A good man who dies for his friends can inspire them. The risen Son of God can bring them through death with him, which is what the rest of the New Testament goes on to claim.
The firstfruits of the dead
The most important image Paul uses is agricultural. The firstfruits were the first part of the harvest, offered to God ahead of the rest. “But now Christ has been raised from the dead. He became the first fruits of those who are asleep.”7 Paul sets the image beside the story of Adam: “For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive. But each in his own order: Christ the first fruits, then those who are Christ’s, at his coming.”8 Colossians uses a related image when it calls Christ “the firstborn from the dead”.9
The point of the image is that Christ's resurrection is not an isolated miracle like the raising of Lazarus, which restored him to ordinary mortal life. It is the first instance of the resurrection that belongs to the end of history, begun in the middle of history. What happened to his body is what will happen to the bodies of those who belong to him. The early writers took the image up directly. Athanasius describes Christ “displaying His own body incorruptible, as first-fruits of the resurrection of all.”10 Cyril of Alexandria's twelfth anathema, against those who would separate the Word from his suffering, ends by confessing that he “has become the first-begotten of the dead, for, as he is God, he is the life and it is he that gives life”.11
Death defeated from the inside
The New Testament presents death as an enemy, not simply a natural event. Paul calls it “The last enemy that will be abolished”.12 Hebrews says the Son shared human flesh “that through death he might bring to nothing him who had the power of death, that is, the devil, and might deliver all of them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage.”13 Peter's sermon at Pentecost gives the reason the enemy lost: God raised Jesus, “because it was not possible that he should be held by it.”14
This is why the early Christian account of salvation cannot stop at the cross. For Athanasius, the Word took a mortal body so that death could be undone in it, “banishing death from them like straw from the fire”.15 The resurrection is the moment the defeat becomes visible. Irenaeus draws the Adam parallel in the language of battle: Christ fought and won “in order that, as our species went down to death through a vanquished man, so we may ascend to life again through a victorious one”.16 Paul's own conclusion to his long argument about the resurrection is a hymn of victory: “Death is swallowed up in victory.” … “Death, where is your sting? Hades, where is your victory?”17 In Revelation the risen Christ says, “I was dead, and behold, I am alive forever and ever. Amen. I have the keys of Death and of Hades.”18
The atonement models discussed in How the Early Church Understood the Cross differ over what the death achieved. On the resurrection they converge. Whatever the cross did, a Christ who stayed dead would not have overcome death.
Why the body matters
If the resurrection is part of salvation, then salvation includes the body. This is one of the places where Christian hope differs most from ideas of the soul escaping the body at death. The earliest Christian writers insisted that the risen Christ had a real body. Ignatius of Antioch, writing against those who said Christ only seemed to be human, puts it simply: “For I know that after His resurrection also He was still possessed of flesh, and I believe that He is so now.”19
The Gospels make the same point in their accounts of the appearances. In Luke the risen Jesus answers disciples who think they are seeing a ghost: “See my hands and my feet, that it is truly me. Touch me and see, for a spirit doesn’t have flesh and bones, as you see that I have.”20 In John he tells Thomas, “Reach here your finger, and see my hands. Reach here your hand, and put it into my side.”21 The body that rose is the body that was crucified, wounds and all. Salvation does not discard what Christ suffered in; it raises it.
Paul says the risen body is transformed: “The body is sown perishable; it is raised imperishable. It is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness; it is raised in power. It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body.”22 The word spiritual here does not mean immaterial; the site's article What Is a ‘Spiritual Body’? explains the language. The same transformation is promised to believers. Christ “will change the body of our humiliation to be conformed to the body of his glory”,23 and the Spirit who raised Jesus “will also give life to your mortal bodies”.24 Paul calls this “the redemption of our body.”25
This is the other half of Gregory Nazianzen's principle, set out in the cornerstone article, that what Christ has not assumed he has not healed. Christ took a human body, died in it and was raised in it. A salvation that ended with the soul would leave out part of what he assumed. Why Do Christians Believe in Bodily Resurrection? and Why Does the Body Matter in Christianity? take this further.
New life now
The resurrection is not only a future hope. The New Testament speaks of believers already sharing in it. Baptism is the place Paul locates this: “We were buried therefore with him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we also might walk in newness of life. For if we have become united with him in the likeness of his death, we will also be part of his resurrection”.26 Ephesians can even speak in the past tense: God “made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up with him”.27
First Peter ties Christian hope to the same event. God “caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead”.28 The new birth is from the risen Christ. Christian traditions differ on how baptism relates to this new life, and Does Baptism Save? sets out the texts. They agree that the life believers receive is the life of the risen Christ, not a better version of the old life. Irenaeus describes the Lord as “bestowing upon us at His coming immortality durably and truly, by means of communion with God”.29
A living high priest
Hebrews adds a consequence that is easy to miss. Old covenant priests died and had to be replaced. Christ does not: “But he, because he lives forever, has his priesthood unchangeable. Therefore he is also able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him, seeing that he lives forever to make intercession for them.”30 Salvation is not only something Christ did once; it is something he continues to do as the living mediator. Here the resurrection leads into the Ascension, which Christians confess in the Creed when they say he “ascended into heaven, and sits at the Right Hand of the Father.”31
The renewal of creation
Paul extends the hope beyond human beings. Creation itself, he says, waits “in hope that the creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage of decay into the liberty of the glory of the children of God.”32 If the firstfruits are a resurrected human body, the harvest is a renewed world. This is why Christian hope is described in terms of a new creation rather than an escape from the old one, and why the site's article Why Is Salvation More Than Just ‘Going to Heaven’? treats the resurrection as central to what salvation is.
What we can say confidently
The New Testament explicitly ties the resurrection to salvation: Christ was “raised for our justification”, without his resurrection believers would be “still in your sins”, and he is the “first fruits” of the resurrection of the dead. The early Christian writers quoted here read these texts as teaching that Christ's resurrection is the beginning of the general resurrection, the defeat of death, and the pledge of bodily transformation for believers. The creeds confess the resurrection of Christ and, for believers, the resurrection of the dead. Belief in a bodily, transformed resurrection is shared by Catholic, Orthodox and historic Protestant Christianity.
What remains disputed
How exactly the resurrection relates to justification. Interpreters of Romans 4:25 differ over whether the verse describes two aspects of one saving act or assigns distinct effects to the death and the resurrection.
The nature of the risen body. Christians agree it is continuous with the present body and transformed. How to describe the continuity, and what spiritual body implies, is discussed in the linked article.
The state of the dead before the resurrection. Traditions describe the time between death and the final resurrection differently; see What Happens to the Soul After Death?
The scope of the renewal of creation. How Romans 8 should be understood in relation to the physical universe is read with different degrees of literalness.
Notes
- Romans 4:25. Scripture is quoted from the World English Bible (public domain). ↩
- 1 Corinthians 15:17. ↩
- Mark 14:61–64. ↩
- Galatians 3:13, quoting Deuteronomy 21:23. ↩
- Romans 1:3–4. ↩
- Philippians 2:8–9. ↩
- 1 Corinthians 15:20. ↩
- 1 Corinthians 15:22–23. ↩
- Colossians 1:18. ↩
- Athanasius, On the Incarnation 20.2, trans. Archibald Robertson, NPNF 2nd ser. 4 (1892), newadvent.org/fathers/2802.htm. ↩
- Cyril of Alexandria, Twelve Anathemas, 12, trans. Henry Percival, NPNF 2nd ser. 14 (1900), newadvent.org/fathers/3810.htm. ↩
- 1 Corinthians 15:26. ↩
- Hebrews 2:14–15. ↩
- Acts 2:24. ↩
- Athanasius, On the Incarnation 8.4. ↩
- Irenaeus, Against Heresies V.21.1, trans. Alexander Roberts and William Rambaut, ANF 1 (1885), newadvent.org/fathers/0103521.htm. ↩
- 1 Corinthians 15:54–55. ↩
- Revelation 1:18. ↩
- Ignatius of Antioch, To the Smyrnaeans 3 (shorter recension), trans. Roberts and Donaldson, ANF 1, newadvent.org/fathers/0109.htm. ↩
- Luke 24:39. ↩
- John 20:27. ↩
- 1 Corinthians 15:42–44. ↩
- Philippians 3:21. ↩
- Romans 8:11. ↩
- Romans 8:23. ↩
- Romans 6:4–5. ↩
- Ephesians 2:5–6. ↩
- 1 Peter 1:3. ↩
- Irenaeus, Against Heresies V.1.1, newadvent.org/fathers/0103501.htm. ↩
- Hebrews 7:24–25. ↩
- Creed of Constantinople (381), trans. Percival, newadvent.org/fathers/3808.htm. ↩
- Romans 8:20–21. ↩
Bibliography
Scripture
- World English Bible. Public domain.
Early Christian writers and creeds
- Athanasius. On the Incarnation of the Word. Translated by Archibald Robertson. NPNF, 2nd series, vol. 4. 1892.
- Cyril of Alexandria. Twelve Anathemas against Nestorius. Translated by Henry Percival. NPNF, 2nd series, vol. 14. 1900.
- Ignatius of Antioch. To the Smyrnaeans. ANF, vol. 1. 1885.
- Irenaeus of Lyons. Against Heresies. ANF, vol. 1. 1885.
- Creed of Constantinople (381). Translated by Henry Percival. NPNF, 2nd series, vol. 14. 1900.
Editorial fact-check ledger
| Claim | Source checked | Confidence |
|---|---|---|
| All Scripture and patristic quotations | World English Bible text (bible-api.com); patristic pages in the notes; verified bank | Very high (verbatim) |
| Firstfruits were the first part of the harvest offered to God | Old Testament background (e.g. Leviticus 23), general description | High |
| Interpreters read Romans 4:25 in more than one way | General state of interpretation; no commentator quoted | High; presented as an open question |
| Belief in bodily resurrection is shared by Catholic, Orthodox and historic Protestant Christianity | The creeds' confession of the resurrection of the dead | High |
| Spiritual body in 1 Corinthians 15 does not mean immaterial | Site article on 1 Corinthians 15; interpretation widely held | Interpretation; see the linked article for the argument |