This sermon is part of a series in which John Arndt preaches on all of the Ten Commandments, every line of the Apostles Creed, and every petition of the Lord’s Prayer.1
Peter says in his first epistle, chapter 1: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His abundant mercy has begotten us again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled and that does not fade away, reserved in heaven for you, who are kept by the power of God through faith for salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.” In this beautiful quote the Holy Apostle Peter highly extols the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ from the dead because of the great benefit we receive from it.
First, he says: We are thereby born again, that is, brought back to life from death in Christ. St. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15: “For if Christ were not risen, we would still be in our sins,” and therefore still in eternal death. Thus, were any to fall asleep in or with Christ, he would be lost. But now that Christ is risen, we who believe are all made alive in Him, we are all born anew, we are all snatched out of death, and in Christ we have all become partakers of life.
Secondly, St. Peter says: “We are born anew through the resurrection of Christ unto a living hope.” If Christ were not risen, then we would, for all eternity, have no hope of life. Rather our hope would be a dead hope like that of all unbelievers who have nothing to hope for after death other than an eternal death—indeed not a different, let alone a better, life.
In the third place, he says that we are born again through the resurrection of Jesus Christ to a living hope of an inheritance incorruptible, undefiled, and unfading, reserved for us in heaven. For if Christ were not risen, He could not have placed us in an eternal inheritance, because it is in Christ that we are given our eternal inheritance. Now if Christ would have remained dead, so, too, would our hope. Our eternal inheritance would be lost. But now that He is risen, and lives eternally, and has conquered, and has inherited all things, and since God has made Him heir over all things, thus will He now establish all the faithful as fellow heirs. As St. Paul says in Romans 8: “Since we are then children, we are also heirs, namely heirs of God, and fellow heirs with our Lord Jesus Christ.” Behold, this is the living hope of all the faithful. Since our inheritance is a living, eternal, incorruptible, undefiled, and unfading inheritance, it therefore produces a living hope. But those who put their trust in what is temporal have an empty, dead hope, which dies and decays along with the temporal.
We now want to treat this Article in the following three questions.
The First Question
What do you believe and confess concerning this Article when you say, “Resurrection of the dead”?
I sincerely believe in my heart and confess with my mouth that the eternal Son of God, Jesus Christ my Lord and Savior, after He truly had died on the cross and departed and lay dead until the third day, and after He had kept His Sabbath day of rest in the grave, came alive again through His own almighty, divine power and authority. On the third day He rose from the dead, because it was impossible that He could be held down by death. For His holy humanity was united with the divine nature, and He Himself was also clean and without any sin, death having no authority over Him on account of His sins. Therefore, in His resurrection He proved Himself a Lord, a Conqueror of sin and death, and our Prince of Victory, who through His great, triumphant resurrection saved us from sin and death. In the place of sin, He gives everlasting righteousness. In the place of death, He gives everlasting life. Upon His victory He distributes these gifts, bounties, and everlasting goods to all believers, as St. Paul says to the Romans in chapter 4: “Christ was handed over for our sins and rose again for our righteousness.” As also the prophets prophesied, such as Isaiah in chapter 25: “The LORD will swallow up death eternally.” And in chapter 53: “When He has given up His life as a guilt offering, thus shall He have seed and His days be multiplied: He is torn from fear and judgment; who shall speak of His generation?” Also Psalms 16 and 18: “I will not die, but live and proclaim the works of the LORD.”2 Which mighty work of His joyful resurrection is also prefigured3 by the Prophet Jonah, by Daniel in the lions’ den, and by Samson, whom the Philistines captured and detained in their stout city. But Samson slept until midnight, and then he got up and tore off the posts and nails of the gates and carried them off. Likewise has Christ in His resurrection vanquished the power and authority of death through his divine omnipotence, as St. Paul says: “Christ has taken away the power of death, and has brought immortality to light.”
In this confession are found the reasons for the resurrection: because Christ is almighty God, because He is without sin, and because He has paid for sin in full. Second, the prophecies of the Prophets. Third, the power of His resurrection.
The Second Question
But how did Christ rise?
The historical accounts of the Lord’s resurrection as taught by the four evangelists, which we always hear read during the joyful Eastertide, are sufficient. It is, therefore, unnecessary to explain further, so long as we take for granted that He is risen.
First: Christ rose majestically, for there was an earthquake. An angel also soared down from heaven and removed the stone, opening the grave after the Lord’s resurrection. His countenance shone bright as lightning. The guards were so terrified that they became like dead men.
Second: Christ rose powerfully and authoritatively of Himself, through His own divine omnipotence, power, and authority. John 10: “I have power to lay down my life and to take it again.” John 5: “The Son has life in Himself.” John 11: “I am the resurrection and the life.” But then St. Paul says: “He was resurrected by the glory of the Father.” And St. Peter in Acts 2 and 10: “God raised Him from the dead and loosed the pains of death.” And again St. Paul says in Romans 8 that the Spirit of God quickened Him: “But if the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by His Spirit that dwells in you.” But none of this contradicts the fact that Christ was quickened through His own omnipotence. After all, there is one united Divinity: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and these three persons are one united substance with equal authority. Therefore, since the divinity of the Father is not separate from the divinity of the Son, and the divinity of the Holy Spirit is one substance with the Father and the Son, it all amounts to the same statement when the Holy Scriptures say that Christ was quickened of Himself, or that the Father resurrected Him, or the Holy Spirit, because these three remain one God, and one united divine substance.
Third: Christ rose most assuredly, with angelic testimony. For how kindly the Angels spoke with the women at the grave, showing them the place where the Lord had lain, reminding them of what the Lord had spoken to them previously concerning His resurrection, as the accounts give.
Fourth: Christ’s resurrection is lovely and comforting. How many times He Himself appears on Easter morning! How glorious an Easter sermon He preaches! John 20: “Go forth and tell my brethren, ‘I ascend to my Father and to your Father, to my God and to your God.’”
The Third Question
What benefit, fruit, and comfort do we get from this article?
First: Since Christ is truly risen, it is thus an infallible testimony that all sin is paid for in full. For if sin had not been obliterated through the death of Christ, neither would death have let go of Christ, because death is sin’s most precious reward. Christ was our guarantor and died for this purpose. He was cast into the debtors’ prison, from whence He would not have been freed had the debt not been paid in full. But now that Christ is risen and death is not able to retain Him, thus must the cause of death, namely sin, also be abolished. Therefore no sin of man remains that was not paid in full, because Christ is risen: “For the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all” (Is. 53). Hence, St. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15: “If Christ is not risen, you are still in your sins.” Because wherever sin has not been completely taken away, there death still rules.
Second: The other benefit and comfort is our righteousness. For just as Christ died for our sin, He also is risen for our righteousness. That is to say, His resurrection is an immense attestation of our righteousness, because ultimately He rose that we might be made partakers of the righteousness that He purchased for us with His death. For even though our sins were all destroyed by His death, still the fruit of the forgiveness of sins and the absolution from sins depend on the resurrection. If the resurrection would not have occurred, our salvation would be incomplete, nay, absolutely nothing at all. But just as God the Father truly laid our sins upon Christ that He might through His death atone and make payment for them, so, too, has He proved that He absolved Christ and counted Him free from our sin by raising Christ from the dead. Thus, He also has freed us in Christ. For Christ’s resurrection is not only a powerful testimony of our righteousness, but an actual absolution and acquittal from all of our sins. For this reason St. Paul says that Christ’s resurrection is our righteousness and that on account of Christ’s resurrection, we are no longer in our sins. Christ is risen as a righteous man,4 but not for Himself. Rather, it was to make us righteous, to impart to us His righteousness. So God gave Him for our righteousness and sanctification.
Third: The third fruit is the defeat of death (Hos. 13). “Death is swallowed up in victory,” etc. (1 Cor. 15). The victory is ours. By Christ, in Christ, with Christ, we defeat death. Christ defeats death in us. John 8: “Amen, amen, I say unto you, whoever keeps my Word, he will never taste death.” John 11: “I am the resurrection and the life, etc.”
Fourth: The fourth benefit is that we have been awakened by the power of Christ’s resurrection to a new life, and that Christ now lives in us. For our justification always has with it the new birth and quickening of the Spirit, or of the new man, which all believers obtain from Christ through the power of His resurrection. Therefore, Christ who lives forever is our life. Yes, our new life is now and always shall be lived through faith with a fresh vitality, because we are spiritually risen to a new life in Christ through His resurrection. Through this resurrection, we truly give up and forfeit ourselves to God. Christ is our head. From Him, as His members, we must have a new spiritual life. As our King, He makes His residence in our hearts, therefore He should also live in us, rule, triumph, and reign in us. Thus, since the new life must begin in us, the Old Adam must be destroyed, as St. Paul says in Romans 6: “Our old man is crucified with Him, that we should no longer be slaves of sin.” And again, we should spiritually rise with Christ and “walk in the newness of life.” 2 Corinthians 4: “We are always delivered to death, that the life of Jesus may be manifested in our mortal flesh.” Galatians 2: “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.” 2 Corinthians 5: “If One died for all, then all died; that those who live should live no longer for themselves, but for Him who died for them and rose again.” Romans 6: “Reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Ephesians 2: “God raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.” Revelation 165: “Blessed is he who has part in the first resurrection.” Bernard: “illi vivas, qui ut semper viveres, semel pro te mortuus est,” that is, “to Him you shall live, who once died for you, that you might live forever.”
Fifth: The fifth benefit and comfort is the joyful resurrection of our bodies on the Last Day, which is so gloriously described by St. Paul in 1 Corinthians 15: “For since by man came death, by Man also came the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ all shall be made alive.” Thus, Christ’s resurrection is an actual reason for our own resurrection. John 11: “I am the resurrection, etc.” A second reason for our resurrection is Christ’s triumph over death. 2 Timothy 1: “Christ has taken away the power of death.” A third reason is that since all believers are members of Christ, the Lord will not leave them in death. The fourth reason is the redemption of both bodies and souls from death. Job 19: “I know that my Redeemer lives, etc.” The fifth reason is the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, as St. Paul says in Romans 8: “God will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you.” Isaiah 26: “Your dead shall live; together with my dead body they shall arise. Awake and sing, you who dwell in dust; For your dew is like the dew of the green fields.” In other words, the Holy Spirit will make our rotting bones to be as verdant as the dew upon the earth, like when Ezekiel 37 speaks of the wind that breathed upon the dead, dry bones. The sixth reason is the Kingdom and inheritance of Christ, which He did not prepare for the dead, nor for anyone less than man. The seventh reason is because we are blessed and drenched in Christ’s quickening flesh and blood unto life everlasting. Therefore we should not fear death. Christ has taken away its power and turned it into a slumber. Through His resurrection He has snatched us, along with Himself, away from death forever, and translated us into an eternal life.
1 Translated from Außlegung Deß gantzen Psalters Davids, Deß Königlichen Propheten by Johann Arndt, Lüneburg, 1710.
2 Actually Psalm 118:17.
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4 Gerechter
5 Actually Revelation 20.
