“God raised Him up again, putting an end to the agony of death, since it was impossible for Him to be held in its power” (Acts 2:24).
Sinful man condemned Jesus to death. God reversed the lower court’s declaration by handing down a verdict unseating man’s condemnatory decree. God’s ruling was that there would “be no end to the increase of His government or of peace” (Isa. 9:7). God effectuated His pronouncement by raising Jesus from the dead thereby confirming Jesus’ position in the annals of human history, in the archives of Christian heroes and in the chronicles of transformed lives (Heb. 11).
Jesus experienced a death that no Christian shall ever suffer because He encountered death without God (Mk. 15:34). In addition, He died because of the sins of all Christians rather than for His own sins (because He was without sin!). Man intends to make sin his servant – for sin to minister to his gratification – but sin only serves to kill. Sin seeks man and expects him to succumb because the pattern of his life has been to acquiesce to sin’s dreadful offerings.
Death is an agony because it is not natural to man in his innocency. Man was not designed to die, but man chose to die when he chose to sin (Gen. 2:17). God put an end to the agony of death for His precious ones by resurrecting Jesus from the dead. If Jesus was only a man He could not have died for you. And, if He was only God, He could not have died for you – He had to be thoroughly both. Because Jesus was the quintessential God-man (Theanthropos), it was impossible for death to hold Him. The reason the devil never wants you to discover truth underlying Jesus’ death and resurrection is because through death He did “render powerless him who had the power of death, that is, the devil” (Heb. 2:14).
Jesus could not be held in the power of death because He had never yielded Himself to the slightest sin. When His eternal labor of paying for the sins of God’s people had been fulfilled, He could declare, “It is finished!” (Jn. 19:30). He paid the sin-debt of God’s beloved in full thereby satisfying God holy Law. Since He was your high priest “forever according to the order of Melchizedek,” death had no authority over Him (Heb. 5:6).
Death was to Christ as the seven fresh cords were to Samson (Judg. 16:9). The advantage for those “in Christ Jesus” is that you too shall enjoy an eternal resurrection from the dead (Eph. 1:1-14). Jesus is the first fruit of those in Christ Jesus, “for He must reign until He has put all His enemies under His feet. The last enemy that will be abolished is death” (I Cor. 15:25f.).
When you receive the Victim of your sin, you have received the victory over death. Thomas Watson said, “We are more sure to arise out of our graves than out of our beds.” You need not be a casualty of sin. You can be more than a conqueror in Christ Jesus. It is an eternal truth that Christ rose from the dead to save those whose names are written in the Lamb’s book of life. Is your name carved in His book?
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