Before sunrise over Jerusalem, the world still looked like the kind of place where graves keep what they take.
A stone lay across the mouth of a borrowed tomb. The air still held the chill of night. Jesus of Nazareth, who had opened blind eyes and called the dead from their graves, now lay in one Himself. His friends were scattered. His mother had watched Him die. The women came carrying spices, because death has a smell and love still wants something to do with its hands.
That is the world as we know it. Hospital rooms. Funeral clothes. Dirt striking a coffin lid. An empty chair.
Then God entered the tomb.
When Paul wrote to the Romans from Corinth around A.D. 57, he sent them the gospel in full. Throughout that letter, the resurrection stands in the center like fire.
God has acted in history. Jesus Christ, crucified and buried, rose again.
Romans shows us first that the resurrection was the act of the triune God. The Father raised the Son. “If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved” (Romans 10:9). The Son rose in the power of His own person. “For to this end Christ both died, and rose, and revived” (Romans 14:9). The Spirit also worked in that grave. “If the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you…” (Romans 8:11).
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit acted there together. Heaven reached into a Judean grave and changed the history of the world.
The resurrection also made plain who Jesus is. Men saw His humanity in broad daylight. They saw the weariness in His body and the tears on His face. His Godhead was hidden from most of them.
Yet after the resurrection, the veil was pulled back. Paul says Christ was “declared to be the Son of God with power… by the resurrection from the dead” (Romans 1:4). The resurrection did not create His identity. It announced it. The man who walked out of that tomb was, and is, the Son of God.
That truth still comes home to sinners the same way. A man begins with doubt. A woman keeps Jesus at a polite distance. Then Scripture, conscience, and the witness of the empty tomb press in until the thing becomes unavoidable. He is alive. He is Lord. The heart bows. Thomas finds his voice: “My Lord and my God” (John 20:28).
Romans presses farther. A belief in that resurrection is bound up with saving faith itself. “If thou shalt… believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved” (Romans 10:9).
Saving faith is not admiration for Jesus or a warm feeling stirred by Easter music. It is the glad surrender of a sinner to a living Christ. The gospel does not ask us to honor a noble dead man. It commands us to trust a risen Savior who is alive to save.
This is where the resurrection enters the trembling conscience. Paul writes of Christ, “Who was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification” (Romans 4:25). The resurrection is God’s public declaration that the work of Calvary has been accepted in full. The life Christ lived was spotless. The death Christ died was enough.
Had there been one sin in Him, one unpaid charge still standing, the tomb would still be sealed. But the stone was rolled away, and Christ came out into the morning light because the Father had accepted the Son’s obedience and sacrifice.
Many Christians know what it is to sit still for fifteen seconds and feel old sins come back with sharp teeth. A cruel word said years ago or a hidden act no one else knows. Perhaps its coldness in prayer or cowardice when faithfulness was costly. Shame can flood a room faster than water.
Then Romans 8 breaks in: “Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God’s elect? It is God that justifieth. Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us” (Romans 8:33-34). The risen Christ at the Father’s right hand is the answer to every accusation against His people. The scars of Jesus are heaven’s reply to hell’s charges. As long as He lives there, the believer’s acquittal stands.
The resurrection also secures our sanctification. Paul says, “Like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life” (Romans 6:4). The slave under a cruel master is freed when he dies, then raised to serve a new king.
That is Paul’s doctrine of union with Christ in plain clothes. When Christ died, His people died with Him. When Christ rose, His people rose with Him. The old master called sin still shouts, yet it has lost its rights. The Christian may say no, because in Christ he belongs to another Lord now.
That matters on an ordinary Tuesday as much as on Easter Sunday. When bitterness starts building its nest or when envy burns. When self-pity curls around the heart. The resurrection means sin is no longer king. Christ is. “For to this end Christ both died, and rose, and revived, that he might be Lord both of the dead and living” (Romans 14:9). Holiness grows in resurrection soil.
Then Paul lifts our eyes to the far horizon. “If the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you… he… shall also quicken your mortal bodies” (Romans 8:11). Mortal bodies. The body that enters the grave under the sentence of Adam will not stay there forever if it belongs to Christ. The same Spirit who raised Jesus will raise His people too.
There is coming a morning when cemeteries will give back their dead. The dirt will release what it borrowed. Bodies lowered in weakness will rise in power. The saints who died whispering Christ’s name will stand and breathe clean air in a remade world. Every grave of a believer is on borrowed ground.
This is why the resurrection must never be reduced to a holiday feeling or a line in a creed. It is the center of the gospel. It tells us who Jesus is. It is part of saving faith. It secures our justification before God, our sanctification in battle, and our glorification at the last day. Without it, there is no gospel. With it, there is news for sinners, peace for the conscience, strength for the fight, and hope for the grave.
Christ is risen from the dead.
For more devotions click here.
Sign up for my email list here.
For a list of other essential Christian reads click here.
Enjoying this content? If you’d like to support my work and help me create more Bible-centered resources like this devotion, consider buying me a coffee! Your support means the world and helps keep this ministry going.
