Day 3: Biblical Creeds: Death and Resurrection 

It is the resurrection that makes or breaks Christianity. If the Resurrection did not happen, well…as Paul puts it in his first letter to the Corinthians in chapter 15, if the Resurrection didn’t happen-if it were a false doctrine-then we are wrong and so much to be pitied. For not only would we be fools, but we would be going against God and damning ourselves with a false belief. Luckily, in the same chapter Paul lays out WHY we know this to be a true and factual event.

Jesus was Killed, Buried and Resurrected: Paul outlines this as a whole statement in I Corinthians 15:3-5: ‘…that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised up on the third day according to the scriptures…’

So Paul, in his usual method of pointing backwards to prove his beliefs, looks to the Old Testament-the Holy Scripture for the Hebrews and the foundation the early Christians needed to put it all together, that the Messiah had come. Psalm 22 is one most often pointed to as a future prophetic type of the death of the Christ. But if looked at as a whole it also ends with the promise of the life to come-of the Resurrection. Isaiah 53 10-11 tells of it as well, making plain the death and hinting of the resurrection. Which HAD to occur, else the promise God had made in 2 Samuel 7:12-13 would be null and void-a lie. And we know from scripture God cannot lie. And the prophesy of the ‘resurrected Saints’ that Daniel gives in 12:2-3 also is dependent on a resurrected Messiah.

Jonah is a foreshadow of the resurrection, and Daniel and Hosea hints at not only the end time tribulation but the return of the Jews to the Messiah they had rejected, one that lives again. Even as far back as Genesis 3 the promise is given of death being defeated.

Scripture reading for today:

Romans 4:23-25
But it was not written for the sake of him alone that it was credited to him, but also for the sake of us to whom it is going to be credited, to those who believe in the one who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead, who was handed over on account of our trespasses, and was raised up in the interest of our justification.

Luke 24:45-47
Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, and said to them, “Thus it is written that the Christ would suffer and would rise from the dead on the third day, and repentance and the forgiveness of sins would be proclaimed in his name to all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem.

Prayer: