As a believer, you know the most important part of the story of Jesus Christ is His death, burial and resurrection. He was hunted down, nailed to a cross and left for dead. God already had sealed a promise in the fate of His Son, but the story has a miraculous ending. One that absolutely no one anticipated, making it all the more amazing. This month we have spent a great deal of time looking at a few of the miracles of Jesus. I purposefully saved this for last as it is the most tremendously glorious of them all, the crucifixion and resurrection of our Lord.
Jesus never sinned, He held the power of God in His hands, yet He fully allowed His Heavenly Father’s plan to unfold that led to His death on the cross. He was brutally mistreated, beaten, mocked, then His hands and feet taken and nails were driven through them on the cross.
Here is a timeline of what happened to Jesus according to Luke 23:44-24:49
About noon, darkness covered the land.
The curtain was torn in two.
Jesus cried out, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit!”
Jesus breathed His last.
People who saw this, finally believe He was the Christ.
His body was taken down from the cross, wrapped in linen and laid in a tomb.
Three days later, those planning to prepare His body with spices, found the stone rolled away from the tomb.
Jesus begins to appear to many.
When Jesus appears to His disciples, initially they are startled for obvious reasons, they witnessed His death. They did not believe He was real, they thought He was a spirit. Jesus says to them in Luke 24:38-39, “Why are you troubled, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself. Touch me, and see. For a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.”
Hop a few verses down.
Luke 24:46-47 says, “Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in His name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.”
Jesus had told them all along this would happen in vaguer terms and though they believed, they could never fully grasp the purity of their faith until the day of His resurrection.
Jesus was raised to life through the power of God Almighty. No earthly power or any other spiritual being could have accomplished what was done that very day. Jesus walked through physical death because He was made to be like us, flesh, but also so we could see what it was truly like to be made like Him in death, resurrected.
Like I mentioned in Part 3 of this series, “Miracles of Jesus,” those who come to the saving redemption of Christ Jesus, will still experience physical death just like those without it, but death will not be permanent. Once you are redeemed, death has no hold on you anymore than it has hold on Our Lord, Jesus. This was the most amazing miracle of all, bodily resurrection, the victory over death.
1 Corinthians 15:55 says, “Oh death, where is your victory? Oh death, where is your sting?”
Life in Christ means newness on earth and eternal joy after this life is over. You will be made new in the resurrection of your new body upon death, just like our Lord and that is something that will give us peace in a world of uncertainty.