by Brett Manero
It is several days past Easter Sunday, but we are still in the octave of Easter, and indeed, the Easter season will last for many more weeks. This is the season of Resurrection, of life, of hope for eternal life. Jesus Christ has done it: He has conquered death in His glorious Resurrection. Alleluja.
The significance of the Resurrection can never be underestimated. Of all of the events in the human history, the Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth is among the most important, the most history-altering. For the first time (and as yet so far), a man has truly resurrected. This is something different from the rising of someone like Lazarus, whom the Gospel of John tells us was risen by Jesus after being dead for four days. Lazarus eventually grew sick again and died again. With the Resurrection of Christ, death no longer has a say, and the prophecy of Isaiah comes true: “He will swallow up death forever” (Isaiah 25:8).
The Resurrection is an entirely new laws of physics, a new way of being. Jesus can never physically suffer again, and He most certainly can never die again. His body has overcome physics and reality as we know it, and brought about something entirely new.
St. Paul – who himself was converted by the risen Jesus – speaks of the significance of the Resurrection:
Now if Christ is preached as raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised; if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified of God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised. If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all men most to be pitied.
But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep (1 Corinthians 15:12-20).
There is a common claim that “all religions or the same,” or, that “all religions lead to the same place.” But this is a flawed argument. Christianity is altogether distinct from other religions for so many reasons, one of them being the Resurrection. We believe that God became man, that He died upon the Cross, and the He resurrected, and can never die again. No other religion makes such a bold claim.
And because He has resurrected, He do such glorious things as appearing to 500 people at the same time (1 Corinthians 15:5). And He shall never die again. And because He is the first fruits of the Resurrection, we shall all rise again too one day, and likewise, if we persevere to the end, we likewise shall never die again.
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