Death Will Not Prevail: How Jesus’s Resurrection Challenges Everything

This essay was first published at Easter in 2023. The present trouble of the world leaves many of us wrestling with a mix of anger and helplessness. It’s timely, then, to renew our understanding—to be shaken by the astonishing resurrection of Jesus, with all that it means for the world, and for those who follow the crucified and risen King.

Rev. Dr Murray Rae teaches theology at the University of Otago. This essay was composed while he was writing a new book, Resurrection and Renewal: Jesus and the Transformation of Creation (Baker Academic, 2024). In that book, Murray calls us to consider how the resurrection of Jesus from the dead transforms all reality, including Christian living and ethics, the nature of Christian community, and the promises of Christian hope. We recommend it! Here we invite you to enjoy a taste of this larger work, for your encouragement as in your work and homes and communities you pray and bear witness to God’s reconciling purpose—Ed.

A world turned upside down

“If Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation has been in vain and your faith has been in vain” (1 Corinthians 15:14). With these words, the apostle Paul emphatically affirms that the Christian gospel stands or falls with the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. Were Jesus not raised, then the grieving friends and disciples who had followed him around Galilee and on to Jerusalem where he was crucified at the hands of the religious and political authorities of the day would have no doubt retained their fond memories of Jesus’s companionship and continued to nurse their sorrow at his tragic demise. But Jesus himself, one imagines, would have largely been forgotten as human history continued on its way.

Because Jesus was raised, however, the world is not the same as it would otherwise have been. The whole course and very nature of human history have been radically transformed. Human life and all of history with it is not merely “one damn thing after another,” as Henry Ford is supposed to have once remarked. Instead, it is the terrain upon which God is drawing humanity—and indeed the whole creation—into reconciled communion with himself, overcoming thereby the deadly consequences of humanity’s efforts to determine its own course in defiance of the one who is the sole creator and sustainer of life. The proclamation that Jesus has been raised from death seems incredible—literally, unable to be believed! And yet, belief in the resurrection of Jesus lies at the very heart of Christian faith.

It is worth noting that the news of Jesus’s resurrection was initially greeted with scepticism even by Jesus’s disciples. They too were incredulous when Mary Magdalene, along with other women who had visited Jesus’s grave on that first Easter morning, rushed to tell the news that the tomb of Jesus was empty and that Jesus had been raised. According to Luke’s gospel, the women’s story seemed to the disciples to be “an idle tale” (Luke 24:11). It is sometimes said that the gospels were written by folks with a primitive worldview and that we enlightened people of the modern world can no longer believe such things. The gospels make clear, however, that it was no easier for Jesus’s friends to believe the claim that he had been raised than it is for us today. Then, as now, the claim that Jesus has been raised from death is astonishing. If it is true, then conventional ideas of the nature of reality stand in need of radical transformation.

That is indeed the case! The resurrection of Jesus calls into question our deeply entrenched convictions about the world. It invites us to think again about whether reality really does conform to our commonly held notions of what is and is not possible in this world. It calls forth a radical transformation of hearts and minds. Radical new conceptions of reality are not unheard of. Such was the case when Copernicus and then Galileo proposed—not without considerable resistance from the church and from the scientific community of the day—that the earth is not the centre of the universe around which the sun and all the other planets revolve as seemed obvious to common sense. Rather, the earth is itself in motion, hurtling around the sun at a rate of about thirty kilometres per second. Paradigm shifts of this nature, confounding common sense, are so startling and revolutionary that they take some getting used to. They typically encounter fierce resistance precisely because they require that we abandon some of our long-cherished beliefs.

That’s how it is with the Christian claim that Jesus has been raised from the dead. If it is true, then the nature of reality is very different from what we commonly suppose it to be. The difference comes about, so Christians believe, because God is involved in our world not, as is sometimes crudely suggested, by randomly dipping a finger into the world and reversing the laws of nature. Rather, God is involved in our world as the one who gives life, who sustains the world’s very existence, and whose purpose for all creation is that it should flourish and be brought to completion in loving communion with himself. The resurrection of Jesus ought thus to be understood not as a random intervention by God but as a dazzling glimpse in the midst of history of the final outcome of God’s creative intent. “The creature shall have life and have it abundantly” is a succinct statement of the Christian understanding of God’s purpose for the world. The resurrection therefore is, among other things, the decisive confirmation that God’s promise of life will not be defeated by humanity’s sinful determination to go its own way—it will not be defeated by brutality and violence; it will not even be defeated by death. The God who gives life has declared his ultimate purpose for the world by raising Jesus from the dead. Precisely because of this, it has been confirmed once and for all that the death-dealing ways of human beings have no future. That is the ground and content of Christian hope. God has overturned the human verdict that we should live in defiance of God’s good purposes for creation. He has answered the human clamour to crucify his beloved Son with forgiveness and new life.

Why believe?

These, of course, are claims of faith. They cannot be proven through any historical enquiry as has sometimes been attempted because they are concerned above all with a future reality: they are concerned with the ultimate realisation of God’s purposes. In the meantime, disbelief has evidence upon which it can base its claims. Evil does seem to triumph, suffering and pain appear to be an inevitable reality, and death often appears to have the last word. Why should anyone believe otherwise?

Christians have generally come to believe otherwise, first because they have found compelling the human life lived by Jesus himself, and second because they experience in their own lives the continuing presence of the risen Christ. There is a moment in the resurrection narrative of John’s gospel that provides, I think, a poignant disclosure of what it is that occasions belief for many Christians. Mary Magdalene had gone to Jesus’s tomb early on the first day of the week. She saw that the stone covering the entrance to the tomb had been rolled away. Rather than concluding, however, that Jesus had been raised, she supposes that someone has removed Jesus’s body from the tomb. That, of course, is the obvious conclusion to draw. In her distress, Mary runs to tell two of the disciples who then return with her to Jesus’s tomb. The two disciples enter the tomb to confirm that it is indeed empty. But Mary stays at the entrance and begins to weep. The disciples leave her, and Mary again stoops to look inside the empty tomb. Then, she sees two angels who ask her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” Mary says to them, “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.” Mary then turns around and sees Jesus standing beside her, but she does not recognise him—she mistakes him for a gardener. And then Jesus says to her, “Mary.” That’s the moment when everything changes for Mary. Jesus calls her by name, and she recognises the presence of her Lord. It is a moment like this, I suggest, that has prompted belief among generations of Christians ever since: a moment when we are called by name and so recognise that we are known and loved by the one in and through whom all things came to be and in whom all things will be brought to completion at the last. Such belief is not the outcome of some process of logical deduction. It is a moment of personal encounter when the truth shines forth for us like never before in the presence of the risen Lord.

In the midst of a world that often appears to be hell-bent on destruction and which is deeply disfigured by human greed, selfishness, and violence, Jesus presents us with a radically different conception of what human life ought to be. He presents us, so Christians believe, with human life as it is intended to be by God. It is a life characterised by compassion, self-sacrifice, forgiveness, and a profound trust in the goodness of God. The exemplary character of Jesus’s life notwithstanding, however, Christians testify that Jesus is not merely a past historical figure. They testify that Jesus encounters us still and calls us to follow him. He encounters us as the one who has been raised from death.

Talk of such encounters may be dismissed as merely subjective or delusional. But, as already noted with respect to the Copernican revolution, many a scientific breakthrough has been dismissed in the same way. It is only when we are prepared to let go of past certainties that a new way of seeing becomes possible and a new truth can come into view. The first disciples took some persuading that Jesus had been raised from the dead. They exhibited, perhaps rightly, a healthy scepticism to begin with. But, on encounter with the risen Jesus himself, they were enabled to see that their old view of the world was profoundly inadequate. The reality of resurrection couldn’t be accommodated within their old certainties, and so, confronted with the risen Jesus himself, their old certainties had to be abandoned. They discovered, as Christians continue to do today, that God’s purpose to give abundant life to his people is not defeated even by death. We should note here, in case there is any misunderstanding, that abundant life is not a reference to material goods. The so-called “prosperity gospel” typically proclaimed by pastors who accumulate great wealth for themselves bears no resemblance to the good news proclaimed by Jesus himself. The abundant life that Jesus speaks of is a life lived in deep communion with the Father, a life filled with the gifts and fruits of the Spirit, and a life lived in loving service of our fellow creatures. Put simply, it is the kind of life that Jesus lives.

Much ink has been devoted to the project of trying to prove that Jesus has been raised, usually by employing the tools of historical enquiry, but the results have never been conclusive. That inconclusivity does not mean, however, that the ink has been entirely wasted. Historical investigation of the circumstances surrounding the original proclamation that Jesus had been raised from the dead have yielded genuine insight into what the first followers appear to have meant by declaring that Jesus had been raised and, indeed, what difference it made to their own lives. Historical inquiry has also made clear that the Christian proclamation of Jesus’s resurrection cannot be simply dismissed as nonsense. Something happened that generated a movement that has been remarkable in its subsequent impact and extent. I remain convinced, however, that the recognition that Jesus has been raised depends, ultimately, not on the well-considered results of historical inquiry, valuable though they may otherwise be, but on encounter through the Spirit with the risen Lord himself. It is in consequence of such encounter, as Mary’s experience at the tomb and as the apostle Paul’s testimony make clear (e.g. 1 Corinthians 15:8–10; Galatians 1:11–17), that minds and hearts are converted to a new understanding of the world, an understanding that is founded upon and is shaped in its distinctive particulars by the resurrection itself.

What is more, it was no part of the New Testament writers’ purpose to offer proof that the resurrection had happened. Their purpose was simply to proclaim the good news that Jesus is risen, to explore how the world has changed in light of that fact, and, above all, to understand the call upon us to participate in the emerging reality of a world transformed. That is also, I suggest, the purpose of Christian witness today. Those who hear the proclamation that Jesus has been raised from the dead and confess that they too believe are then invited to learn and to practice the gestures of resurrection life.

Learning the gestures of resurrection life

What might those gestures be? Following the resurrection, when the first disciples of Jesus looked back upon the time they had spent with him and his ministry through the regions of Galilee and then on to Jerusalem, they began to see the resurrection as the decisive clue to what had been going on all along. They looked back and saw that Jesus was about the work of his Father, renewing creation, giving new life to the world, and releasing it from its bondage to sin and death. The signs of new life that emerged in the company of Jesus—the healing of the sick, the forgiveness of sin, the good news delivered to the poor and to the outcast—began to fit together now into a comprehensive vision of creation made new and of God’s purposes for the world being brought to fulfilment. The resurrection provided confirmation that the way of Jesus truly reveals what God has intended for the world and for human life from the beginning. Theologians often say that the resurrection is God’s vindication of Jesus. Against those who wanted to shut him down and rid the world of Jesus, against those who orchestrated his death, God vindicates Jesus. God vindicates his teaching, his proclamation of the kingdom, and his compassion for those cast aside by society. God vindicates Jesus’s critique of those who strain at a gnat and swallow a camel, and who see the world in cold, legalistic terms and show up with stones to hurl at those who have stumbled. God vindicates Jesus’s declaration of forgiveness for the sinner and his promise that the meek will inherit the earth. God vindicates Jesus’s command to put away the sword and his blessing of the peacemakers … and so on. In sum, God vindicates Jesus’s way of being human, and he also vindicates Jesus’s declaration that whoever has seen me has seen the Father.

What then does it mean to learn the gestures of resurrection life? At one level, that is a very easy question to answer. We need simply recall the signs of resurrection life that become evident through the course of Jesus’s ministry: the sick are healed, the hungry are fed, and the resources of creation—loaves and fish, for example—are shared equitably among all who have need while the surplus is gathered up for use another day; the ill-gotten gains of a wayward tax-collector are repaid fourfold, workers in a vineyard are paid at the end of the day enough to provide for their families, prodigal sons are welcomed home, and women weighed down by oppressive social conditions are given the dignity and the freedom they deserve. This is what resurrection life looks like. This is the nature of the divine economy established on the firm foundation of Jesus’s resurrection from the dead. This is the new reality in which we are called to share. We may put it simply in colloquial terms: the challenge of the gospel is to get with the programme. But here’s the rub: the cross comes first. Dying comes first. We are to die to the old order, an order that confuses abundant life with the accumulation of wealth, an order that gets things done in the world through violence and the exploitation of others, an order that lays creation to waste, and an order that seeks revenge and is oblivious to the divine economy of grace. That is the order to which we must die for it is an order that has no future; it is an order that is passing away. Only then may we truly share in God’s purposes for the world and live into the fullness of Christ’s new way of being.

To whom will we give our allegiance?

Although it is a relatively simple matter, following the New Testament itself to describe what the gestures of resurrection life look like, I do not wish to underestimate how difficult it is to practice these gestures. In the world as it is today, still bearing as it does the marks of fallenness, Christians frequently find themselves caught between two worlds. It is important and reassuring to note that the New Testament writers were themselves well aware of this tension. Paul’s confession in Romans 7 of the inner conflict he experiences between the law of God in which he delights and the pull within him towards evil is a familiar description of the problem. Matthew’s gospel also recognises the tension and develops it in narrative form throughout the gospel. Consider, for example, Matthew’s account of Jesus’s birth.

Matthew’s infancy narrative presents the reader with a stark contrast between two kings, one the imperial ruler of Judea and the other a baby born in Bethlehem and visited by magi from the East who wished to pay homage to the one who had been born “king of the Jews” (Matthew 2:2). The two kings represent two very different worlds and two vastly different conceptions of the good. The first king, Herod the Great as he was known, had become the king of Judea “through brutality and expeditious marriage into the Hasmonean family,” and he ruled with an iron fist. His loyalty to the Roman Empire did not endear him to his Judean subjects while his “distrust of possible rivals led to the construction of inaccessible fortress palaces […] and the murder of some of his own sons.”¹ This is the background we need to be aware of when we read in Matthew’s gospel:

In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, asking, “Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star at its rising and have come to pay him homage.” When King Herod heard this, he was frightened, and all Jerusalem with him; and calling together all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Messiah was to be born. They told him, “In Bethlehem of Judea ….” Then Herod secretly called for the wise men and learned from them the exact time when the star had appeared. Then he sent them to Bethlehem, saying, “Go and search diligently for the child; and when you have found him, bring me word so that I may also go and pay him homage.” (Matthew 2:1–5a, 7–8)

The chilling pretence of Herod’s words—“when you have found [the child] bring me word so that I may also go and pay him homage”—needs no further elaboration by Matthew. A king who would murder his own sons in order to suppress any threat of a rival is pitted against a child of lowly birth. Herod had wealth and power, and “all Jerusalem with him” (Matthew 2:3); the child had only his humble parents and their readiness to trust in the guidance of God (see Matthew 1:24; 2:14).

Matthew has the wise men make the decisive choice: to whom should they give their allegiance? Will they fulfil Herod’s command to tell him where the child lay (Matthew 2:8) or will they offer their gifts to the child and return home by another road (Matthew  2:11–12)?

Abundant evidence provided through the course of human history supports Matthew’s portrayal of the fear-filled brutality of tyrannical power and of a moral calculus that can justify the preservation of one’s own interests at terrible cost to others. The sad story continues in our own time. We are currently witnessing the brutal assertion of Herodic power in Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. The “special military operation” serves in Putin’s mind to uphold a particular moral order centred on Russian nationhood. But Russia is not alone in adhering to a moral framework that has fear, mistrust, and violence at its heart. The same distorted moral calculus is evident in the military budgets of many nations that far exceed their spending on humanitarian aid.²

Matthew’s portrayal of such power and the moral calculus that accompanies it is no incidental detail in his gospel. It is a consistent theme and a recurring point of conflict throughout his account of Jesus’s ministry. That conflict comes to a head in the drama of Jesus’s passion and resurrection. The defenders of the existing order gathered as a Council to bring Jesus to trial. Although they struggled to find compelling testimony against him, they eventually found him guilty of blasphemy. It is clear, however, that the trial was merely a search for a pretext “justifiable” in law to condemn the man whose teaching and practice had exposed the defects in the religious authorities’ own moral and theological framework. The political authorities, Pilate and Herod, were less interested in condemning Jesus.³ Pilate is portrayed in the gospels as a man faced with the same choice as the wise men in Matthew’s infancy narrative. It is the choice of allegiance to a regime of violence or to a new order inaugurated in and through the person of Jesus. Pilate hesitated and wondered (Matthew 27:14; Mark 15:5) but then capitulated to the crowd’s demand that the existing order and its regime of violence should be preserved. Having scourged Jesus, Pilate delivered him to be crucified (Matthew 27:26; Mark 15:15; Luke 23:25; John 19:16).

Pilate’s capitulation to the prevailing moral order and the consequent crucifixion of Jesus was presumed to have extinguished the alternative moral order proclaimed and enacted by Jesus. Humanity had spoken and had done its worst. Matthew puts the matter poignantly: “Then the people as a whole answered, ‘His blood be on us and on our children!’” (Matthew  27:23). The people’s voice had been sounded, but there was another word still to be heard. It was the divine word of resurrection and new life. The conflict between the two moral orders and between two kinds of kingly rule takes an astonishing turn. It turns out that victory belongs to the lamb. It is Jesus who is enthroned by God (See Revelation 17:14; compare Revelation 7:10). The existing order of violence and death will not prevail. It will not prevail because God has raised Jesus from the dead. Humanity’s choice of death and the moral frameworks that lead to and justify death have been decisively overturned.

Jesus’s resurrection from the dead, following upon the course of his whole ministry, introduces a conception of reality that unmasks the powers and principalities that hold sway in our world and that calls every one of us into question. It probes the depths of our own hearts and asks where our own allegiances lie. Jesus’s way of being, his obedience to the Father, his inauguration of a kingdom in which the poor hear good news, captives are released, the blind are enabled to see, and the oppressed are set free (Luke 4:18) constitutes a radically different ordering of the world, an order which, when taken up by the followers of Jesus in the early church, “turns the world upside down” (Acts 17:6).

That is still the call upon us. That is still the choice that confronts us through the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. To whom will we give our allegiance? It is a stark choice, and those who make it in favour of the risen one will need God’s help in order to be faithful to it. That is why the Christian life is a life that is grounded in prayer.

¹ I take these descriptions of Herod from Raymond E. Brown, An Introduction to the New Testament (New York: Doubleday, 1997), 58.

² In 2021, for instance, global military spending was in the order of US$2.1 trillion whereas global spending on humanitarian aid amounted to US$31.3 billion, a mere 1.4% of the world’s military budgets. The respective figures are taken from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures, and the Global Humanitarian Assistance Report published by Development Initiatives, https://devinit.org/resources/global-humanitarian-assistance-report-2022/volumes-of-humanitarian-and-wider-crisis-financing/

³ Herod the Great was no longer on the scene at the time of Jesus’s crucifixion but had been succeeded by Herod Antipas who had ordered the death of John the Baptist.