Request your free, three-month trial to Tabletalk magazine. You’ll receive the print issue monthly and gain immediate digital access to decades of archives. This trial is risk-free. No credit card required.
Try Tabletalk NowAlready receive Tabletalk magazine every month?
Verify your email address to gain unlimited access.
Romans 8:11
“If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you.”
Who raised Jesus from the dead, the Father, the Son, or the Holy Spirit? By this point in our study of the external (ad extra) works of God, we know that the answer must be that the Father, the Son, and the Spirit all raised Jesus from the dead. Resurrection, after all, requires an exercise of divine power in creation, and since the power—and every other divine attribute—of each person of the Trinity is identical, then the work of resurrecting Jesus is the same work performed by all three Trinitarian persons.
That all three persons raised Jesus from the dead is a theological conclusion from the principle that when God acts outside Himself in creation, the three persons work inseparably. Yet this principle of inseparable operations is also taught explicitly in Scripture. With respect to the resurrection of our Lord, Paul says in Romans 10:9 that God raised Jesus from the dead. In that passage, the Apostle uses the word God for the Father, as is Paul’s common practice, so we see that the Father resurrected Jesus. In John 10:17–18, we see that Jesus has the authority to lay down His life and take it up again, thereby showing us that the Son performs the work of resurrection. The Holy Spirit also raised Jesus from the dead, for in the resurrection Christ “was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead” (Rom. 1:4). John Calvin comments on today’s passage, “No doubt Christ arose through his own power; but as he is wont to attribute to the Father whatever Divine power he possesses, so the Apostle has not improperly transferred to the Father what was especially done by Christ, as the peculiar work of divinity.”
As with the other external works of God, the resurrection of the body of Jesus comes from the Father, through the Son, by the Holy Spirit. There is an order and a distinction that shows forth the persons: the Father is the principal subject of the action of raising the Son; the Son is the subject through whom the Father works, and the object of His resurrection in His humanity; the Holy Spirit is the subject who crowns the work as He is given by the Father and the Son to consummate the Son’s resurrected life. So it was in the firstfruits of redemption seen in our Lord’s resurrection, and so it will be in the Trinity’s work of consummating salvation when the Father through the Son and by the Holy Spirit brings the new heaven and earth (Rom. 8:9–23; 1 Cor. 15:20–23).
Coram Deo Living before the face of God
Our resurrection from the dead will be accomplished by the very same power and inseparable work of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead. Jesus was raised, never to die again, and therefore so will we be raised to life incorruptible on the last day. The common working of the three persons of the Trinity in raising both Jesus and, finally, us from the dead assures us that our salvation will be completed and that we will be preserved in glory forever.
For further study
- Ezekiel 37:1–14
- Hosea 6:2
- John 6:63
- 1 Peter 1:20–21
The bible in a year
- Numbers 20–22
- Mark 7