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Romans 4:25
“[Jesus our Lord] was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification.”
Having considered the work of Christ as our High Priest in both His active obedience to keep God’s law and His passive obedience to suffer and die for our sins, we now turn to His resurrection. Our Savior continued to represent us when He rose again from the dead on the third day, and He continues to represent us before the Father to this day.
We see that Jesus represented us in His resurrection in texts such as Romans 4:25. Just as Christ “was delivered up for our trespasses” (died in our place to pay the penalty for sin), He was “raised for our justification” (resurrected in our place so that we could be declared righteous). There is a legal, representative dimension to the resurrection that allows God to pronounce us righteous in Christ and to forgive us our sins. To be sure, Jesus’ resurrection is more than that, for it guarantees our own final resurrection. Nevertheless, Christ’s resurrection is absolutely necessary for our justification, our being declared righteous in God’s heavenly courtroom.
How does this work? Recall that death is a penalty only for sinners (Gen. 2:17). No sin, no death. Jesus, of course, died on the cross even though He had no sin of His own. Nevertheless, His death was still on account of sin, for He was “made . . . sin” at Calvary (2 Cor. 5:21). That is, our sins were imputed to Jesus or put on His record before God’s justice. If that had not happened, Jesus could not have died because He had no sin of His own for which to be punished.
Yet because Jesus had no sin of His own, death had no final claim on Him. It was impossible for death to hold Him because He was perfectly righteous and because He fully paid the penalty for the sins that were imputed to Him when He propitiated the wrath of God (Acts 2:24; Rom. 3:21–26). It would have been unjust for God to keep Jesus in the grave for our sins when He completely satisfied God’s wrath against them. To do so would have been to demand a greater payment for sin than He had required.
So Jesus rose again for “our justification” (Rom. 4:25). His resurrection vindicated Him, demonstrating that He was personally sinless and that our debt was paid. Moreover, because Jesus is our Great High Priest who represents us before God, His resurrection is also our resurrection. We share in God’s verdict that Jesus is righteous pronounced when our Savior rose from the dead. United to Him by faith, we are likewise declared righteous.
Coram Deo Living before the face of God
The resurrection of Jesus is proof that God has accepted the payment for sin that our Savior made and therefore that we are declared righteous in His sight. It also assures us that we will one day be bodily resurrected ourselves. Death will not be able to keep us because in Christ we have been declared righteous. The resurrection of Jesus is good news indeed, so let us share it with the world.
For further study
- Psalm 26
- Isaiah 53:10
- 1 Corinthians 15:1–11
- 1 Timothy 3:16
The bible in a year
- Psalms 120–123
- 1 Corinthians 7:1–24