WHY DID GOD RAISE JESUS FROM DEATH?

BY IAIN GILL. A series of short articles about Jesus’ resurrection BY IAIN GILL

A PRAYER OF THANKSGIVING FOR THE RESURRECTION

Heavenly Father, we bow before you and reflect, in the spirit of thanksgiving and praise, on that great fact of history, the rising from the dead of the Lord Jesus.

We give thanks for Jesus, risen and exalted. Lift our eyes, we pray, high into the heavens, to the One who sits on the Throne of God.

We thank you for the Lord’s Day, for that day in every week in which we are reminded of the resurrection, a day when we rejoice and celebrate that Jesus is Lord. On that day, with believers throughout the world and throughout the gospel age, we can say, ‘The Lord is risen; he is risen indeed!’

We thank you that in the resurrection you declare so clearly that Jesus’ incarnation, his becoming a human as we are, was not just for the years of his humiliation. The Son of God is the Son of Mary for all eternity.

The resurrection of Jesus authenticates the Bible’s claims about Jesus’ death, about God’s call for all men to repent, and about eternal life that is offered to us. We thank you for the Gospel!

We thank you that the resurrection was a creative act of the triune God that surpassed even the creation of the world. In the resurrection body of Jesus we see your greatest creative work.

We thank you that Jesus’ resurrection was the first-fruits of a great harvest in which we will be part. We thank you for the hope that this gives us: that if we die in Jesus, then we will be raised from death to newness of life with a body like the body which Jesus has. And so we look to a future beyond the grave, for Jesus has defeated sin and sickness and death.

We worship and adore our risen Saviour; we praise him and we remember that he who is the Friend who sticks closer than a brother is also the one to whom you have given all power on heaven and on earth. And so we tremble, but in faith come boldly to the throne of grace.

We thank you that when our great high priest entered into heaven once for all, having made eternal sacrifice for sin, he fulfilled the type of the Old Testament high priest entering the Holy of Holies bearing the symbol of life, the shed blood of the sacrificed beast. Jesus entered heaven bearing his newly created body, the epitome of Life, the radiance of the glory of God, the exalted, glorious priest after the order of Melchizedek.

We thank you too for the motivation for mission that flows from the resurrection. The resurrected Jesus gave the Great Commission. And it was the resurrected Jesus who fulfilled his promise and, having returned to heaven, asked his father to send the Holy Spirit, who came at Pentecost. We have a unique Gospel, a Gospel of life and promise. There is no other name by which we can be saved but the name of Jesus, our risen Saviour, who himself declared, ‘I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live…’

And so we give thanks, in wonder and praise, for the great fact of the resurrection.

The Lord is risen, he is risen indeed — glory to his name.

Amen •