Final Comments
In the beginning of this book I asked these questions:
Why do you think Jesus didn’t raise Himself from the dead?
Why do you think it is important to understand why He didn’t do it Himself?
Let me answer them now…
You first need to understand what the resurrection means. The resurrection indicated that Jesus, who became a man just like His brethren, lived a perfect life – a life without a single sin throughout His entire life. By resurrecting Jesus from the dead God was testifying that He agreed that Jesus was sinless while in human flesh. If Jesus had sinned even once God would not have raised Him from the dead.
If Jesus was not sinless then the payment for our sins was not made and we are not saved. Therefore, without the resurrection we are still in our sins.
Therefore, if Jesus raised Himself then the testimony is invalid because it is self-promoting. It is like a man claiming that he has found a cure for cancer. His testimony is suspect unless others affirm his testimony. That is why the Father, and not Jesus Himself, had to raise Jesus from the dead.
When we realize that Jesus received testimony from God that He was sinless we truly understand the greatness of Jesus. We probably sin every day even though we sometimes try very hard to not sin. But here was a man, just like His brethren, who lived every day of 33.5 years without sin, conscious or unconscious sin. That has to be the greatest human accomplishment ever.
And when we realize that the same Holy Spirit that dwelt in Jesus now also dwells in us then we rejoice that we too, like Paul, can press on to the perfection that Jesus attained.
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