When most of us see a diamond, we immediately think oh, that’s a diamond, of course it’s valuable! But an appraiser is going to take it and literally look at the stone from every angle and they’ll tell you just how valuable that diamond is and why.
They’re not as popular now, but do you remember those pictures that at first look just a bit rough, like something’s a bit out of place? The closer you look, you realize it’s actually made up of thousands of smaller pictures. I don’t know how they do it, but all of those thousands of tiny pictures are arranged somehow to look like a larger image. The final product is certainly about the larger image, but it is also about more; it is about all of those thousands of other images. Similarly, we often think of certain things in the Bible only in particular ways, forgetting about the many facets that go into the larger truths.
We often think of Jesus’ resurrection only at Easter and even then, we often think in very limited terms. We think that Jesus rose from the dead, therefore Christianity is true or we think that Jesus rose from the dead, therefore there is life after death. The resurrection is certainly about these things but it is more. It is not less but it is more. I wonder how often we think of the Resurrection having very real impact on our lives today? Having to do, not just with who Jesus is but what our response to Him ought to be?Paul forces us to a larger view of the resurrection in Romans 1:1-6:
Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy Scriptures, concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord, through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations, including you who are called to belong to Jesus Christ
Paul says that by His resurrection, Jesus was declared to be the Son of God but the Greek communicates more than just that He was shown to be the Son of God. The Greek literally communicates that at His resurrection, Jesus was appointed the Son of God. This doesn’t mean that Jesus wasn’t God prior to His resurrection but that after the resurrection, Jesus was a Son of God in a way that He was not prior to the resurrection. We might think of Acts 10:42, which uses the same word, saying: “And he commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one appointed by God to be judge of the living and the dead.”
The key is in properly understanding the term the “Son of God.” We’re prone to think of this as a term simply ascribing deity to Jesus. It is that, but biblically, it has other implications as well. Ancient Near Eastern and biblical text understand one aspect of the title “Son of God” to mean royalty as well. Paul has already primed the pump, so to speak, for this understanding, by reminding his readers that Jesus was a descendant of David. This of course is made clear in 2 Samuel 7 and Psalm 2.
In other words, by His resurrection, Jesus was appointed king, not just of Israel, not just of the Jews, not just of the Church but of all creation. Whereas some rulers conquer lands, Jesus has conquered sin and death. His resurrection is about the truth of Christianity, it is about life after death, but it is about more than that. I wonder the last time most of us thought of the resurrection demanding our allegiance to Jesus as the risen King? But that’s exactly what Paul says. Christ’s resurrection means that He is King. The question remains: what is our response?
