What is Significant About Christ’s Resurrection?

Scripture 1 Corinthians 15:17
If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins.


Comment
What is significant about Christ’s resurrection?
St Paul said "If Christ has not been raised our faith is in vain"
It couldn't be clearer.

Without the resurrection, Christianity collapses.
Sadly, in recent years too many theologians and spiritual writers have tried to domesticate the resurrection.
"Oh, it just means that the cause of Jesus goes on"
"It just means now we are going to bear His presence to the world"
"It means that we remember Him fondly"
"It means that He has gone to God"

You see, the trouble with this is that those things could be said about any great and admired figure.
The members of the Abraham Lincoln Society could gather and read Lincolns speeches and say "Lincolns spirit goes on"
or even
"We think Lincoln was such a good man that he must be with God"

Well heck, if that is all it means then Christianity falls apart and Christianity devolves into one more cult of personality.
"We remember this hero from the past"

The resurrection is not simply something that happens to the disciples.
It is something that happens to Jesus.

His Father raises Jesus from the dead and He shows himself bodily present to His disciples after His death.

Simply resuscitated?
No, the way Lazarus was or the way the daughter of Jairus was.
No.
Not simply resuscitated and returned to this world.

But Christ is transformed.
He has conquered death.
He now lives through the power of the Father and in the dimension of God but bodily present to His disciples.

I think that is what the resurrection means and that event took the disciples breath away. That event grabbed them by the lapels and shook them and sent them around the world with the message.

When St Paul talks about the Good News, the Gospel, that is what he means first and foremost.
Jesus is bodily risen from the dead.

Everything else in Christian life flows from it.

If Christ has not been raised then his death is the death of a good man.

Tragic. Sad.
Maybe we would write songs about it. Remember it fondly. Wasn't He a good man and done in by evil forces.

But raised from the dead we now see that Jesus is the one who has conquered death.
Raised from the dead we now see that Jesus is the one who has conquered sin.
And if you take those things away you take Christianity away.

That is why the resurrection is the hinge, it is the corner stone of Christian faith.

Source: Fr Robert Barron