“They have taken the Lord out of the tomb . . . ” These words from a breathless Mary Magdalene were the first breaking of the news that Sunday morning. “. . . and we do not know where they have laid him” (John 20:2).

Just as Mary herself had run to inform Peter and “the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved,” they then ran together to check for themselves. That Jesus’s body was gone, they now believed. But somehow, even with Jesus’s words to them, on multiple occasions, about his coming death and resurrection (Mark 8:31; 9:31; 10:33–34), they, like Mary, “did not understand” (Mark 9:32).

On this world-changing Sunday morning, Jesus’s closest disciples first assumed his body had been taken and laid elsewhere. “As yet they did not understand the Scripture, that he must rise from the dead” (John 20:9). Must rise. In Jesus’s mind, and in the courts of heaven, and in the pages of holy Scripture, the suffering and subsequent resurrection of the Messiah were not just possibilities or likelihoods. These were not options. They were musts. Jesus had said it before, and later that day he would explain it again — that it was necessary, that it must have happened this way.

O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory? (Luke 24:25–26)

Everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled. . . . that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead. (Luke 24:44–25)

But when Peter and John first looked into the empty tomb, that necessity had not yet struck them. Fresh off the devastating grief of the previous two days — doubtless the two worst days of their lives — they still were coming to terms with his death, and assumed with Mary that he was still dead and “they” — some undefined group — had moved the body. Having seen the empty tomb, John reports, “the disciples went back to their homes” (John 20:10).

Only Mary stayed behind, and soon found Jesus alive. Then, with his commission, she “went and announced to the disciples, ‘I have seen the Lord’” (John 20:18).

Christ Must Rise

However slow his disciples had been to understand the necessity of his suffering and rising, they soon became convinced — not just that he did rise (that was indisputable) but that he had to rise. It was necessary. It must have happened this way.

“Death could not hold him, restrain him, keep him. It was not possible. Christ, the Son, had to rise.”

Just fifty days later, when Pentecost came, Peter would preach this in public — not just the resurrection but its necessity. At the height of his sermon, Peter declares about his Lord — “this Jesus,” who was “crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men” — “God raised him up, loosing the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it” (Acts 2:23–24). Death could not hold him, restrain him, keep him. It was not possible. Christ, the Son, had to rise.

Why, we might ask on this Resurrection Sunday, was it necessary? Why did Jesus have to rise? Acts 2, together with other New Testament texts, give us at least five reasons why the Son had to rise again.

1. To Make Good on God’s Word

First, the word of the living God was at stake. Through his prophets, God had long promised to send his people a climactically Anointed One, the Messiah, heir to David’s throne and rallying hope of Israel. And essential to that Messianic promise was an eternal reign (2 Samuel 7:13, 16). Not only would David’s line continue one generation after another, but one great heir was coming who would reign without end (Psalm 45:6–7; 102; 25–27; 110:1–4).

Even in his own lifetime, David himself had spoken of God not abandoning his soul to Sheol — and not letting his “holy one see corruption” (Psalm 16:10), which Christians, including Peter, came to see as one of many old-covenant anticipations of the coming Messiah’s resurrection. Which is how Peter argues in that first Spirit-anointed sermon (Acts 2:29–32).

God’s anointed king would fulfill the promise of God’s word. Jesus was, and is, that Christ. Therefore, it was impossible for him to be kept from that eternal reign. Not even the last enemy could keep him from it. Strong as the power of death may seem, it was, and is, no match for the omnipotent God working for his Messiah.

2. To Vindicate His Sinless Life

Jesus’s life was without sin. He was utterly innocent, and rising again vindicated his perfect human life. Death and Satan had no claim on him because Jesus had no “record of debt that stood against [him] with its legal demands” (Colossians 2:14). With respect to Jesus, Satan and his minions never had been armed; they had no hooks in him because he had no sin or guilt. Rather, in dying, Jesus gave himself, nailing to the cross our record of debt, because of our trespasses, and disarming the demons against us (Colossians 2:13, 15).

Luke sounds the note of Christ’s innocence again and again — three times in the mouth of Pilate, then again by the thief crucified next to him, and finally by the centurion who saw him breathe his last (Luke 23:4; 14–15; 22; 41, 47). Jesus’s innocence — that he did “nothing deserving death,” before man and before God — would be, as Paul celebrates, “vindicated by the Spirit” in Christ’s resurrection (1 Timothy 3:16).

3. To Confirm the Work of His Death

The resurrection also confirmed that Jesus’s death on the cross worked. It counted. It was effective. His dying declaration, “It is finished” (John 19:30), was shown to be true by his resurrection. Had he stayed dead, what confidence would we have that his sacrifice worked, that it was sufficient for us and all who believe? What firm hope would we have that he indeed was not only innocent of his own sin but that his death could count for us, in our place?

“The resurrection confirms that his death on the cross worked. It counted. It was effective.”

Paul writes in Romans 4:25 that Jesus “was delivered up” to death “for our trespasses and raised for our justification.” The resurrection shows that his work was effective — not only in covering our sins with his death, but in rising to be our righteousness — our justification — before the holy God. Which leads to another distinct but inseparable reason.

4. To Give Us Access to His Work

Not only did our sins require a reckoning — by Christ, outside of us — but we also needed to have access to his work, to have it applied to us. Potential salvation is not enough. We need actual rescue, which comes through the instrument called faith which unites us to a resurrected, living Lord.

However sufficient his self-sacrifice might have been to cover our sins, we have no access to that rescue if he is not alive that we might be united to him. But he is alive. As he says, “I am the first and the last, and the living one. I died, and behold I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of Death and Hades” (Revelation 1:17–18). There is no great salvation for us if we are not united by faith to a living Lord to have the benefits of his work applied to us.

5. To Be Our Living Lord and Treasure

One final must or necessity is the final necessity: Jesus is alive to know and enjoy forever.

There is no final good news if our Treasure and Pearl of Great Price is dead. Even if our sins could be paid for, righteousness provided and applied to us, and heaven secured, but Jesus were still dead, there would be no great salvation in the end — not if our Savior and Groom is dead. At the very center of the Easter triumph is not what he saves us from, but what he saves us to — better, who he saves us to: himself.

Our restless souls will not find eternal, and ever-increasing, rest and joy in a Christ-less new earth, no matter how stunning. Streets of gold, reunions with loved ones, and sinless living may thrill us at first — but they will not ultimately satisfy, not for eternity, not on their own. We were made for Jesus. He is at the center of true life now, and he will be forever. If there is no living Christ, there is no final satisfying eternity. But he is alive indeed — to know and enjoy forever.

John Piper is founder and teacher of desiringGod.org and chancellor of Bethlehem College & Seminary. For 33 years, he served as pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church, Minneapolis, Minnesota. He is author of more than 50 books, including Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist and most recently Providence.

If you are in Christ, you have been justified — eternally, irreversibly, gloriously.

God has spoken his everlasting sentence over your soul. Through faith alone (Romans 5:1), on the basis of the death and life of Jesus Christ alone (Romans 5:9), you are not guilty, but righteous; not hell-bound, but heaven-bound; not condemned, but justified. You need no longer wonder what judgment day holds. Though men, devils, and a disordered conscience may accuse, there is therefore now no condemnation for you (Romans 8:1). Let your soul sigh with relief: you have been justified.

And yet, surprising though it may sound, you also will be justified. As the apostle of justification himself writes, “Through the Spirit, by faith, we eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness” (Galatians 5:5) — a statement that seems to suggest some future dimension to the righteousness God reckons to us in Christ. In him, we have righteousness, and we hope for righteousness; we have been justified, and we will be justified.

For many, I suspect, the future dimension of justification startles us at first, like a constellation we’d never noticed before. But rightly understood, it makes the sky of our heavenly hope burn all the brighter.

Salvation Already — and Not Yet

To say we both have been and will be justified may sound like double-talk. How can justification happen in both the past and future tense? But the New Testament authors, and Paul especially, talk this way all the time.

We have been adopted (Romans 8:14–16) — and we will be (Romans 8:23).
We have been resurrected (Ephesians 2:4–6) — and we will be (1 Corinthians 15:22).
We have been redeemed (Colossians 1:13–14) — and we will be (Ephesians 4:30).
We have been sanctified (1 Corinthians 1:2) — and we will be (1 Thessalonians 5:23).
We can even say we have been glorified (Romans 8:30; 2 Corinthians 3:18) — and we will be (Colossians 3:4).

“If you are in Christ, you have been justified — eternally, irreversibly, gloriously.”

We tend to cast the benefits of salvation in chronological order: we have been justified, we are being sanctified, and we will be glorified, for example. But as Sinclair Ferguson writes, “We cannot think of, or enjoy, the blessings of the gospel either isolated from each other or separated from the Benefactor himself” (The Holy Spirit, 102). In other words, the benefits of salvation are less like links in an abstract chain and more like spokes attached to the hub of Christ himself (see Saved by Grace, 16, for a helpful visual). “Every spiritual blessing” lives in Christ (Ephesians 1:3), and because we ourselves are in Christ, every spiritual blessing in one sense is already ours.

And in another sense, every spiritual blessing is not yet ours. “In the New Testament,” Ferguson continues, “there remains a yet-to-be consummated aspect to every facet of salvation” (102–3) — justification included.

Future Justification

Speaking of future justification calls for care, of course. So much of justification’s power lies in the past tense. “We have been justified” (Romans 5:1), Paul says — and he means it. And yet, some future dimension of justification awaits.

We have already noted, for example, Paul’s words in Galatians 5:5: “We ourselves eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness.” We might also mention Paul’s teaching (echoing Jesus) that everyone, believers included, “will stand before the judgment seat of God” (Romans 14:10; see also 2 Corinthians 5:10). If God’s justifying verdict were only past, why would Christians need to appear at God’s judgment seat? More than that, we have another biblical clue that justification is, in one sense, still future — a clue that may seem surprising: our bodies still decay and die.

In the beginning, Paul reminds us, “sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin” (Romans 5:12). Death is not the natural end to life’s natural process. Death is penalty and punishment, the unnatural end to life under sin. Every headstone stands as a silent witness to God’s judicial sentence over sinful man: “You are dust, and to dust you shall return” (Genesis 3:19).

In other words, death is the just end of the unjustified. And though, in Christ, we really have been justified, we still die as if we haven’t been, as if we were still under the same sentence of condemnation. Our bodies, “dead because of sin” (Romans 8:10), await the day when we who have received “the free gift of righteousness” will “reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ” (Romans 5:17).

Raised and Justified

The connection between death and condemnation deepens the darkness of Good Friday and Holy Saturday. Every drop of blood from the cross, and then every hour in the tomb, seemed to confirm the Pharisees’ claim that “this man is a sinner” (John 9:24). “As long as he remained in a state of death,” Richard Gaffin writes, “the righteous character of his work, the efficacy of his obedience unto death remained in question, in fact, was implicitly denied” (Resurrection and Redemption, 121). If the stone had never rolled away, Jesus would have remained slain among the unjustified.

But the stone did roll away, such that Paul can sing, “He was manifested in the flesh, vindicated by the Spirit” (1 Timothy 3:16). The word vindicated here is the same word for justified, suggesting that, in a sense, Jesus’s Spirit-wrought resurrection served to justify him — to declare to all that the so-called “sinner” on the cross was in truth “the Holy and Righteous One” (Acts 3:14). Despite his enemies’ slander, Jesus never sinned. Therefore, Peter says, “It was not possible for him to be held by [death]” (Acts 2:24). Death, unable to imprison a sinless man, was forced to bow before Christ’s resurrected feet.

Resurrection, then, testifies that the Genesis 3 death sentence no longer rests over a person, that he or she is now in the right with God, and therefore fit to dwell with him in the land of the living. In Christ, of course, we too have been resurrected (Ephesians 2:4–6) — but only in spirit, not yet in body. Which means our justification is both already and not yet. As Gaffin writes,

As believers are already raised with Christ, they have been justified; as they are not yet resurrected, they are still to be justified. . . . “The outer man,” subject to decay and wasting, mortal and destined for death, still awaits justification in some sense. (By Faith, Not by Sight, 98–99)

For now, God’s justifying verdict lies veiled beneath our bent and broken bodies. But one day, “when the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality” (1 Corinthians 15:54), our justification will become plain to all.

Our Cosmic Acquittal

The Westminster Shorter Catechism helps us picture that day: “At the resurrection, believers being raised up in glory, shall be openly acknowledged and acquitted in the day of judgment” (answer to question 38).

God has already “acknowledged and acquitted” us on the basis of Jesus’s death and resurrection. But he has not yet done so “openly.” As Dane Ortlund writes, “The open manifestation and vindication of already justified sinners is not yet placarded before a hostile world” (“Inaugurated Glorification,” 119). For now, we live in a world that opposes and denies our justification. The devil still accuses us. Conscience unfairly condemns us. Our bodies wrinkle, weaken, and eventually die under the death penalty of sin. But not so forever.

On the day of judgment, we will stand before God and all the world, our risen bodies testifying that we are no longer dust destined for dust, but glory headed for glory (1 Corinthians 15:48–49). The “accuser of our brothers” (Revelation 12:10) will have his mouth shut, finally and forever. Conscience will no longer clamor; enemies will no longer slander. And most importantly, God himself, having already claimed us in Christ, will trumpet his righteous pleasure as far as east is from the west (Matthew 25:21). Openly and publicly, he will justify us.

That future day will not serve as a second justification, as if the first were somehow tentative and uncertain. Nor will it rest on any other basis than Christ alone — though Spirit-wrought good works will play their role as public witnesses of saving faith (2 Corinthians 5:10). That day will simply consummate the justification God has already declared over us in Christ. The song ringing in our hearts will resound throughout the cosmos (Romans 5:5).

We Eagerly Wait

In the galaxy of our heavenly hope, here is a star to see and savor. We will not only be raised, saved, adopted, and welcomed home on the last day; we also will be openly justified. Oh to say with the apostle Paul, “We ourselves eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness” (Galatians 5:5).

“We will not only be raised, saved, adopted, and welcomed home on the last day; we also will be openly justified.”

Paul himself tells us how to join him in his eager waiting: “Through the Spirit, by faith, we ourselves eagerly wait . . .” Doug Moo summarizes Paul’s meaning: “It is by appropriating and living out of the power of the Spirit that believers confidently wait for the ultimate confirmation of their righteous status before God” (Galatians, 329). One day, the Spirit will raise our buried bones, sew joint and sinew back together, and present us for public justification, as the universe watches. In the meantime, the same Spirit grows our confidence for that day by slowly making us more righteous now.

We will never become perfectly righteous in this world. Far from it. But the only people who “eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness” are those who “hunger and thirst for righteousness” to fill our words and deeds, our thoughts and feelings (Matthew 5:6). And so, as long as we live here, walking in a broken body upon a broken earth, we strive for righteousness, waiting for the day when God will openly crown us with the righteousness already ours in Christ.