What The Resurrection Demands

"They seized upon that statement, discussing with one another what rising from the dead meant.”
Mark 9:10 

The disciples understood resurrection. They had watched Jesus raise Lazarus.  

What threw them off was not the word, but the implication.  

If Jesus was going to rise from the dead, that meant He had to die first.  

And that was the part they refused to accept. 

Isaiah had written it plainly. "He was pierced through for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities" (Isaiah 53:5).  

The evidence was there. The problem was selective reading.  

They held the verses about glory and victory and skipped past the ones about suffering and death. Sound familiar? 

We do the same thing. We love the promises of God and resist the process of God.  

We want the crown without the cross, the testimony without the trial, the resurrection without the burial.  

But the death of Christ is not incidental to the gospel. It is the gospel. 

Without a Savior who died, there is no forgiveness. Without a Savior who rose, there is no hope.  

Both truths must stand together. 

Read Isaiah 53 in full today. Sit with the weight of what the Messiah endured, and let gratitude be your response. 

Prayer:

Lord, thank You that You did not flinch from the cross. Thank You that what looked like defeat was actually rescue. Help me never minimize what Your death accomplished. In Jesus' name, Amen.