| Stephen Burns |
"The nuances and shifting of language
seem to have diluted the message about what the resurrection of Jesus
Christ is all about. You are righteous! Now discover your
righteousness!
"He who was delivered over because of our transgressions, and was raised BECAUSE of our justification" - Romans 4:25
"Who was delivered up because of our offences, and was raised up BECAUSE of our being declared righteous" - Romans 4:25 YLT
Here's my "Berean" note. I included two versions that translate the verse correctly from the Greek. One is in the New American Standard Bible. The other is the Young's Literal Translation. The majority of verses render the resurrection as happening "for our justification". But the same Greek preposition (dia) is used in conveying the idea of Jesus being given "because of our transgressions" as is used to express that is was also BECAUSE of our justification that he was raised to life! The use of the preposition "dia" actually means "on account of" or "by reason of". So you can hear this more precisely expressed as the resurrection of Jesus actually having happened ON ACCOUNT OF and BY REASON OF your being found righteous by God!"
Why did Jesus die? Because of our sins - in other words, Jesus died because we did the wrong thing and slandered, wrongly condemned, abused and killed Him.. And why did Jesus rise? Because God found us innocent of any crime! Jesus Himself pointed that out on the cross, that the stance of the Godhead concerning our crucifixion of the Son was that 'they don't know what they're doing.' Wow!"He who was delivered over because of our transgressions, and was raised BECAUSE of our justification" - Romans 4:25
"Who was delivered up because of our offences, and was raised up BECAUSE of our being declared righteous" - Romans 4:25 YLT
Here's my "Berean" note. I included two versions that translate the verse correctly from the Greek. One is in the New American Standard Bible. The other is the Young's Literal Translation. The majority of verses render the resurrection as happening "for our justification". But the same Greek preposition (dia) is used in conveying the idea of Jesus being given "because of our transgressions" as is used to express that is was also BECAUSE of our justification that he was raised to life! The use of the preposition "dia" actually means "on account of" or "by reason of". So you can hear this more precisely expressed as the resurrection of Jesus actually having happened ON ACCOUNT OF and BY REASON OF your being found righteous by God!"
Jesus rose to prove to us that God didn't believe we did any wrong! He knew we were misguided, hurt, lied to, blind and confused..trapped in the lies we'd heard all through our lives/human history - the lie that God doesn't love us, that we are bad, that we are misshapen, broken, inadequate and 'not enough,' that we must prove ourselves to God or else be punished, that God rejected and abandoned us, that we are on our own and must measure up to a standard in order to be 'ok' in ourselves and before God, the relationship with God must be earned and merited, that we are 'wrong' and innately sinful..and we seemed to prove all this by being so rebellious in our actions, so angry and bitter against God, so mistrusting and withdrawn and suspicious, so hateful in our acts toward Him, even to the point of murdering Him! Yet God proved otherwise. He did not call us out, punish or condemn us, or even call us sinners! Instead He brought Jesus back from the dead without a word of reproof, without a bit of anger or 'righteous indignation,' without a bit of retaliatory or retributive 'justice' in His ways towards us!
It was almost like He was saying, oh, you little children didn't know what you were doing when you killed my Son. So I am going to make it all better, take responsibility for your confused and misguided acts; I am going to clean up this mess and make it like it never even happened - for I am just going to pop my Son back up in life again. Haha! Infected with such a love demonstrated and proved to us by such an act of the loving Dad, we can't help but live abundantly and freely with Him forever! Eden revisited and more!
So He died because we went and killed Him in our Satanic delusion (trapped as we were by Satan's lies...so that we weren't in control of our acts but were slaves to this confusion he put on us by lying to us), and yet..
And yet He rose because God knew that we were actually innocent of any wrong and was proving that!
Satan tried to convince us we were guilty and unloved by getting us to lash out in our confusion and angst and kill the Son of God..
But God popped Jesus back up to life, erasing the crime! No body, no murder to convict or punish us of! God showing He knew we were innocent all along!
He has only ever seen you, me and everyone as His beloved children, in whom He is well pleased! How could the perfect Father ever see His children as anything less than perfect - pure, sweet, lovely and innocent? How could the One who is Pure Love (undiluted love, love without any mixture of anything else!) ever have any other stance towards us than complete love, acceptance, joy and delight? How could we, made in His perfect and pure Love Image, ever be anything BUT pure Love at our core? The cross proves His Love, and the resurrection proves our Innocence, bathed as we are in that same Love, made as we are of that very BEING of Pure Love! We're Pure Love just like our Daddy! Thank You, Papa for showing us that - who You are and who we are - through the cross and resurrection!