The Resurrection Is Important Because It Means God is God

In John 11 we read that the brother of Mary and Martha, Lazarus, had become ill. And because Jesus was the healer, they sent for him. Upon hearing of Lazarus' condition, Jesus said something amazing (verse 4): "This illness does not lead to death. It is for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it." That verse would be pretty easy to understand had Jesus rushed to save him. But he didn't. Look at verse 6: "So, when he heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was." Now the NIV translates the first word there not as "So" but as "Yet." So and yet. There is much semantical difference between those two words, as I am sure you can see. "Yet" in this sentence implies indecision on Jesus' part. "So", the literal translation, implies that Jesus waits on purpose. So Jesus knows that Lazarus is sick and then says that this sickness will not lead to death. But then why does he wait? So Lazarus can die. John 11:14: "Then Jesus told them plainly, 'Lazarus has died.'" How can we then square verse 4 and verse 14? Two ways:

1. The obvious way to reconcile this is to realize that Jesus knew that he was going to raise Lazarus to life. Though Lazarus would be dead for a time, a result of his illness, the illness was not as powerful as God working through Jesus. Lazarus would only be dead for a while.

2. The not so obvious reason is that Jesus was pointing to something much more profound. Upon telling his disciples that Lazarus has died he says this: "For your sake I am glad that I was not there, so that you may believe." Now what he wants them to believe concerns his own death and resurrection. He needs them to see and know that our own sickness does not lead to death either. What is our sickness? Impugning the holiness of God; exchanging the glory of God for idols; making good things ultimate things. And for that, we deserve death. Horrible, endless death. Jesus' claim then, that we will all not die, is insane. Piper calls this idea schizophrenic:

So the troubling thing is that God is so enthusiastic about adopting and exalting people whose sinfulness is a blight on his name. It seems schizophrenic. The Bible makes God out to love his name and his glory with omnipotent energy and unbounded joy. And then it pictures him choosing God-belittling sinners for his court, and rejoicing over the very people who have despised his glory and cheapened his name. (The Pleasures of God, p.158)

And how does he choose them? How does he save them? By executing his son (emphasis mine):

Isaiah 53:10-11:

Yet it was the will of the LORD to crush him; he has put him to grief; when his soul makes an offering for guilt, he shall see his offspring; he shall prolong his days; the will of the LORD shall prosper in his hand. Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied; by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities.

Acts 2:23-24 :

This Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you 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.

Romans 3:23-26:

For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God's righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

So what happened was that God killed his son in order that he might love us but also stay righteous (God finished what Abraham did not). God is no hypocrite. His glory had been impugned for centuries and for that he would eventually call to account those who sinned against him. But he loved us so much that it was worth destroying his son. Propitiation literally means to "bear wrath." And that is what Jesus did. He bore the wrath of God so that we wouldn't have to.

Now of course the end of all of this, and the only reason this is a viable transaction, is that Jesus rose from the dead. In verse 25 Jesus says to Martha, "I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die." If we believe in the crucified and resurrected son of God, we will too be raised to new life.

But what is the real reason Jesus died and rose from the dead? Finally, we are back to the verse we started with. "For the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it." These words foreshadowed what it would take for God and Christ Jesus to be both just and justified. The ultimate reason God sent his son to die and then raise him from the dead was so that they might be glorified. Ephesians 1:11-12 (emphasis mine):

In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will, so that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory.

No one could have made this up. Mark Driscoll said once that his gospel, if he tried to devise one, would be comprised of napping and chicken wings. Not Jesus'. God and Christ Jesus were able to remain righteous and save those whom they loved. The resurrection is important because it means, once and for all, that God is God.