According to the Apostle Paul, the whole of our Christian faith hinges on the resurrection of Jesus Christ. “If Christ be not risen,” Paul writes, “then is our preaching vain, and our faith is also vain. Yea, and we are found to be false witnesses of God; because we have testified of God that he raised up Christ: whom he raised not up” (1 Corinthians 15:14-15). Paul goes on to add that without Christ’s resurrection we are still “in our sins,” our loved ones who have “fallen asleep in Christ are perished” and “we are of all men most miserable” (1 Corinthians 15:17-19).

When Christ died on the cross He did more than just die for our sins; according to the Scripture, He actually became our sin (2 Corinthians 5:21). When Christ became our sin on the cross of Calvary God the Father poured out the full fury of His wrath on Christ for every sin that has been or ever will be committed. On the cross, Christ suffered the full punishment for all the sins of all time. This explains why Christ, already kneeling under the shadow of the cross, suffered such agony in the Garden of Gethsemane (Matthew 26:36-45, Luke 22:39-46). It was not, as is commonly believed, the physical pain and suffering of the cross that caused Christ to shrink back and His sweat to become like “great drops of blood” in the garden. Instead, it was the fact that Christ was about to become the sin of the world and suffer the full brunt of His Father’s wrath. Although the physical death Christ died on the cross would be more than enough to cause most men to sweat blood, it was the spiritual death that He was facing that caused Christ’s anguish in Gethsemane.

The fact that Christ experienced spiritual death—separation from God the Father—is made abundantly clear by Christ’s bloodcurdling cry from the cross, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me” (Matthew 27:46). When Christ died on the cross, becoming the sin of the world, God the Father turned His back on His Son. Since God cannot look upon sin (Habakkuk 1:13), He turned away from His Son as soon as His Son took upon Himself the sin of the world.

With “the Father of lights” (James 1:17) turning away and “the light of the world” (John 8:12; 9:5) doused out by the sin of the world, is there any wonder that the Scripture says the earth was suddenly shrouded in an inexplicable darkness (Matthew 27:45)? Suspended between heaven and earth and forsaken by both, Christ hung that dark day on the cruel cross of Calvary. Alone and abandoned Christ died for you and me.

Following His death, Christ’s body was taken down from the cross and buried in a borrowed tomb. From the time of Christ’s interment until He arose on that first Easter Sunday morning the drama of all the ages was played out. Could Christ, ensepulchered in the stead of all the sinners of the world, ever come alive to God again? This question for the ages, posed by Christ’s occupied tomb, was resoundingly answered in the affirmative by His empty one!

In spite of being as spiritually dead to God the Father as all the sins of all time could make Him, Christ came back alive to the Father when He arose from the dead on that first Easter Sunday morning. This is why the Bible teaches that Christ was spiritually justified and made alive in the spirit when He arose from the dead (1 Timothy 3:16; 1 Peter 3:18). If Christ, who was as spiritually dead as the trespasses and sins of all time could make Him, rose from the dead and came back alive spiritually, then so can the vilest sinner in all of the world who will “believe in his heart that God has raised [Christ] from the dead" (Romans 10:9). No matter how spiritually dead you are in your trespasses and sins, you too can rise from the dead and come alive to God through faith in the resurrected Christ. This hope of spiritual life is at the very heart of the gospel and the reason it all hinges upon Christ’s resurrection.

In Psalm 2:7, God the Father says to Christ, “Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten thee.” Being eternal and without beginning or end, when was Christ ever begotten by the Father? According to the Apostle Paul, Christ was begotten by the Father when He was raised from the dead. In Acts 13:33, Paul says, “God hath fulfilled the same unto us their children, in that he hath raised up Jesus again; as it is also written in the second psalm, Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee.”

Did you know that Jesus Christ was the first person to ever be born again? He was the first person to come back alive to God after being spiritually dead in trespasses and sin. However, Christ’s spiritual death was not the result of His sin, but of Him becoming ours. When Christ arose, coming back alive to God the Father, the Father said to Him, “Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee.”

As “the first born from the dead”; that is, as the first person to ever come back alive to God after being spiritually dead to Him, Christ has become “the head of the body, the church” (Colossians 1:18). What is the church? It is simply all of those, like Christ, who have been born again. The church is made up of those who were once dead to God in their trespasses and sins, but now have come alive to God through faith in the resurrected Christ.

According to the Apostle Paul, everyone in the church has been foreknown and predestined by God “to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren” (Romans 8:29). God wants many more children like His firstborn Son, Jesus Christ; that is, born again children to whom God can say, on the day they place their faith in His firstborn Son, “Thou art my [child], this day have I begotten thee.” All of those begotten by the Father through faith in His risen Son become Christ’s “brethren” and members of Christ’s body, “the church of the firstborn” (Hebrews 12:23). How about you, have you been born again?