Relevance and Practical Implications of the Resurrection (Part 1)

You pretty much have to live in a shell to have not heard about James Cameron and the long lost tomb everyone has been looking for! Because I most likely wouldn't have anything new or exciting to say on the matter I would like to write about the relevance of the resurrection and the practical implications it holds on us today. So over the next few days I would like to look at how the resurrection gives us a confident joy, a hope, and a divine impulse to service.

Confident Joy
Apart from giving us an assurance of the deity of Christ, the resurrection gives us a confidence throughout life as it pertains to our salvation. We could end each day asking, "Did I pray enough?" "Did I read my Bible enough?" "Was I good?" and when I go through the list of moralistic do's and dont's, I come out a rather depressed person. As I start to understand the resurrection more and more I realize that sin has been defeated and Christ has triumphed over death. So in our sin, we can hate it and find it revolting but we still have a confident joy that I am free from death's grip based on my own good works? No, but Christ's defeat of sin and the grave. So in the face of sin we can be angry over our depraved self, but we can confidently take joy in the fact that Christ has defeated the very thing we hate so much. ESV 1 Corinthians 15:55 "O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?" As the hymnwriter says, "Behold him there the risen Lamb, my perfect spotless Righteousness, the great unchangeable I AM, the king of glory and of grace. One with himself I cannot die, my soul is purchased by his blood, my life is hidd'n with Christ on high, with Christ my savior and my God."