The resurrection of Jesus is everything.

The New Testament exists because Jesus rose from the dead. Just think about it. Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Peter, Jude & James (brothers of Jesus), and Paul wrote what they did because Jesus from again from the dead. The Old Testament prophesied that Christ would die and rise, the Gospels tell us how it unfolded, and the rest of the New Testament tells us how to live in light of it. A weekend in Jerusalem is the gravitational pull and propulsion of Christian spirituality.

Jesus is the living ecosystem of the Christian life. “It is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me“ (Gal 2:20), and “For you died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God“ (Col 3:3). The risen Christ validates, verifies, and vivifies everything in Christianity.  The vibrancy of the resurrection of Jesus, when seen in the heart, can put a gust of wind into the sails of your spiritual life. The risen Jesus is amazing, inviting, comforting, powerful, kind, and exciting.

Here are 20 of my favorite quotes on the resurrection of Jesus.

  1. "You are not suffering from anything that a good resurrection can’t fix." - D. A. Carson
  2. “Our problem is very simple—we simply do not know how to live as people who believe that Jesus is the resurrected Lord.” — Stanley Hauerwas
  3. “Jesus did not dissolve into spiritual nothingness. He retains his humanity and he retains a distinct, individual, physical body.” — Peter C. Orr
  4. “The resurrection of Jesus is the action at the core of all Christian spiritual formation.” — Eugene Peterson
  5. “The Resurrection of Jesus is the central fact of Christian devotion and the ground of all Christian thinking.” — Robert Louis Wilken
  6. “If our theology is gospel-driven, the resurrection will permeate every facet of Christian thought. We can contemplate Christ only as the risen Lord.” — Michael Bird
  7. “The apostles understood the resurrection as the lynchpin of Christianity—integral to every aspect of life and thought—and therefore so should we.” — Ross Clifford & Philip Johnson
  8. “The entire Bible pivots on one weekend in Jerusalem about two thousand years ago. Attempts to make sense of the Bible that do not give prolonged thought to integrating the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus are doomed to failure, at best exercises in irrelevance.” — D.A. Carson
  9. “Oh that you and I would never cut and divide Christ so as to choose one part of him and leave another. Let not a bone of him be broken, but let us take in a whole Christ up to the full measure of our capacity. Prophet, Priest, and King, Christ divine and Christ human, Christ loving and living, Christ dying, Christ risen, Christ ascended, Christ coming again, Christ triumphant over all his foes—the whole Lord Jesus Christ is ours, We must not reject a single particle of what is revealed concerning him, but must feed upon it all as we are able.” — C.H. Spurgeon
  10. "If Christ is not risen, nothing else matters. And if Christ is risen, nothing else matters." — Jaroslav Pelikan
  11. “Our salvation consists of both a bloody cross and an empty tomb, both a Friday afternoon’s agony and a Sunday mornings’ vindication—and the latter is not merely proof of the gospel, but part of the gospel.” — Gavin Ortlund
  12. “The resurrection is the first article of the Christian faith and the demonstration of all the rest.” — Paul Beasley-Murray
  13. “The light of the resurrection, therefore, casts its ‘back shadow’ on previous events—that is, the resurrection serves as the hermeneutical key by which the past is interpreted as having contained signs pointing to what has now begun to unfold.” — Joel B. Green
  14. “Romans is suffused with resurrection. Squeeze this letter at any point, and resurrection spills out; hold it up to the light, and you can see Easter sparkling all the way through.” — N.T. Wright
  15. “I'm totally convinced that the resurrection of Jesus is the most crucial bridge between reality and life. Knowing the truth of this event is the engine that drives the quest for spiritual victory.” — Gary Habermas
  16. “God wants us not just to believe in Jesus’ resurrection but to be transformed by it and to receive the power we need to live the way we know we ought.” — Adrian Warnock
  17. “To preach Christianity meant primarily to preach the Resurrection…The Resurrection is the central theme in every Christian sermon reported in the Acts. The Resurrection, and its consequences, were the ‘gospel’ or good news which the Christians brought.” — C.S. Lewis
  18. “He has forced open a door that has been locked since the death of the first man. He has met, fought, and beaten the King of Death. Everything is different because He has done so. This is the beginning of the New Creation: a new chapter in cosmic history has opened.” — C. S. Lewis
  19. "Genesis ends with Joseph’s death. Deuteronomy ends with Moses’s death. Joshua ends with Joshua’s death. The Gospels end with Jesus’s resurrection. And that changes everything." — Tony Merida
  20. Bishop Azariah, the first native Indian Bishop of the Church of South India, was asked, “If you were in a village where they had never heard of Christ, what would you preach upon?” Bishop Azariah said, with no hesitation, “The resurrection.”