Christ risen from the dead establishes, as the great fact presented by God to faith, victory over evil in Him who bore its consequences in the righteous judgment of God that He might deal in sovereign grace with man, give the believer power morally by the Holy Spirit meanwhile, and associate him openly and triumphantly with Christ in the same risen condition ere long and forever.
The denial of the resurrection denies not merely the future hope of the saints, but the standing fact of Christ, the mainspring of God's good news. If it is not true, the foundations are gone, the gospel is worthless, God Himself misrepresented, and the witnesses impostors.
The immense fact of resurrection was one which Christ not only predicted over and over again, but on it staked the truth of His mission and Sonship. It is the manifestation of that power of deliverance from death and judgment which is the present joy of the Christian, as it is the brightest witness to the efficacy of atonement and the pledge of glory with Christ at His coming again. [10]