Recommended Reading on the Resurrection

By Matthew Barrett–

Certain books are worth returning to again and again each year. And on significant occasions like Easter Sunday, Christmas, and others it is helpful to have a couple of books to take off the shelf and re-read in order to meditate on and think deeply about the central truths of the Christian faith. Since Easter is almost here, you may be looking for a book or two (or three or four!) to invest in for this very reason. There are a number of books on the resurrection that are worth your time for a variety of reasons, but today I have picked just five (and they are not listed in any order of importance). Here they are:

Raised with Christ: How the Resurrection Changes Everything. By Adrian Warnock.

If I could hand just one book to somebody on the resurrection of Christ, this would probably be the one. Warnock’s treatment of the resurrection is theologically minded, but pastorally driven as well. He does an excellent job showing how the resurrection is central to our salvation (something I will touch on later this week). Here is what Crossway says of the book,

Jesus truly is alive today. But compared to his atoning death, Jesus’ resurrection sparks relatively little discussion in the church. Inadvertently, we can become so focused on the good news that Christ died for our sins, that we almost forget he was “raised for our justification” (Romans 4:25).

In Raised with Christ, author Adrian Warnock exhorts Christians not to neglect the resurrection in their teaching and experience.Warnock takes his cue from Acts, where every recorded sermon focuses on Jesus’ resurrection. He stresses that Christians who faithfully proclaim both the death and the bodily resurrection of Jesus, and live out the implications of that message in vibrant,grace-filled churches, will be enabled to reach a world that lives in death’s dark shadow.

The power of the risen Christ is active in every true Christian, transforming our lives. Raised with Christ will help you discover afresh the massive implications of the empty tomb. Jesus’ resurrection really has changed everything.

For those looking for an academic work on the resurrection, you will want to pick up a copy of Wright’s massive and monumental treatment of the topic. Here is the publisher’s description:

Why did Christianity begin, and why did it take the shape it did? To answer this question ” which any historian must face ” renowned New Testament scholar N. T. Wright focuses on the key question: what precisely happened at Easter? What did the early Christians mean when they said that Jesus of Nazareth had been raised from the dead? What can be said today about this belief?

This book, third in Wright’s series Christian Origins and the Question of God, sketches a map of ancient beliefs about life after death, in both the Greco-Roman and Jewish worlds. It then highlights the fact that the early Christians’ belief about the afterlife belonged firmly on the Jewish spectrum, while introducing several new mutations and sharper definitions. This, together with other features of early Christianity, forces the historian to read the Easter narratives in the gospels, not simply as late rationalizations of early Christian spirituality, but as accounts of two actual events: the empty tomb of Jesus and his “appearances.”

How do we explain these phenomena? The early Christians’ answer was that Jesus had indeed been bodily raised from the dead; that was why they hailed him as the messianic “son of God.” No modern historian has come up with a more convincing explanation. Facing this question, we are confronted to this day with the most central issues of worldview and theology.

What place does the resurrection of Jesus Christ have in Paul’s teaching concerning salvation? Richard B. Gaffin, Jr. explains in part one that a change has taken place in Reformed theology’s interpretation of the center of Paul’s thought — a change that affects how we should approach Paul”s writings. Gaffin discusses this change and the proper way to approach Paul. Part two uncovers the basic structure of Paul’s resurrection theology and shows the central place of Christ’s resurrection in the whole of Paul’s theology. Part three discusses how Paul develops and uses this resurrection theme in several passages and in connection with the doctrines of adoption, justification, sanctification, and glorification. Gaffin’s conclusion presents the implications of this study for the problems and program of Reformed dogmatics.