Death is profoundly disorienting. God created us not to experience it, so it should come as no surprise when we feel deeply disturbed by it. However, death is only becoming more disturbing in our society. In recent decades, our culture has embraced death in certain ways, such as abortion, but now this embrace of death is growing with things like MAID (medical assistance in dying).
However, it is not just death that is becoming more disturbing in our society; it is how we deal with death. With the legacy of a common Western worldview quickly fading, each “does what is right in their own eyes” with regard to death. The sprinkling of ashes in order to return to being “one with the universe” has been around for decades, but more recent trends, such as choosing not to have a funeral or burial ceremony, leave us without the opportunity to deal with our most difficult human experiences. Such decisions not only ignore the significance of death, but they also refuse to create space for the human need to express our pain and grief in the face of loss.
But we are not the first culture of death. Whether it be the child-sacrifice of ancient Canaan, the fatal exposure of infants in the Roman world, or the suicide bombers of radical Islam, death has haunted every age and civilization since Adam to a lesser or greater extent. The human encounter with death, whether of those we love or the anticipation of our own, is perennial. Our questions and pain are not unique.
Of course, as Christians, we confess a Saviour who “was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures” (1 Cor 15:4). There is hope, yes, but of what kind? In light of a growing culture of death in the Western world, this article seeks to examine how Jesus, the Anointed (Gk. Christ) Servant, has overcome death, and what this means for us. We begin with a wide-angle view of how resurrection and new life are viewed in Isaiah, followed by a reflection on the Servant of the Lord’s vindication within Isaiah’s narrative. From there, we turn to Paul’s exposition of the resurrected Anointed One in 1 Corinthians 15, and how this intersects with the lives of those who believe.
Death and Its Defeat in Isaiah
When speaking of death and its defeat in Isaiah, pride of place belongs to Isaiah 25. In context, Isaiah 24:21-23 tells us of the reign of God over both evil kings and supernatural powers. This means that Yahweh defeats the wicked (Isa 25:1-3, 11-12) and rises up as a shelter for God’s people (Isa 25:4-5). God will host a global feast where “He will swallow up the veil, the veil covering all the peoples… he will swallow up death forever.” Death will be swallowed on the mountain of God’s rule: “We waited for him and he saved us” (Isa 25:9).
And as if to reinforce Isaiah 25, Isaiah 26 contains the only explicit reference to resurrection in the book. Isaiah 26 celebrates the victory accomplished in chapters 24-25, a long-awaited victory, to be sure. In the face of seeming defeat, we read, “Your dead will live, their bodies shall arise; awake and rejoice, those dwelling in dust; For your dew is the dew of light; The earth will birth the dead” (Isa 26:19). In light of this coming reality, the people of God should wait patiently until God comes to disclose all the secrets of the earth (Isa 26:20-21).
When we combine these passages, we see that Isaiah looks forward to a time when, after much waiting, God will come, act on behalf of his people, subdue their enemies, and defeat death. It is no surprise then that Daniel, when he describes the difficult end times, draws from Isaiah 26:19: “many who dwell in the dust of the earth will awake, some to everlasting life” (Dan 12:2). This is resurrection life.
Another key passage with regard to death in Isaiah is chapter 65, verses 17-25. This is true regardless of whether the passage refers to the millennium or the new heavens and new earth. This passage speaks of “no more weeping” (65:19) and explains this by death’s claims on humanity being diminished (or even destroyed): “No longer will there be there an infant only a few days old, or an old man who does not fill his days” (Isa 65:20). Indeed, God’s people will be “as the days of a tree” (65:22). The section closes with an idyllic scene: “The wolf and the lamb will pasture together, like the ox the lion will eat straw, but the serpent’s food is dust. They will not wrong or destroy all my holy mountain” (65:25).
Celebrating the Messiah, Isaiah 11 completes the picture: “the nursing child will play over the hole of the cobra…they shall not harm or destroy on all my holy mountain, for as waters cover the sea, the earth is filled with the knowledge of the Lord” (Isa 11:9). The Messianic reign brings the serpent-defeating, creation-restoring, life-prolonging rule of God to God’s holy mountain. The Messiah is a second Adam, the seed of Eve (Gen 15), who rules and defies the death of the first Adam (Gen 3:19).
When taken together, these passages don’t form the whole of a systematic theology of death and the afterlife in the Old Testament. However, they do show that God’s renewing and restoring work, in connection with his Anointed, is a new life that has defeated the grave.
The Servant of the Lord’s Vindication
With this background, we now turn to the Servant of the Lord. The Servant of the Lord is God’s appointed means of renewing his people (Isa 42:1-6) and bearing away their sin (Isa 53:4-6). This clearly involves his death: “like a lamb that is led to slaughter” (Isa 53:7), “cut off from the land of the living” (53:8), “his grave with the wicked” (53:9), “poured out his soul until death“ (53:12).
Because of the Servant’s work (“if he will offer his soul as a sin offering,” Isa 53:10), there are a variety of rewards from God promised, including vindication (Isa 50:8). And this vindication is the focus of Isaiah 53:10-12, but the picture there seems to go beyond just vindication to include resurrection.
To begin with, it is said the Servant will see his seed, like Jacob’s embrace of Joseph’s sons (Gen 48:11). With a lengthening of his “days,” (cf. Isa 65:22), this portrays covenant blessing from God for obedience (Exod 20:12; Deut 11:9). This is remarkable indeed for the one who has just died in shame and under judgment.
Isaiah 53:10-12 continues: “he will see (light).” The Hebrew text does not have “light” (so ESV), the Greek Old Testament does (so NIV). This tells us how the ancient translators read the passage: “to see light” is to live and not go down to the grave (Ps 49:19, 15:3). That is the Servant’s future. Like “the dew of light” (Isa 26:16) that will rise on God’s people when they rise, so the Servant will also know this light. In this, he will be satisfied, another mark of God’s favour on the Servant (Deut 6:11, 11:15).
Does such a description justify us talking about the resurrection of the Servant of the Lord? It is important to remember the larger picture of the defeat of death in Isaiah: renewed long life for the people of God and blessing under his reign and in his presence as a part of the Messiah’s rule. When we take the Servant-Messiah in this context, his lengthened life and seeing the light of life under God’s blessing, resurrection doesn’t seem far off. He has come to bring the new things (Isa 42:9), and his sacrifice will accomplish the renewed creation (Isa 55:12-13). This is vindication beyond the grave with the blessings of God and renewed life. We will call it “resurrection” for the sake of convenience.
The Anointed One: His Resurrection and Ours
With this background, it is no great surprise how Paul explains Jesus: “that the Anointed died for our sins according to the Scriptures and that he was buried [Gk. etaphē, Isa 53:9: taphēs] and that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures” (1 Cor 15:3-4). The death, burial, and resurrection are all there in Isaiah 53. Moreover, the language of being raised (Gk. egeirō) borrows directly from the resurrection vocabulary of Isaiah 26:19, “they will be raised among the graves” (LXX).
As 1 Corinthians 15:3-4 itself confesses, the Old Testament fundamentally shaped these events, and there are a limited number of places that clearly speak of resurrection in any way (Isa 26:19; Dan 12:1-3; Ezek 37:11-14). Thus, it should be no great surprise that Isaiah and his Servant are the primary background. And the whole chapter shares Isaiah’s vision that we have seen above. We’ll only hit some of the highlights here.
To begin with, there is a baseline assumption that without the resurrection “our faith is in vain” (1 Cor 15:14), with our own resurrection tied to Jesus (vv.15-16). That is to say, the power of the new age of life that raised Christ will also raise us up.
With this established, Paul explores the ramifications in a variety of directions. Importantly, in verse 17 he says we would still be in our sins if the Anointed was not raised. What is the logic here? Surely it is a call back to verse 3, where the Anointed died for sin. However, 1 Corinthians 15:17 clarifies that the Anointed’s death (Isa 53:7, 8, 9, 12) would not have been effective without the resurrection (Isa 53:10-12). There is an assumed premise here that clarifies the whole argument: God resurrects the righteous to life, as we saw in Daniel 12:2-3. The argument then goes as follows. A crucified man (the ultimate dishonour) could never be a Saviour unless he was completely and dramatically vindicated of all charges. And this is what God did in the resurrection of the Anointed. Jesus’s resurrection gives us surety of his completed success in our atonement of which he spoke (Mk 10:45; Isa 52:13; Rom 4:25).
Indeed, with the atonement complete, Paul continues by calling the Messiah the “first-fruits” of the resurrection for which the people of God wait. The completion of the atonement in Jesus’ resurrection enables ours. With his wrath absorbed, it is the start of God’s work of blessing upon the whole earth for his people and of judgment for the wicked (Dan 12:1-3, Isa 26:19).
Indeed, all things (especially Satan) must be subdued under the feet of the skull-crushing seed of Eve (1 Cor 15:24, 27; Gen 3:15). The Messianic kingdom of Isaiah 11, in which all creation is renewed, is the coming rule of the second Adam (1 Cor 15:45-59). This is the kingdom of good news: shalom, the reign of God, and salvation which the Servant has brought in his death. The skull-crushing Messiah will bring these things to completion in his return.
Isaiah’s vision of hope hasn’t changed, but the timeline has. It will still be a world made new through the coming reign of God and triumph over death itself. Indeed, Paul is utterly clear that in the second coming of the Messiah, the rule of God will be complete, undoing death. And this is why Paul returns to quote Isaiah 25:8: “Death is swallowed in victory.”
Death and Its Defeat in Our Days
And Paul’s reflections are not without practical ramifications for us. To begin with, in the face of death and with a lack of answers, even Paul himself expects us to try to glut ourselves with pleasure. It is the way to not deal with the pain of the future: “let us eat and drink for tomorrow we die” (1 Cor 15:32). Our world is doing exactly what the Scriptures assume would happen in the face of hopelessness. Our world already feels the unsettledness about death. That’s natural. But what about believers? We’ll look at four aspects.
First, as believers, we need to define death in biblical terms and reckon with its tragedy. Death will swallow us all. From Adam’s day to ours, there is not one single human death which is natural and good. Life is good, but never death. Health care may be more sophisticated and death more sanitized, but we all know death has a sting. Indeed, part of the vision of the defeat of death is that “the Lord God will wipe away the tears from every face.” The Bible knows we will shed many tears from death, and we need to help others confess that their hearts are broken by death. Only when death is known as the horrendous enemy it is can we truly embrace the second Adam in hope. Only then can we cry with Paul, “Oh death, where is your sting?” (1 Cor 15:55).
Second, we need to emphasize that leading people to Jesus as the crucified and resurrected Anointed One is leading them to a complex of resurrection hopes. Resurrection isn’t just more time in this heartbreaking world. Resurrection comes with the completion of the rule of God. This is the rule of shalom, in which God completes his realigning of our broken world and our disordered desires. He remakes us in harmony with his own good self, and it will be the fulfillment of all the good echoes of the garden of Eden that we have felt and longed for. Let’s make sure the Christians around us know about the breadth and depth of our resurrection hope.
But it won’t just be restoring the good; it will be dealing with the evil. This is our third point. Resurrection is about the completion of justice, where those rejecting the Lord are brought to justice, and those made just in Christ will rule in grace, under the second Adam, for eternity. There will be no more angst about the wrongs of our world. There is a resurrection unto judgment.
Finally, resurrection is about the undoing of death for humanity: it is not simply the personal revivification that Lazarus experienced (John 11), but an undoing of the perishable order and a putting on the imperishable (1 Cor 15:42-49). Death and all its attending sorrows will cease to be a reality for the new humanity, for those resurrected to life under the headship of the new Adam. It’s not just that the tears will be wiped away, but that the sources of the tears will be defeated. At the resurrection, finally, the only thing our hearts will ache for is more of Christ.
