Christ is risen! Indeed He is risen!
For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. (John 3:17)
St Methodius (3rd-4th Centuries) makes an interesting commentary on the role both of death and resurrection as God’s means for saving us. First though, he reminds us that the Old Testament, the Law, must be read as a shadow or a type of things to come. His criticism of Judaism is that the Jews read the Law as the reality, fulfilled in its own right, and thus their attention is on the past. For Methodius, Christ has shown us that the Law and the entire Jewish scriptures were actually future oriented – looking to the Christ and the coming Kingdom of heaven. He teaches that if the Jews would understand their own scriptures appropriately, they would see their scriptures pointed to Christ and the Church. For Methodius Christ and the Church have fulfilled the Jewish Law (which was a temporary custodian or trainer for the Jews until the Christ should come – Galatians 3:24) and thus supplanted it. The Law was a shadow and type of the reality which we now have in Christ and the Church. Our interest in the Law is only in how Christ interpreted it.
Methodius writes:
Let this then stand as an instance to prove that the Jews, by misinterpreting things present as types of things that are already past, have foundered their hopes of the good things to come, unwilling as they are that their types should foreshadow images, and that these images should represent the truth. For the Law is a shadow and a type of the image, that is to say, of the Gospel; and the image, the Gospel, represents the truth which will be fulfilled at the Second Coming of Christ. Thus the ancients and the Law foretold and prophesied to us the features of the Church, and the Church foretells those of the new order. And we, who have accepted the Christ, who said I am the Truth, are aware that the shadows and types have come to an end, and we press on towards the truth, proclaiming it in vivid images. For as yet we know in part, and, as it were, through a glass, for that which is perfect is not yet come to us, the Kingdom of heaven and the resurrection, when that which is in part shall be done away (John 14:6; 1 Corinthians 13:9, 12:10).
Then will all our tabernacles be established, when our bodies rise again, their bones once more fixed and compacted with flesh. Then shall we celebrate to the Lord the day of joy in a pure manner, receiving, now eternal tabernacles, never more to die or to be dissolved into the earth of the grave.
[For Methodius death is God’s way of stopping us from continually sinning, so death is God’s first mercy to us. God does not want us eternally to be sinners. However, God does not allow us to remain dead forever, rather in the resurrection God brings an end to the power of death and raises us up to eternal life. So even death was part of God’s plan for our salvation and the removal of sin from our lives.]
For our Tabernacle of old has been firmly made; but it tottered and fell by the Fall. And God put an end to sin by man’s death, lest man become a sinner for all eternity, and, since sin would be living in him, be under eternal condemnation. And this is the reason why man, though he was not made mortal and corruptible, dies and his soul is separated from his body, in order that his transgression might be destroyed by death, being unable to live after he was dead. Thus with sin dead and destroyed, I can rise again in immortality and sing a hymn of praise to God who saves His children from death by means of death; and in accordance with the Law I celebrate the Feast in His honor, adorning the tabernacle of my flesh with good works, just as the prudent virgins there with their five-flamed lamps. (THE SYMPOSIUM: A TREATISE ON CHASTITY, pp 134-135)
God uses our own death and then our resurrection as two steps in the same process of salvation for all humans. God becomes incarnate in Jesus Christ to use both death and resurrection to accomplish salvation for all.