The Meaning of the Resurrection of the Son of God

In his 800 page The Resurrection of the Son of God (London, SPCK, 2003), N. T. Wright concludes that for the New Testament writers, the resurrection of the Son of God means that he is the Messiah, the Lord of the World and God the Son.

(1) Messiah

“The first level of a ‘son of god’ understanding of Jesus’ resurrection can therefore be summarized as follows. Jesus is Israel’s Messiah. In him, the creator’s covenant plan, to deal with sin and death that has so radically infected his world, has reached its long-awaited and decisive fulfilment.” (p728)

(2) Lord

“This then is the second level of meaning. The resurrection constitutes Jesus as the world’s true sovereign, the ‘son of god’ who claims absolute allegiance from everyone and everything within creation. He is the start of the creator’s new world: its pilot project, indeed its pilot.” (p731)

(3) God

“… the fact that this Jesus had been raised by this god… drew from the early Christians the breathtaking belief that Jesus was the ‘son of god’, the unique ‘Son’ of this God, as opposed to any other… … he was the personal embodiment and revelation of the one true god.” (p731)

“The resurrection … declares that Jesus really is God’s Son… in the sense that he is the one in whom the living God, Israel’s God, has become personally present in the world, has become one of the human creatures that were made from the beginning in the image of the same God.” (p733)

“… this resurrection [of this ‘son of God’] … was the public announcement, by the one true God, that this Jesus really was, and had always been, his son in this full, self-revealing, self-embodying sense.” (p734)