In 1 Timothy 3:16, Paul gives a poem about Christ:
"He was revealed in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, beheld by angels, proclaimed among the nations, believed on in the world, taken up in glory."
Given that 'taken up in glory' refers to the ascension of Christ, and revealed in Christ refers to the Incarnation, there would need to be an event in Jesus' life that can be called 'justification.' Leithart writes:
"...at some point between Jesus' appearance and his disappearance, someone, presumably God, rendered a favorable verdict on his behalf through the agency of the Spirit. Justification is at the heart of the mystery of godliness, but, perhaps surprisingly, the justification at the heart of the mystery of godliness is the justification of Jesus. What event is it? It has to be an event that occurred between the incarnation and the ascension, an event that involved the work of the Spirit, and an event that is justly described as a judicial act, an act of vindication or justification. The only event that fulfills all of these criteria is the resurrection of Jesus." (184-185)
As Leithart writes, it isn't customary to speak of the resurrection as a judicial event. Unlike the trials leading up to Jesus' death, the resurrection is not explicitly described this way. However, we could see that God's raising Jesus is a display of authority that is more clearly discerned precisely because it has judicial ramifications. Leithart writes:
"Carl Schmitt, Giorgio Agamben and Walter Benjamin argued that authority ultimately rests on the state of exception, the ability to act sovereignly, embodied in the power to kill. After state and religious authorities had exerted their most extreme authority against Jesus, after they had done all that they could do - which is to kill - the Father displays his strange judicial authority, reversing the verdicts of Jew and Gentile by raising Jesus from the dead. Resurrection is the state of divine exception that establishes his authority as Lord of the living and the dead." (Delivered, 185)
In John 2, Jesus overturns tables in the temple. When asked for a sign that he has authority to do this, Jesus says: "Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days." (John 2:19) The temple is God's house on earth. It's where he sustains a community who will be his witness to the world, and through whom he will reunite the world under his governance. When the veil is torn in Jesus' cross, it shows that the temple's atonement and sacrificial structure has been superseded by a greater atonement and a greater sacrifice. As Jesus himself says in John 2, his resurrection establishes a new and better temple with a better system. As one teacher put it in a recorded message, the tabernacle and, later, the temple were the center of the earth. Now, in Jesus' resurrection, the center of the earth is with God at his right hand where Jesus has been raised and has ascended. When Christians meet to worship, sharing in the Lord's Supper, this is our new geography. He are with him in heaven.
Without resurrection, we are left with a travesty of justice as flesh seems to achieve victory over God. Far from overturning the curse of Eden, the curse has extended to claim even God's life. Far from overturning the curse of Babel, the world becomes even more entrenched in division and confusion as God's chosen witness, Israel, has rejected its calling. Resurrection shows Jesus' death to be that of a true Israelite, a true Abraham who lays down his fleshly glory, as one who suffers in the place of his tormentors, as one whose death achieves a new access into Eden beyond the cherubim, and whose witness as Israel to the true God opens the floodgates of spiritual blessing to fall on the nations to break the curse of Babel. In all these things, Jesus establishes a just new community of people who live by a new nature, not by Torah or by sinful flesh, but who live as those delivered into a new union with God, as those who have already died and been raised.
Resurrection breaks the chain of evil which degrades the goodness and integrity of creation. In Genesis 1, we see God creating - giving form to vulnerable, dependent things who receive the gift of an ecology, an environment in which they derive all things from God. Death un-threads this tapestry. Resurrection establishes a new creation, ennobling and dignifying the created frame all things had from the beginning.
Israel's sacrifices always pointed them to this. They were trained to hope in resurrection from the sacrifices they offered. Represented by animals, sinners themselves died and were 'burned,' transforming them into Spirit-life, or smoke, which would mingle with God's glory cloud beyond the veil. In celebration of this new union, the priests would eat a meal with God.
In the same way, Jesus dies the sinner's death. But in his resurrection, Jesus has been transformed into Spirit-life. He lives by the Spirit in the flesh. From the perspective of the resurrection, Jesus is not only a man who has come from Eden into enemy territory. He is a man who has dismantled all the obstacles to Eden so the world can be transformed from enemy territory into Eden again. So that the world can become church. In his ascension, he enters as a human into union with the Father on our behalf. For Christians, to be baptized into Jesus is to ascend with Jesus into this fellowship with God. Our communion meal is a celebration of the union we have with God through Christ.
Paul says: "And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies because of his Spirit who lives in you." (Romans 8:4) The Holy Spirit has power then to work within our lives so that we live a resurrected life now. We still await this, of course, but we are to consider ourselves as those who have truly entered into Eden again. We are not outside anymore. Stunningly, we aren't 'sinners', at least not in the sense that this truly defines us. Now of course we still sin. And yet... Jesus' resurrection is a deliverance for the entire world because the curse of Eden was on the whole world. And now it's gone. Do we still sense the effects of it? Sure. But the veil is torn. The cherubim and their flaming swords are gone. Jesus is the temple. He is Eden. And as animals served as representatives for the Israelites, and as the Israelites saw in the mingling of the sacrificial smoke with God's glory cloud the hopeful sign of their own future mingling - so, in the same way, Jesus serves as representative for all humanity so that we know we will share in the glorious resurrection God has given him.
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