1 Corinthians 15:12-19 NASB
Now if Christ is preached, that He has been raised from the dead, how do some among you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? [13] But if there is no resurrection of the dead, not even Christ has been raised; [14] and if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is vain, your faith also is vain. [15] Moreover we are even found to be false witnesses of God because we testified against God that He raised Christ, whom He did not raise if, in fact, the dead are not raised. [16] For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised; [17] and if Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless; you are still in your sins. [18] Then, those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. [19] If we have hoped in Christ in this life only, we are of all men most to be pitied.
If you closely look at 1 Corinthians 15, you will discover that the apostle Paul is arguing for the importance of the resurrection of Jesus because His resurrection means that we have victory over sin and death, our two great enemies. He emphasizes the importance of the bodily resurrection of Jesus because being in Christ means that we, too, will inherit a new physical glorified body. We will not spend eternity in just some ethereal, spiritual state as a living soul. Instead, we will live forever, as the final consummation of our redemption, with glorified bodies that can navigate the new earth and the new heavens. Paul also makes it very clear that if Jesus isn’t resurrected from the dead, then our faith is worthless and in vain, and we are still in our sins.
You see Jesus died on the Cross for us, so that risen from the dead he could live his life in us, and it is his life in us that sets us free daily from the power sin. At the Cross, Jesus paid for what we did and crucified who we were, but in His resurrection, He raised us up to be in union with who He is so that from that union, we can live the life He lives. This risen victorious life that we live by the resurrected Jesus is not a life of spiritual imitation, but a life of relational manifestation. Out of our union and communion with Him we simply bear (not produce) the fruit of His victorious life. “For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved in (by) His life.”
At the Cross, we stopped being enemies of God when He, on our behalf, reconciled us to Himself. Through His life and death, He changed the condition that we were living in, in relationship to God, but in His resurrection, we share in the condition that He is living in, in relationship to God.
Because we still live in this fallen body, the virus of sin is still in our members, but because the risen Christ also lives in this fallen body, He gives life to me every day, and the power of that resurrection life keeps the virus rendered powerless.
Romans 8:10-11 NASB
If Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, yet the spirit is alive because of righteousness. [11] But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you.
Because of the death of Jesus, I have a new reconciled standing with God, and because of the resurrection of Jesus, I have a new victorious walk with God.
Paul kind of sums it all up in 1 Corinthians 15:55 – 58; “O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting? The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law; but thanks be to God, who continually gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” The resurrection of Jesus takes the sting out of death through the promise of my own bodily resurrection in Jesus, and it renders powerless moment by moment the law of sin in my members so that I’m able to victoriously shout even in this life that I’m no longer in my sins because of the victorious risen Christ who is living in and through me, for the law of the spirit of Life in Christ Jesus has set me free from the law of sin and death.