Easter and the Point of it All

He is Risen – The First Easter
Arthur Hughes (1893)

He is not here; for He is risen. Just as He said.
Matthew 28:6

The atheist protests that God (the One Who, by skeptic reckoning, was never there) should have created a far different world than the world we now have. I can fathom no reason why God should adjust His sovereignty to accommodate the bellowing of ranters. But in point of fact He did create a world which would be unrecognizable to us today.
In that Original Creation death was nowhere to be found. Everything teemed with life. Throbbing, pulsating, prolific life. Literally everything in that system collaborated for the sustenance of human happiness. The elements themselves, the beasts of the field, the things which creep and those micro-organisms invisible to our sight were either benign or salubrious in their impact on the health of human-kind.
In the first Garden death was a nullity unregistered in history or experience. Because it was unexperienced and unwitnessed it was a thing scarcely to be imagined. Death existed, if we may use the word 'existed' in such a manner, in only one place, and that place was the Word of God. More precisely death existed solely in a Warning by God. And that warning was localized in a Tree and the fruit which hung thereon. Eat of the fruit of that tree said the Lord and in the day you eat of it, dying you shall surely die.
Of course the world as it is today is precisely the opposite to what we have read of that Paradise of Innocents. Everything tends toward death. Every person ever born (Enoch and Elijah excepted) is either dead or will die. It is the one great commonality in our history and the one great certainty in our future.
Life after the grave, the triumph over death at the end, is found in only one place: In the Word of God. As far as our hope for life goes the Promise is localized upon one tree and the one Man who hung thereon. That tree was the Cross, and the Man Who died there is Jesus of Nazareth. It is only by faith believing God's Promise that death will be cheated and the grave plundered.
We will not here trace the various threads of evidence which lend credence to biblical miracles.
Our question is a simple one. Why was Christ raised? To give Him life? Not in the ultimate sense. Christ already possessed Life which was eternal, non-contingent and unalienable.
No man takes My life from Me. I lay it down. (John 10:18)
His resurrection was not necessary to secure His own life for the simple reason that His death was not necessary. It was rather voluntary.
The resurrection was necessary to secure life for the sinner.
He was raised for our justification.
Before the throne my Surety stands.
My name is written on His hands.
Christ is risen that I too may rise.
Having died with Him by faith I will reign with Him in glory.
Such is the promise, such are the prospects.
The warning went unheeded let not the promise go unclaimed.
Christ is risen as our hope.
There is no other recourse.
Nor would we want one if there could be.