Did Jesus resurrect Himself from death, or did God raise Jesus from the dead?
When we come to respect the mystery of the Trinity, we will be quick to see that we will never fully understand how God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit work separately, yet completely together. This will continue to baffle any human this side of Heaven. However, the scriptures do shed some light on specific roles of each Person of the Godhead but also shows how each works simultaneously.
ROM. 8:10 If Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, yet the spirit is alive because of righteousness.
ROM. 8:11 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.
Paul says in v.11 that the Spirit is responsible for the resurrection of Jesus. Yet we must understand that this is also the Spirit of Christ working in and through Christ's body, in complete obedience to the will of the Father. Therefore, all three Persons are at work in the resurrection.
Furthermore, we have Jesus professing His authority to lay down and raise up His own body:
John 10:17 “For this reason the Father loves Me, because I lay down My life so that I may take it again.
John 10:18 “No one has taken it away from Me, but I lay it down on My own initiative. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This commandment I received from My Father.”
The Father loves the Son because the Son takes upon Himself this task of dying for the sins of mankind and then bringing His lifeless body to life again, defeating death once for all. Jesus says He lays His life down so that He may take it up again. In other words, Jesus is revealing not only the necessity of His death but also His coming resurrection. By this act Jesus' death saves us from our sins BUT it was His resurrection that made possible our glorification into a new body.
Finally, Jesus’ act of dying a sacrificial death on our behalf did not make Him a victim nor does it mean Jesus was less powerful than His enemies. On the contrary, Jesus says He lays His own life down of His own initiative. The word initiative is important to understanding what Jesus is saying about His death; the word in Greek is emautou, which is a compound word meaning “of myself .” By choosing this word Jesus explains that He lays down His life of Himself, therefore, everything about this event came from Jesus.
He decided it would happen from before the foundations of the world, He decided the way it would happen, He decided the time it would happen, He decided who would accuse Him, who would condemn Him, and how He would die.
Remember His words to Pontius Pilate:
John 19:10 So Pilate said to Him, “You do not speak to me? Do You not know that I have authority to release You, and I have authority to crucify You?”
John 19:11 Jesus answered, “You would have no authority over Me, unless it had been given you from above; for this reason he who delivered Me to you has the greater sin.”
Jesus placed Himself on that cross, aligning Himself to the Fathers will, worked out by the Spirit.
Moreover, Galatians points to the resurrection being that of the Father:
GAL. 1:1 Paul, an apostle (not sent from men nor through the agency of man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised Him from the dead),
Again, more proof to show the Godhead is working in unison to bring forth salvation to those who believe.
From the Biblical text gathered we are confident to say that God raised Jesus from the dead, acting with the Son and Spirit in triune nature. While we cannot fully comprehend the Trinity in this life, scripture clearly teaches that God is three Persons in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, yet is also One God. Scripture will also, at times, refer to the Persons of the Trinity interchangeably. An example is the Spirit of Christ in Romans and 1 Peter which clearly refers to Jesus and the Holy Spirit as One:
ROM. 8:9 However, you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. But if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Him.
1 Peter 1:11 seeking to know what person or time the Spirit of Christ within them was indicating as He predicted the sufferings of Christ and the glories to follow.
Jesus even says that He and the Father are One in John 10:30:
"I and the Father are one.”
How is this possible? Again, we don’t know, but we will all know when we meet our glorious God in heaven.
To say plainly we are chosen by the Father, reconciled through the Son, all by the Spirit.
Ephesians 2:18 says it best: “for through Him [Jesus] we both have our access in one Spirit to the Father.”
