South Yarra Presbyterian Church Resurrection Sunday Service
John 20:1-18
This is a doctrinally serious Easter sermon. Rev. Ben Nelson, a PhD candidate and Academic Dean at the Presbyterian Theological College and an elder at South Yarra Presbyterian Church, gives the congregation much that is true, weighty, and pastorally useful. The sermon proclaims the bodily resurrection of Christ, resists a merely memorial Christianity, moves from resurrection to ascension, distinguishes Christ’s natural Sonship from the believer’s adoptive sonship, and concludes with union with the risen and ascended Christ by the Holy Spirit.
For that reason, the sermon deserves more than a shallow approval or a dismissive critique. Its strengths create the conditions for a more searching evaluation. A thin sermon can only be critiqued at the level of basic doctrine. A strong sermon can be pressed further. The question is not whether this sermon contains Christian truth. It plainly does. The question is whether the truths it names are sufficiently driven into the conscience, especially in relation to the necessity of the new birth.
That is the burden of this review. Several doctrines appear in the sermon without being fully pressed home: the difference between resurrection evidence and saving faith, the judicial meaning of the empty tomb, the sinner’s death in Adam, the necessity of regeneration, and the need to be personally and effectually called by the risen Christ..
The sermon gives us the risen Lord, but it does not always bring the hearer to feel why the risen Lord must give life to the dead.
This matters because the question before us in The New Birth in Exile series is not simply whether an Easter sermon mentions the resurrection. The question is whether Easter preaching impresses upon the hearer the necessity of being born again. Does the sermon bring the congregation face to face with their death in Adam? Does it summon them to life in Christ? Does it connect resurrection life to union with Christ, regeneration, repentance, faith, and life in the Spirit? Does it make clear that resurrection life must become personally ours through the new birth?
By that standard, this sermon is faithful, but incomplete.
The sermon opens with a striking contrast between Jesus and dead men whose bodies or memories have been preserved: Lenin, Mao, Ho Chi Minh, Stalin, and Jeremy Bentham. The point is well made. A corpse may be embalmed, displayed, revered, photographed, or remembered, but it remains powerless. Human beings may attempt to preserve greatness after death, but preservation is not life.
That opening prepares the congregation to understand Mary Magdalene’s sorrow at the tomb. Mary is not looking for a doctrine, an influence, an ideal, or a symbol. She is looking for the body of her Lord. Her repeated concern is that “they have taken away” the Lord’s body. She does not yet understand resurrection. She is grieving a dead Jesus and seeking a missing corpse.
Here the sermon is at its best. It refuses to reduce Jesus to a dead religious teacher whose words remain useful after his death. The preacher later warns against what he calls a “mummified gospel”: a Jesus whose teaching may still inspire and whose example may still instruct, but who is not worshipped, sought, obeyed, and trusted as the living Lord. That is a powerful Easter category. It exposes a form of Christianity that can be orthodox in memory but dead in present communion.
Yet precisely here the sermon could have gone further. When the preacher says that Christ’s word still teaches us, the point is true, but it needs sharper theological definition. Dead teachers can still “teach” in a limited sense through preserved writings and remembered influence. The risen Christ teaches differently. He teaches as the living Prophet of the church, by his inscripturated Word and by his Spirit. The Westminster Shorter Catechism states that Christ executes the office of a prophet in revealing to us, by his Word and Spirit, the will of God for our salvation. That distinction would have protected the sermon’s own argument. Christ is not merely a teacher whose instruction survives him. He is the living Lord who speaks effectually to his people.
This distinction matters because Easter preaching must not merely contrast a dead Jesus with a living Jesus. It must show what kind of living Lord he is. He is not simply remembered. He speaks. He summons. He reveals. He gives life.
The sermon rightly insists on the true bodily resurrection of Christ. It would be better not to call this “embodiment,” since that language is somewhat vague and not especially scriptural. The issue is the bodily resurrection of the crucified Christ. Mary is not encountering a religious impression, spiritualized presence, apparition, or memory. She encounters the same Lord Jesus who was crucified, now risen in the body.
The sermon treats the empty tomb as historical, physical, and revelatory. It expressly denies that Easter is wishful thinking, desperate hope, or pious fiction. The tomb was empty. The women saw him and spoke with him. The disciples communed with him. Christ has conquered death, and he stands before Mary as the living Lord.
The sermon also does well by refusing to stop at resurrection alone. Mary is not allowed simply to cling to Jesus as though Easter meant the restoration of the old manner of fellowship. The resurrection leads to the ascension. Christ is going to the Father. He is entering heavenly glory. He is reigning. He is not merely back; he is exalted.
That is a significant strength. Much Easter preaching stops at “Jesus is alive” without moving to the ascended, reigning, interceding Christ. But John 20 does not allow that reduction. The risen Christ speaks of going to the Father. Easter is not simply the reversal of death. It is the beginning of Christ’s exalted heavenly reign as the crucified and risen Mediator.
This movement from resurrection to ascension naturally opens the sermon’s treatment of adoption. If Christ rises and ascends to the Father, then the question becomes: what does his return to the Father mean for those who are united to him?
The sermon handles adoption with doctrinal care. When Jesus says, “my Father and your Father, my God and your God,” the preacher rightly distinguishes Christ’s natural Sonship from our adoptive sonship. Christ goes to the Father as the only begotten Son. Believers go to the Father in him, by grace, as adopted sons and daughters. That is sound and precious theology.
But adoption appears somewhat abruptly. It is introduced as a beautiful doctrine, but not sufficiently as the answer to our alienation from God. The hearer is told the privilege, but not made to feel the estrangement that makes the privilege astonishing. We are not by nature children at peace in the Father’s house. In Adam, we are guilty, alienated, under wrath, and outside the household of grace. Adoption is glorious because sinners who deserve exclusion are brought near in the Son.
This is a recurring pattern in the sermon. Rich doctrines are named accurately, but they are not always developed through the darker realities that give them experiential weight. Adoption should land not merely as a comfort, but as a marvel: the risen Christ brings rebels home to his Father and makes his Father their Father.
That same pattern appears in the sermon’s treatment of death. Death is described movingly, but not as fully as it should be in an Easter sermon.
The sermon speaks movingly of death in terms of grief, sickness, war, poverty, persecution, temptation, bodily suffering, and the believer’s pilgrimage through a painful world. These are real and biblical concerns. The preacher is pastorally attentive to suffering saints, and that should be commended.
But Easter preaching must say more. Death is not merely the sorrow that bereaves us. It is the wages of sin. It is covenant curse. It is divine judgment. It is the judicial consequence of Adam’s fall. The Westminster Shorter Catechism describes fallen mankind as guilty in Adam, lacking original righteousness, corrupted in nature, under wrath and curse, and liable to death and to the pains of hell forever.
That darker background needed to be clearer. Without it, the empty tomb can sound chiefly like comfort for mourners rather than God’s public declaration that the crucified Saviour has triumphed over the covenant curse. Christ had no sin of his own. He bore the imputed guilt of his people. He endured wrath, curse, judgment, and death in their place. The Father raised him from the dead as the public vindication of his person and work. The sacrifice was accepted. The debt was paid. Death had no rightful claim upon him.
This would have strengthened the sermon’s call to trust Christ. The resurrection is not the cause that makes the cross effective after the fact. Rather, it is the Father’s public declaration that the cross has succeeded. If Christ is risen, then his offering has been accepted. If he is risen, then the guilt that separated his people from the Father has been answered. If he is risen, then faith does not rest on religious aspiration, but on the finished work of the crucified and risen Mediator.
This is where Easter preaching must move from fact to faith. It is not enough to say that the tomb was empty. The hearer must be summoned to receive and rest upon the Christ whose empty tomb declares the success of his sacrifice.
The sermon does say that one should put one’s trust in the Lord Jesus and take him as Lord and Saviour. That is good. But saving faith needed clearer definition.
Faith is not merely believing that the resurrection happened. Nor is it simply admiring the risen Christ, feeling moved by Mary’s encounter, or accepting Christian doctrine as true. Saving faith is receiving and resting upon Christ alone for salvation as he is offered in the gospel. Easter faith says not only, “Christ is risen,” but also, “Christ crucified and risen is my only righteousness before the Father. His blood answers for my guilt. His resurrection assures me that the Father has accepted him. I rest upon him alone.”
This distinction is crucial for this Easter series. A person may believe historical facts about Easter and yet not be born again. A person may accept that the tomb was empty and still not possess life in Christ. John’s Gospel presses beyond bare historical acknowledgment. John writes so that readers may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing they may have life in his name. Therefore John 20 sits inside John’s evangelistic purpose. It is not merely evidence for resurrection. It is written to bring sinners to life through faith in Christ.
That distinction leads directly to Mary Magdalene. She had evidence, but evidence alone did not open her eyes. She needed the voice of the risen Christ.
Mary’s recognition of Jesus offered the clearest doorway into the necessity of the new birth. She had evidence before her. She had the empty tomb. She had angelic testimony. She even had Jesus standing near her. Yet she did not recognize him until he called her by name.
The sermon presents this beautifully as a pastoral encounter, and it is that. But it is not only that. This moment resonates with the whole theology of John’s Gospel. The sheep hear the Shepherd’s voice. He calls his own by name. The dead hear the voice of the Son of God and live. Unless a man is born from above, he cannot see the kingdom of God. Mary’s eyes were opened when Christ called her. That is not less than tenderness, but it is more than tenderness. It is a living picture of sovereign, effectual calling.
This should have become the sermon’s decisive experiential moment. The question is not only whether Mary came to recognize Jesus. The question is whether we recognize the risen Christ savingly. We may stand before Easter evidence and remain blind. We may hear Easter preaching and remain dead. We may respect Jesus, admire Jesus, and even seek some religious comfort from Jesus, and yet not possess resurrection life.
Unless the risen Christ calls us by his Word and Spirit, we do not see, seek, trust, or possess him savingly. We must be born again. When these truths are faithfully preached, the Holy Spirit moves in the souls of sinners to respond to the Word of God.
Mary’s recognition, then, should not be treated only as a tender narrative detail. It should become an experimental mirror held up to the congregation.
The sermon’s portrait of Mary is psychologically vivid, but not sufficiently experimental. Mary is grieving, confused, devoted, and mistaken. The preacher sees this. He rightly observes that she is looking for the wrong thing in the wrong place. He also connects her with broader Johannine patterns: the woman at the well, the crowds seeking bread that perishes, and those who misunderstand Jesus because they remain fixed on earthly categories.
But the sermon does not fully turn Mary’s condition upon the hearer. Where do we seek the living among the dead? Where do we prefer a Jesus we can preserve, manage, quote, or remember, rather than the Jesus who rules, exposes, commands, and saves? Where do we deny the resurrection in practice by unbelief, prayerlessness, worldliness, fear of man, or refusal to repent?
The sermon identifies the danger of a mummified gospel, but it does not make the congregation feel the guilt of mummified Christianity in their own lives. That is what is meant by a lack of experimental tension. The sermon comforts more than it searches. It tells believers that the risen Christ is theirs by the Spirit, and that is precious. But it does not sufficiently expose how even religious people may live as though Christ were still dead.
Mary loved Christ, honoured him, sought him, and grieved for him, yet still misunderstood what had happened. That could have become a searching warning to churchgoers: one may be sincere, religiously affectionate, and deeply moved, and still not yet apprehend Christ rightly.
This pastoral imbalance becomes especially clear in the sermon’s final movement, where the comfort given to believers is warm and true, but the warning to the unconverted is too faint.
The final movement of the sermon assumes the believer. It speaks warmly to brothers and sisters facing sickness, poverty, war, temptation, persecution, and suffering. There is nothing wrong with that. Easter is comfort for the saints. The risen Christ is their life, hope, brother, and Lord.
But an Easter congregation may include the nominal, the self-deceived, the visiting, the hardened, the curious, and the unconverted. The sermon’s pastoral warmth would have been stronger if it had also said: if you are not born again, the risen Christ is not yet your comfort. He is your Judge.
That note of judgment is too faint. The risen Christ is not only brother, comforter, and ascended Lord for his people. He is also the coming Judge before whom every knee will bow. Easter preaching should not leave judgment behind at Good Friday. The resurrection declares that Jesus is Lord of all, and therefore all must repent and believe. John 5 teaches that the Father has committed judgment to the Son, and that the hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and come out, some to the resurrection of life and some to the resurrection of judgment. The Shorter Catechism likewise includes Christ’s coming to judge the world as part of his exaltation.
The empty tomb is saving comfort only to those who are in Christ. To those outside Christ, it is the announcement that the crucified one lives and will call all men to account.
This same concern applies to the sermon’s treatment of new creation. The doctrine is present, but the hearer is not sufficiently shown how one personally enters that resurrection life.
The sermon names new creation, and that is welcome. The preacher says that Christ’s rising ushers in the new creation and that old things have passed away and all things have become new in him. That is true and important.
But without further explanation, new creation can sound grand and almost abstract. New creation means that in the risen Christ, the last Adam, the age to come has broken into the present age. His resurrection is the firstfruits of the coming resurrection. Believers share in that life by union with him. Regeneration is the sinner’s personal entrance into that resurrection life. Final glorification is its consummation.
Here John 3 should have been brought into John 20. If Easter is the dawn of new creation, then the new birth is not an optional application. It is the way one enters the life of the new creation. To preach new creation without clearly pressing regeneration is to leave one of Easter’s deepest implications underdeveloped.
That brings us finally to the sermon’s treatment of the Holy Spirit. Since the sermon rightly connects the risen and ascended Christ to the Spirit’s presence with believers, the Spirit’s work deserved fuller doctrinal and experiential development.
The sermon’s treatment of the Holy Spirit is true, but too thin. The preacher rightly refuses to reduce the gift of the Spirit to tongues, miracles, or unusual experiences. He says that the great gift of the Spirit is that the risen, ascended Lord Jesus is ours, and that believers are in him by the Spirit. That is excellent.
But because the sermon ranges across John’s Gospel, it could have developed John’s Paraclete theology more fully. The Spirit gives new birth, bears witness to Christ, brings Christ’s words to remembrance, convicts the world concerning sin, righteousness, and judgment, glorifies Christ, and applies Christ’s redemption to his people.
This requires careful doctrinal precision. The Spirit does not transform us into Christ’s righteousness in the sense that sanctification becomes the ground of justification. Christ’s righteousness is imputed to us for justification. Yet the Spirit truly transforms us in sanctification, conforming us to Christ’s image and making the life of the risen Christ operative in us.
The sermon speaks of the Spirit, but does not adequately unfold the Spirit’s sovereign work in effectual calling, regeneration, faith, repentance, adoption, assurance, sanctification, and perseverance. The Westminster Shorter Catechism gives the needed framework: we are made partakers of the redemption purchased by Christ by the effectual application of it to us by his Holy Spirit.
This is the thread that gathers the whole critique together. The sermon is not weak because it lacks doctrinal truth. It is incomplete because those doctrines are not always pressed into the sinner’s need for new life and the believer’s present communion with the risen Christ.
This sermon is doctrinally serious, Christ-centred, and pastorally warm. It rightly proclaims the bodily resurrection of Christ, resists a merely memorial Jesus, connects resurrection to ascension, teaches adoption in the Son, and grounds Christian comfort in union with the risen and ascended Lord by the Holy Spirit. It is far stronger than much Easter preaching, and how blessed we would all be if more Easter sermons possessed such doctrinal substance.
Yet experientially, the sermon remains incomplete. Its weakness is not that it fails to preach the risen Christ, but that it does not sufficiently preach the sinner’s need to be made alive to see and trust the risen Christ. It gives us the living Lord, but does not adequately tell the dead sinner why he cannot see, seek, trust, or possess that Lord unless born from above. It names new creation, but does not clearly explain regeneration as personal entrance into that life. It names the Spirit, but does not sufficiently preach the Spirit’s sovereign application of redemption. It comforts believers, but does not sufficiently warn the religious hearer, expose unbelief, summon repentance, or declare the risen Christ as Judge.
Mary’s recognition of Jesus should have become the sermon’s decisive experiential moment. She had evidence, but she needed Christ’s call. So do we. We may stand before the empty tomb, hear the Easter proclamation, and still remain dead in our sin. The risen Shepherd must call us by name. The Spirit must give life. We must be born again.
Only then does Easter become not merely an event we confess, but the life of Christ in us.
More articles in this series are available at The New Birth in Exile
