What Is the Meaning of Resurrection?

According to the dictionary, there are three meanings to the word resurrection:

• a rising from the dead, or coming back to life
• the state of having risen from the dead
• a coming back into notice, practice, use, etc.; revival, as of old customs

However, when most people ask the meaning of the word resurrection, they are specifically looking for what it means in a religious context.

The literal definition of the word “resurrection” has its roots, in the Greek language, in the word “arising.”

• Resurrection is a process that may take place by which people are raised in order to return to earth.
• It may be considered, in many Biblical concepts, as the resurrection in which all beings are raised back into life in order to face the final judgment of God.

Meaning of Resurrection in Christianity

To fully understand what the meaning of resurrection is, you need to consider it in its religious context.

• The resurrection of Jesus, and many earlier resurrections in various religions such as the resurrection of the Egyptian god Osiris, carry the symbolism of light that comes after darkness.
• Resurrection is the process by which a period of darkness is ended by light, in the natural rhythm of things.
• Consider nature going into hibernation during the winter and “coming alive” again in the spring – this is the same basic concept.
• Resurrection and the idea of the body and identity of the being coming back to life after having been dead are considered the light at the end of a dark period of death.

Resurrection in the Old Testament

In the Old Testament, there are multiple examples of resurrections: just at the hands of Jesus, for example, Jairus’ daughter, the son of the widow of Nain, and Lazarus are all raised from the dead.

In Matthew 10:8, Jesus sends his disciples out to heal the sick and to raise the dead. The raising of the dead in the name of Jesus is an idea that still persists in religion today.

Resurrection in Other Religions

The meaning of resurrection, as it relates to religion, may be associated by many people with Christianity alone. Certainly the resurrection of Jesus is the most well-known in Western culture, but resurrection is a theme that appears numerous times in all religions. While each is surrounded with its own belief system and holds its own significance within the religion it represents, these ideas of resurrection nonetheless have some themes and ideas in common. 

Resurrection Versus Reincarnation

It’s important to note that some religions believe in reincarnation, which is similar to resurrection in some ways but is not the same thing.

Reincarnation is the process of souls being embodied in different ways again and again in order to achieve perfection; in many ways, this is a form of resurrection, and some scholars argue that the two ideas share common roots in the concept of beginning anew.

This can certainly be considered a rational viewpoint and is worthy of interesting study, but in terms of today’s definitions, strictly speaking, reincarnation and resurrection are two different things.

Resurrection is literally the idea of living again after having passed into death, meaning that the person leaves the state of death and rises again into life - in the same body and with the same identity as before.