The eighth century Eastern theologian John of Damascus has written one of the great hymns of the Christian church celebrating the redemptive joy and judicial benediction that flow from the resurrection of Christ:
Come, ye faithful, raise the strain of triumphant gladness;
God hath brought his Israel into joy from sadness;
Loosed from Pharaoh’s bitter yoke Jacob’s sons and daughters;
Led them with unmoistened foot through the Red Sea waters.‘Tis the spring of souls today; Christ hath burst his prison,
And from three days’ sleep in death, as a sun hath risen;
All the winter of our sins, long and dark, is flying
From his light, to whom we give laud and praise undying.Now the queen of seasons, bright with the day of splendor,
With the royal feast of feasts, comes its joy to render;
Comes to glad Jerusalem, who with true affection
Welcomes in unwearied strains Jesus’ resurrection.Neither might the gates of death, nor the tomb’s dark portal,
Nor the watchers, nor the seal hold thee as a mortal:
But today amidst thine own thou didst stand, bestowing
Thine own peace, which evermore passeth human knowing.
taken from “Raised for Our Justification” by Lee Irons which was published in the March/April 1996’s issue of Modern Reformation.