The Resurrection

What does The Resurrection show?

Jesus stands in a white robe, His face lifted and His arms extended upward. The angel at the left presses both hands together; the one at the right crosses them at the chest. Their wings and pale clothing frame His upright figure against the dark rock and doorway.

At His feet, the stone slabs lie broken. A helmet and spear remain at the lower left, and the remains of a fire occupy the opposite corner: objects left behind make the guards’ absence noticeable. White lilies rise beside the robe. BYU’s exhibition curators read them as signs of purity and rebirth, adding living growth to a scene otherwise marked by fractured stone.

Bloch’s large altarpiece belongs to Sankt Jakobs Church in Copenhagen. It imagines a triumphant emergence that the Gospels do not narrate directly. They tell of the empty tomb and encounters with the risen Jesus without describing the moment His body leaves the grave. The kneeling angels, abandoned weapons and lilies gather the event’s meaning into one image. Seen in its church setting, the raised arms face people confessing the resurrection long after its first witnesses.

Featured in: 27 Carl Bloch Paintings of Jesus, Explained

What does Romans 10:8–9 mean?

In Romans 10, Paul describes the word of faith as near, in the mouth and in the heart. Verse 9 joins confessing Jesus as Lord with believing that God raised Him from the dead. The following verses extend the promise to everyone who calls on the Lord, without distinction between Jew and Greek.

Paul is explaining the response of faith, rather than describing what the resurrection looked like. Bloch’s altarpiece supplies a visual meditation on the event named in the verse. The lifted figure and the opened tomb direct attention toward the living Christ whom the passage invites its readers to acknowledge.

Romans 10:9 joins inward belief to spoken confession; Bloch places the risen Jesus before us as the center of both.

Sources

Sankt Jakobs Church — the church and its altarpiece. The owning church identifies Bloch’s Resurrection and shows the exact altarpiece.

National Museum of Denmark — the Uldum copy. The museum identifies the Copenhagen original as a painting of 1877 when documenting a later copy.

Romans 10 — Berean Standard Bible. Verses 5–13 connect the nearness of the word with belief, confession, and calling on the Lord.

BYU Museum of Art curators — Works of Grace. Exhibition discussion of the exact Sankt Jakobs altarpiece, including the lilies and the abandoned guards’ objects. Numerical speculation about the die is not adopted.