Victory and Death

He accepted on the cross and endured a death inflicted by others, and above all by His enemies, which they thought dreadful and humiliating and not to be faced; so that this also being destroyed, both He Himself might be believed to be the Life, and the power of death be brought utterly to nothing. So something surprising and startling has happened; for the death that they thought to inflict as a disgrace was actually a monument of victory against death itself.

Athanasius of Alexandria

We are not, therefore, to regard the cross as defeat and the resurrection as victory. Rather, the cross was the victory won, and the resurrection the victory endorsed, proclaimed and demonstrated.

John Stott