61. Crucifixion and Resurrection Belong Together
Crucifixion and Resurrection Belong Together This brings before us the other side of that great truth which, in type, in symbol and in doctrine, runs through Scripture from end to end. Without this other half of this great two-fold truth, Christ’s death would have been in vain, and our faith would be vain.
It was because Christ met fully and forever every demand which infinite holiness could possibly require of a substitute, that God raised Him from the dead. The resurrection is God’s sign, seal and signet, certifying to the whole moral universe that both the character and the work of His Son were wholly without flaw, and were therefore eternally sufficient for all who trusted in that work for them.
There is deep meaning in a wonderful statement in Christ’s upper room message to His disciples that some people miss. He is speaking of the coming of the Holy Spirit and of His work among men. He says that the Spirit will convince the world “of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment” (John 16:8). After saying that the one and only sin of which the Spirit will convince men is that of not believing on Him, he says that the Spirit will also convince them of righteousness, “because,” says He, “I go to my Father.”
Some so completely miss the real meaning in those words that they misquote Christ’s next statement and say: “of judgment to come.”But after the cross it is judgment past, “because the prince of this world hath been judged.” For Satan was judged and sentenced by the cross, the selfish principle which made him what he is and men what they are, being thereby forever condemned and cast out by the exaltation of the sacrificial principle on the cross, as the infinite and majestic glory of that principle was there fully displayed before the universe. When Satan through men put Christ to death, the cross became the throne of glory from which the sacrificial principle shall forever reign over the eternal ages. The resurrection then follows, and thus becomes God’s reversal of the world’s judgment of His Son. The last view the world ever had of Christ, He was hanging on a malefactor’s cross, the butt of sneers, contempt and ridicule, a condemned fraud, impostor and blasphemer of God. The world told God their estimate of His Son by hanging Him to a gibbet, thereby saying: That’s what we think of Him! “Away with such a fellow from the earth! for it is not fit that he should live” (Acts 22:22), as the Jews said of Paul. And when they laid Him in the tomb, the world never saw Him again. But His own saw Him, and had many “infallible proofs” that He was alive.
Thus did God speak and give the world His estimate of the One men had murdered. He said to His Son: “Come forth,” as He “loosed the pangs of death; because it was not possible that He should be held by it” (Acts 2:24). But why could not death hold Him? Because death had no claim on Him, for He was righteous. He purposely went into that dread realm “that through death He might bring to naught him that had the power of death, that is, the devil” (Hebrews 2:14). He brought the devil’s power of death to naught, therefore, when He deliberately took His own human body from that realm and repossessed it with a life which death can nevermore touch. Thus He “brought immortality to light” (2 Timothy 1:10); for immortality relates wholly to the body, never to the soul, for every soul as created by God is endowed with endless being.
Having “abolished death,” therefore, in the resurrection of His Son, God thus vindicates all Christ’s claims for Himself, establishing forever the perfect righteousness of Him whom the world had banished as a blasphemer. The Holy Spirit thus convinces the world of His righteousness through the fact that He was raised from the dead and taken to the Father (John 16:10). That is the eternally established evidence of Christ’s righteousness.