06.02. The Resurrection

Chapter 2 The Resurrectioin THE resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ from the dead has established the belief in the immortality of the soul on the impregnable basis of fact. There was a time when it was a matter for speculation; an argument founded on the analogy of nature; an inference from the nature of the soul. But since the gospel of the resurrection has been proclaimed, life and immortality have been brought to light. We are no longer left to infer that men may rise and live in the hereafter. It is enough to say that a Man has risen, and He the second Adam, the representative Man, the type to which man is being conformed. And therefore, as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. The resurrection of Jesus Christ not only established Christianity by putting the divine seal on all that He had done and taught, but it filled the world with a new hope, an ecstacy of delight, a ravishment of joy, which were as great a contrast to the sad forebodings of paganism, and to the uncertainty of religious teachers, as the flowers of May to the gloom of December. We are so accustomed to the assertions of Christianity that we find it difficult to realize how vast was the transformation it wrought on the outlook of the soul of man. Like the women, it had been gazing into a sepulcher; now it greeted the risen Christ and shared His life. The New Testament is therefore full of this gladness. The new wine of the kingdom fermented vigorously in the new bottle-skins that swelled beneath its touch. The voice of Christian song awoke. The walls of the catacombs bear witness to a triumphant hope that laughed at death and leaped forward to embrace the life that beckoned it. At one time an enthusiasm for martyrdom seized upon the Church, and led multitudes to dare the uttermost penalties of their foes that they might sooner drink the cup of immortality. Women and children, youths and maidens eagerly pressed forward, through stake and wild beast, to quaff the water of life where it issues from the throne of God. But there are four main aspects in which the resurrection may be regarded:

First, that of the Epistle to the Hebrews. These Hebrew Christians had some reason to fear that the religion of Jesus Christ might be only a phase in the growth of a great religious system, and that it might pass away, as the patriarchal had done before the Levitical, or as the Levitical before Christianity. What security of tenure was there? What assurance that their children might not have to relinquish the Church, as they had been called upon to relinquish the temple? What if, after all, there were the element of transience, the seeds of decay, the little rift of dissolution in this system, of which the name of Jesus was center and circumference, beginning and end!

Such thoughts were met and forever dissipated by the argument based on the resurrection of the Lord Jesus which attested His perpetual existence and priesthood. Four times at least the words are repeated, "a priest forever." Twice the emphasis is laid on the fact that our Lord’s priesthood, unlike that of the Levitical priests, is indissoluble and inviolable. They were many in number, because hindered from continuing by reason of death; but He is perfected forevermore, and because He ever liveth is able to save to the uttermost of time, as well as of space, all who come unto God by Him.

Religious systems naturally circle around the priest. Christianity finds its center in Jesus. What He is, it must be; and since He is unchangeably the same, it can never be superseded or pass away; it can never wane as the stars of the old dispensation did in the growing glory of the new; it must abide as the one final revelation of God to man, and the way by which man may enter into fellowship with God. The second aspect is that of the Apostle Peter. He is preeminently the apostle of hope. He bids us be sober and hope patiently for the grace to be brought unto us at the revelation of Jesus Christ, and makes constant allusion to the glorious realities of the unseen and eternal world, on which the Christians of that dark time should set their thoughts. But all his hopes for himself and his converts were built on the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. He blesses God the Father for having begotten them again unto a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, unto an inheritance incorruptible, undefiled, and that fadeth not away. The hope of the inheritance was founded on the empty grave. The stone that was rolled away became the cornerstone of the new temple of hope. The traveler in Norway, who comes across homes and hamlets perched on almost inaccessible heights, or shut in by the mighty rampart of mountain ranges, will find no difficulty in imagining a community contained within itself, and oblivious to the existence of a great outer world. To such a society that world might be a subject of speculation, discussion, and argument. The villagers might be accustomed to accompany each other to a certain point on the mountain track, when summoned by an irresistible impulse to ascend it, but none of those who passed that point ever returned. Rumors, guesses, ancient legends might declare that there was a world beyond the mountain barriers to which the road led, and where all who had departed were living a fuller and richer life than before; yet still the information within their reach would be mere surmise. Hope would flicker like the will-o’-the-wisp over the marsh. But supposing that one of their number, whom they had known, went along that path, and after being absent for some days returned, and went often to and fro, declaring that the path led somewhere, that there was a better world on the other side, and that they should meet their beloved once more. Do you not see what a change would come over the people’s hopes? No longer shadowy and deceptive, but strong, clear, sure. An anchor so surely fixed as to bear the greatest strain. A light so clear that shadows of uncertainty must flee away. This is the Apostle Peter’s "living hope."

There is also the aspect presented in the writings of the Apostle Paul. As in respect to the death, so of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, the apostle’s constant thought is identification. "Quickened together with Christ and raised up with Him." "Raised together with Christ, seek those things which are above." If we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him. It is his one thought that in the death of Jesus he passed from the old world into the new, and that he was living on the shores of the new world, the world of resurrection and life, the world of which Jesus was King and Lord. The apostle, therefore, found in the Lord’s resurrection the daily motive and law of his life. He was always regulating his action by the laws of that new kingdom, which was unseen and eternal and whose laws were laid down by the Lord in His discourses and parables. This makes the difference between the Christian and the man of the world. They are occupied about similar circumstances, but the latter acts on the principles of the world, whose motive is selfishness, and its aim personal aggrandizement; while the former deals with every incident as a citizen of the new Jerusalem, and upon the principles of the Sermon on the Mount.

We are risen with Christ in the thought and .purpose of God, but we must open our natures wide to the Spirit of the resurrection, the Holy Ghost, that He may conform us to the ideal Easter-life. The exceeding greatness of God’s power that wrought in Christ, when He raised Him from the dead to His own right hand, is waiting to do as much for us, but we must yield to it. It will enter and transform our spirits, then permeate our souls, and finally, when the Lord shall come, it will reach and vitalize our bodies, which will rise in the likeness of the risen Lord: transformed from corruption to incorruption, from immortality to immortal youth.

Lastly, there is the aspect presented by the Apostle John. Before Christ’s resurrection man thought that night and death were supreme, out of which all things were born, and to which they went. Life might be fair and beautiful, but it was evanescent. Each flower fell before the inevitable scythe, or faded. Each day, whatever the promise of its dawn, died on the edge of the western wave. Each child, however beautiful, passed through maturity into death. And so they fabled the Prometheus, the Laocoon, the fall of Troy. Life was profoundly sad to these people, who tried to solve all problems by their intellect, and imagined that at death life became extinct, like the torches they extinguished at the tomb of their friends. The world, they thought, would become one day a sarcophagus of graves, while Erebus and Chaos resumed their ancient sway. To meet this, it was not enough to affirm that the Son of God lived: it was needful to say, also, that He had died, and having tasted the sharpness of death was living on its farther side. It was on this that the Master laid emphasis when He said to the exile of Patmos, "Fear not; I am the first and the last: and the Living One; and I became dead, and behold I am alive forevermore, and have the keys of death and of Hades." The Son of God entered the lists with Death to try the question as to which should be the reigning power in the universe, whether life or death, light or darkness, corruption or immortal strength and beauty. They grappled for mastery, each with the other, in the wilderness, on the cross, and in the grave. At first Death seemed victor. He appeared to triumph over the one Man, as over all other men. The Prince of Life was slain. The hour and power of darkness vaunted their supremacy. And Chaos seemed about to spoil the palace of Life. But it was only for a moment. It was not possible that Christ should see corruption or be holden of death. Life broke from the sheath and hush of death into the rapture of the Easter morn. Death was robbed of its sting, the grave of its victory, and the lord of death of his power to terrify. As the blessed Lord emerged from the empty tomb, leaving behind Him the adjusted cerements of death, stepping forth into a garden where the spring flowers exhaled their rarest fragrance, it was forever established that life was stronger than death, light than darkness, truth than lies, God than sin. In His life and death and resurrection the Lord Jesus has revealed a life which is stronger than death and hell, and which holds them in its thrall, locking and unlocking them at will. This life He waits to give. He binds it as a victor’s wreath about the brows of them that overcome. He carries it with Him as He rides forth, conquering and to conquer, until grace reigns through righteousness unto eternal life. So utterly subordinate to Christ are death and Hades that He is said to hold their keys. From the jailer He wrenched them, and He keeps them. In a sense they exist, but the one is His slave, and the other the vestibule of His palace. They serve His purpose. They do His will. If He opens the door, neither the hand of love, nor that of skill, can shut it. If He shuts, all the hatred of men or demons cannot force it open. The life of Jesus, which He has and gives, is not only impervious to all noxious influences, but has acquired the mastery of them, which it holds forevermore.

Such are the main aspects in which the sacred writers view the resurrection. Let us put their chalice to our lips and share its exhilarating joy. "Awake and sing, ye that dwell in the dust." Far up the heights, listen to the call of Life, bidding us arise and be gone. Let us leave behind the clinging mists of the valley, over which death has cast its shadow, and stand on the uplands where the sons of the resurrection live in a light that never dims, and amid joys which are never old.

Let us live as the sons of the resurrection. "You will never see me die," a veteran Christian was wont to say to his children; "I shall only fall asleep." And so it befell. By faith Enoch was translated that he should not see death. Let us claim our privilege in the risen Lord. It is appointed unto men once to die. We have died once in Him; and now let us venture all on His own sweet word: "He that liveth and believeth in Me shall never die."