GOD AND
THE RESURRECTION
Thus we now reach the highest level from
which the fact of the Resurrection can be viewed. Difficulty is solely proportional to the
power of the person meeting it: a difficulty insuperable to an infant, is,
to a man, no difficulty at all: to a Sadducean doubt - [ancient
and modern] - of resurrection Jesus says, “Ye do err, not knowing the Scriptures nor the POWER OF
GOD” (Matt. 22: 29). The apostle chosen at Pentecost to expound
the empty tomb devotes one verse to our Lord’s life, one
to His death, but twelve to His resurrection; for while the efficacy is in the
Cross, the demonstration is in the Tomb; and throughout he supremely reveals
God’s mind in raising His [only begotten] Son [out] from the dead.
“A man approved of God, by mighty works which
God did” (Acts 2: 22) - the
only Man whom God never blamed and never rebuked: “delivered
up by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God” – for from
the world’s foundation the sacrifice of the Lamb had dwelt in the heart of the
Father (Rev. 13: 8): “Whom God raised up” – for the
resurrection, as also the life and the death, was full of God. Now “the sting of
death is sin, and the power of sin is the law” (1
Cor. 15: 56); that is, it is broken law which inflicts death, and
maintains corruption; but the body of Jesus never corrupted – the only body
which never did – nor was His soul left in Hades; for the law is powerless against
absolute holiness; and the body was without corruption, for it was
without moral taint. “Having loosed the pangs of death: because it
was not possible that He should be holden of it.” So Peter proves that the Resurrection had
been of God’s lips a thousand years earlier.
“Thou wilt not leave my soul in Hades, neither wilt thou suffer THY HOLY ONE to see corruption.” For, had sin been in Christ, He could not
have risen;
and, had it not been on Christ, He would not have died:
but as sinless, He was free to bear the death-penalty for others; and as
pronounced sinless still by the resurrection, the sin He bore had been expiated
and consumed. “Declared to be the Son of God with power, according
to a spirit of holiness” – the force of Deity whereby He
paralyzed death, and forsook Hades – “by the [His] resurrection [out] of the dead”* (Rom. 1: 4). The God of inflexible justice and awful
holiness has loosed the pangs that were ours, and accepted our Sacrifice by
exalting it: if my sins were not consumed, He would not be where He is. “Being therefore by
the right hand of God exalted, God hath made Him both Lord and
Christ, this Jesus whom ye crucified.”
Was it any wonder that the disciples disbelieved for joy? For the Resurrection is not a prodigy: it is
a necessity; and less evidence would be ample to establish that which thus
meets our infinite moral need.
[* Christ’s
resurrection was a selective resurrection.
No other disembodied soul, either before or after His, has ever been
resurrected to immortality: and when He spoke to His disciples about His
resurrection, they “kept the matter to themselves,
discussing what (‘rising out [‘ek.’] from the dead:’
Gk.) meant” (Mark 9:
9.).]
But the Lord Jesus also participated in
the Resurrection. The angels said, “He is risen,” not He is raised:
others were raised, He rose: it was a conjoint work of the Godhead, in which He
was an equal share. “I lay down my life, that I may take it again. I have power to lay it down, and I
have power to take it again” (John
10: 17). Twelve times He is
recorded as foretelling his death in words free from all type of figure, and once
only (Matt. 26: 2) without naming
His rising from the dead in the same breath; and the figure He especially used
– the Temple rebuilt in three days – formed not only the ground-work of capital
charges (Matt. 26: 61), but was correctly understood
by
His enemies as a specific prophecy of resurrection (Matt. 27: 63).
“What sign showest Thou unto us?” “Destroy this temple,”
our Lord answered – for the [His] Resurrection is the only sign to be granted
to this generation (Matt. 12: 39) – “and in three days I will raise it up. But He spake of the temple of His body”
(John 2: 19, 21). Both temples, alike shrines of Godhead (Col. 2: 9), both born in one spot (Psa. 132: 6), and both rent with death-pangs
together (Matt. 27: 50), perished for reconstruction, our Lord in
three human days the
[* Moreover, our Lord, alone of all the
prophets, foretold the exact measure of the ‘little
while’ (John 16: 16) between the
moment of expiring and the unsealed tomb; a measure of time which makes it
impossible that the resurrection was the mere release of the spirit from the
body. That was instantaneous.]
So also the [Holy] Spirit is God’s great Agent in resurrection, to
which also He is the supreme Witness; though I am not aware that He is anywhere
stated to have raised the Lord. “If the Spirit of Him
that raised up Jesus from the dead dwelleth in you, He that raised up Christ
Jesus from the dead shall quicken also your mortal bodies through His Spirit that
dwelleth in you” (Rom. 8: 11). Nothing less than the Resurrection can
explain Pentecost. So it is the
Holy Ghost who uncovers the fatal consequences (1
Cor. 15: 12-19) of a denial of the Resurrection. For if Christ now lies in Palestine, (1) He is
a dead man still; a false prophet, therefore, of what never was, and
never can be, fulfilled; and, in His assertion – “I am
resurrection” (John 11: 25) – a
blasphemer: (2) the Gospel is a delusion – “our
preaching is vain” – for its central dogma is a myth: (3) the
Apostles are liars – “we are found false
[not, mistaken] witnesses of God” – utterers of
falsehood deliberately put into His mouth*: (4) atonement is as dead as the Lamb
– “your faith is vain” – for, as death is the
physical proof of sin, so sin’s obliteration can be physically proved only by
resurrection: (5) no soul has ever been regenerated – “ye
are yet in your sins” – so that all that is good and lovely and god-like
in character has been a mirage: (6) the godly are lost – “they also which are fallen asleep in Christ have perished”
– for if a lifeboat, seeking a foundered ship, never returns, it can only be
because both have been engulfed in a common destruction: and (7) we
disciples are fools – “of all men most pitiful”
– for while we have renounced earth, we have also lost heaven, and we have led
countless myriads into the same folly.
It is Deity alone which emptied the tomb of Christ: Christianity answers for the Resurrection with its life. But more perishes than the Christian faith,
if Christ lies beneath the Syrian blue.
History is shattered – for no other event was ever closely or so amply
evidenced; testimony is shattered – for no testimony can survive the ruin of
the testimony of holy apostles and prophets; character is shattered – for if
our Lord was thus exposed as a false prophet and blasphemer, no character can
be trusted again; heaven is shattered – for if the sinless Christ sank under
death, all escape for the sinful is impossible; and faith is shattered – for if
God has so dealt with His Son, trust in Him can never be restored. All this is a much less credible creed than
the Christian Faith. THE RESURRECTION [OF
CHRIST/MESSIAH] IS A FACT. Millions of believing souls had fallen asleep
with their faces set forward to a sinless Sacrifice; earth’s only holy millions
to-day have their faces turned upward to a living Christ: and “the Church is too holy for a foundation of rottenness, and
too real for a foundation of mist.”
[* It has been well expressed thus: “If false, you must suppose that twelve men of mean birth,
and of no education, formed the noblest scheme that ever entered into the mind
of men, adopted the most daring means of executing that scheme, and conducted
it with such address as to conceal the imposture under the semblance of
simplicity and virtue. You must suppose
that men guilty of blasphemy and falsehood united in an attempt, which has in
fact proved the most successful, for making the world virtuous; that they
formed this singular enterprise with the certain expectation of scorn and
persecution; that although conscious of one another’s villainy, none of them
ever thought of providing for his own security by disclosing the fraud, but,
amidst sufferings the most grievous, persevered in their conspiracy to cheat
the world into piety, honesty and benevolence.”]
MAN AND HIS
DESTINY
Thus the Resurrection, as we should
expect from a miracle so foretold, so evidenced, so unique, and so stupendous,
has changed the entire destiny of mankind.
For what exactly is ‘man’? Scripture regards the body, spirit and soul as ‘man.’ “The Lord God formed
man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his [still lifeless]
nostrils the breath of life” (Gen. 2: 7):
“they took the body of Jesus, and bound it in linen cloths” (John 19: 40): “Dorcas fell
sick and died; and they laid her in an upper chamber” (Acts 9: 37): in each case the body is the man. So also, only more emphatically, is the soul.
“I will
go down to Hades to my son mourning” (Gen.
37: 35): “this day shalt thou be with Me in
Paradise” (Luke 23: 43): “the garments which Dorcas made, while she was with
them” (Acts 9: 39):- in each
case the soul is the man: living humanity is spirit,
soul and body: “and her spirit returned, and she
rose up immediately” (Luke 8: 55); “for as the body apart from the spirit is dead”
(Jas. 2: 26):- in each case the spirit
gives life to the man. Thus
spirit, soul and body are essential elements in man; humanity is “body, soul, and spirit” (1
Thess. 5: 23). Death, therefore,
we had almost said, dehumanises: it is decomposition, a disintegration, a
dissolution, of ‘man’; it is a violent rending
asunder of his constituent elements, consequent on sin; and, to speak exactly,
though body, soul and spirit are each ‘man,’ neither
is man alone. The spirit returns to God; the body rots;
the soul departs to Hades: the man is dead.
Thus, when God deals finally with man He
deals, not with a corpse, nor with a disembodied soul, but with a man;
man, for all eternity, can never cease to be ‘man’:
his eternal destiny, whatever it be, must be the destiny of a man. Now our Lord, as the typical Man, is the One
who, alone hitherto, has passed through
all the processes of man. First, He
was truly man:- “they took the body of Jesus” (John 19: 40); “my soul
is exceeding sorrowful” (Matt. 26: 38);
“into Thy hands I comment My spirit” (Luke 23: 46).
Violent dissolution took place on
the Cross: “being put to death in the flesh,
but quickened in the spirit; in which He went and preached
unto the spirits in prison” (1 Pet. 3: 19). After three days and three nights, the angels
said:- “Why seek ye the living among the
dead? He is not here” – His corpse is not in the graveyard [in Joseph’s tomb],
His soul is not left in Hades (Acts 2: 31) – “but is risen”
(Luke 24: 5); that is, the recumbent body
stands again upon its feet, and the
spirit is ‘returned’ into it (Luke 8: 55).
Christ, born of a woman, was born full man: He died as a man dies: and
He rose with body, soul and spirit re-knit
in everlasting resurrection. “I am the Living One; and I was dead, and behold, I am alive
for evermore” (Rev. 1: 18).
A passage now arises before us than
which perhaps the whole Bible itself contains none more solemn. “For since by
[a] man came death” – dissolution,
decomposition, disintegration – “by [a] man came also the resurrection of the dead” (1 Cor. 15: 21)* - the re-knitting, the individual
re-composition, of the whole man;
and this, for the entire race. “I AM RESURRECTION AND LIFE” (John 11: 25): since Christ was made man, and is resurrection,
resurrection has become an essential part of human nature. “For as in Adam all
die, so in Christ shall all be made alive” – not
regenerated, but made alive physically: for as physical death
poured itself through Adam into all the race, so physical resurrection becomes
integral to humanity from the second federal Head of mankind. Because Christ was a Man, and rose, all
rise; for all partake of the same flesh with Christ: but believers are
“one spirit with the Lord” (1 Cor. 6: 17): so, while unbelief severs from all
benefits of the Passion, no man can escape the consequent resurrection. The Incarnation empties every grave: for
Christ is “the first-born from the dead,” “the first-born of all creation” (Col. 1: 15, 18).
The eternal destiny of our race now
stands revealed. “The last enemy that shall be destroyed” – for
all mankind – “is death”: man, after entering on resurrection, never
suffers dissolution again: “it is appointed unto
men once
to die” (Heb. 9: 27): full manhood
follows forever. Thus the redeemed are
wholly redeemed: redeemed in spirit, soul and also in (Rom.
8: 23), the man, as man, is redeemed utterly and
eternally. What then of the lost? “Be not afraid of
them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear Him
which is able to destroy both soul and body in Gehenna”
(Matt. 10: 28). The wicked equally abide as men forever: “they twain were cast alive” – that is, spirit,
soul and body – “into the lake of fire, which is the second
death” (Rev. 19: 20; 21: 8). The Second Death is not decomposition, the
splitting up of the personality, as was the First: much less is it
annihilation: it is the final and eternal abode of the undivided man. “This is the second death, even the lake of fire. And if any was not found written in the book
of life, he was cast into the lake of fire” (Rev.
20: 14). “For this corruptible must put on incorruption”: and when God says
it must,
it is certain that it will.
Unbeliever, what a destiny! And what a Christ! “I am a substance nobler than the stars”:
they must perish, but, for better or worse, we endure: none can escape the
momentous consequences of the incarnation.
It twists its roots under and about all that is human, and lifts the
entire race into resurrection from death; and the new relation which humanity
bears towards Christ is glorious, or fearful, according to what we do with
him. And what a Christ! Christ is so truly man that He actually died
as a man dies: He is so truly God that He not only raised Himself, but
the whole of humanity, in His rising.
The rising of one is the peculiar prerogative of
the Godhead: who but the Son of God, by the mere fact of association in the
flesh, could raise all?
For who is it that lay on the slab of
rock? The Lord has Himself answered in
one of the most wonderful utterances that ever fell even from the lips of the
Son of God. “I AM RESURRECTION AND LIFE” (John 11: 25).
What is resurrection? It is life
in battle with death, and conqueror: it is the tremendous
creative energy of the Deity put forth over a corpse. Jesus does not say, I produce resurrection,
or, I confer resurrection, or, I intercede to obtain resurrection: He says, - “I am resurrection.”
Resurrection, that is, is not some unknown law about to operate
suddenly: it is the personal intervention of Christ: where he moves,
graves empty. Therefore our Lord’s
resurrection is itself the touchstone of all salvation. For to acknowledge its absolute truth, and
therefore to cry with Thomas – “My Lord and my God!” is to confess the
sinner’s need, to embrace the sinless Sacrifice, and to submit to the provided
righteousness. “Say
not in thy heart, Who shall ascend into heaven?” – for the Incarnation has occurred;
“or, Who shall descend into the abyss?” – for
the Resurrection [of Christ/Messiah] has occurred: and between these two
points Christ’s righteousness, the imputed obedience of the Son of God, has
been wrought out, and is ready for faith to grasp. “Not having a
righteousness of mine own, even that which is of the law, but that
[righteousness] which is through faith in Christ, the
righteousness which is from God UPON [resting as a garment upon the shoulders of] faith” (Phil. 3: 9; Isa.
61: 10). THEREFORE “if thou shalt confess with thy
mouth Jesus as LORD, and shalt believe in thy heart that God raised Him [out] from the dead, THOU SHALT BE SAVED” (
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