Practical Lessons of the Resurrection
Paul tells US, in the first chapter of Ephesians, that the same power which raised Christ from the dead is in us who believe. In the fourth chapter, he says of Jesus that, “having ascended on high. He led captivity captive and gave gifts unto men.’ In the third chapter of Philippians, he says of himself, ‘‘What things were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ. Yea, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus, my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung that I might win Christ.... That I may know Him and the power of His resurrection.’
The practical, every-day teaching of these Scriptures to me is this: That since Jesus rose from the dead and ascended on high, He puts at my disposal the same power to do and suffer His will that His Heavenly Father gave to Him.
Jesus “was crucified through weakness, yet He liveth by the power of God,” and when He rose from the dead He broke every fetter forged by Satan, sin and hell, and carried them captive, and opened a way by which every child of man may go free and enter into union with God through the in-dwelling Holy Ghost, and have the power of God working mightily and triumphantly in him. Bless God for ever! In ancient times victorious gpnerals carried captive the captains and kings whom they conquered, with all the wealth they could lay their hands upon, and when they returned to their own people, they distributed gifts from the spoils of the enemy. So Jesus, having triumphed over all the power of the enemy, distributes gifts of love and joy and faith and patience and spiritual insight and wisdom to His people, that shall enable them also to have power over all the power of the enemy.
He came as a lowly stranger into the iron furnace of this sin-cursed, devil-enslaved world. He toiled with its toiling millions. He suffered their sorrows and their sicknesses, their poverty and their temptations, and when He had impressed upon a few of them a faint sense of His divinity, hid under the humble garb of His humanity. He suffered their death and dashed their hopes, as they supposed, for ever. But He rose again and ascended “far above all principality and power, and might and dominion,’^ and is set down at the right hand of the Father as our Intercessor, our Advocate, and from that place of power He pleads our cause, watches our interests, guides our steps, strengthens our hearts, illuminates our minds, secures for us boundless gifts and graces and immunities, which we are at liberty to take by faith and use for the advancement of His kingdom of holiness and humility, of righteousness and joy in our hearts and the hearts of others.
It is His purpose that we should, in a most important sense, sustain the same relation to Him now that He sustained to His Heavenly Father in the days of His humanity, that we should be baptised with the same Spirit, and preach with the same authority, and secure the same results, and gain the same final and eternal victory, and at last sit down with Him on His Throne for evermore.
This being so, I am under as much obligation now to be holy, to be empowered by the Spirit, and to be about my Lord’s business, as I shall be in heaven. And, bless God, this is not only an obligation, but an inspiration 1
Who, having caught a glimpse of this high and holy purpose of His resurrected Lord, can ever be content again to grope in the malarial fogs of unbelief, and grovel on the dung-hill of this world’s poor little pleasures and riches and honours? Who would not forsake father and mother, and wife and children, and houses and lands, pluck out a right eye, cut off a right hand or foot, cast off every weight and easily-besetting sin, deny himself, take up his cross, esteem all this world’s gain as loss, and if needs be sacrifice his life in order to ^‘know the power of His resurrection,” enter into this “life hid with Christ in God” and not disappoint his Lord?
It was for this we were born, and to fall short of this will be infinite, eternal loss, and doom us to an everlasting night of shame and contempt.
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Can & person who was once sanctified and filled with the Holy Ghost, and became a backslider openly, be brought back to God and enjoy the same blessing, seeing that the sixth chapter of Hebrews says: For it is impossible for those who were once enlightened and have tasted of the heavenly gift and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost, and have tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the world to come, if they shall fall away, to renew them again unto repentance, seeing they crucify unto themselves the Son of God afresh and put Him to an open shame? ’’
Answer: A sanctified man who backslides and goes into open sin may be restored if in his inmost heart and soul he does not utterly go away from God, curse God in his heart and crucify Jesus to himself. A sanctified man may backslide and go into open sin and yet not go so far but that in his heart he hates himself rather than Jesus, and feels secret sorrow for his backsliding. It is not impossible to renew such a man as that to repentance, and many have repented and been saved and sanctified and made to praise God again for His infinite mercy. The devil very often wounds tender consciences with these verses, and tries hard to drive some who truly repent and are full of Godly sorrow to despair. So long as a man feels sorrow in his heart for his backslidings and longs to get back again and love and serve Jesus, he has not passed “the dead line.” But let backsliders beware, for they are on dangerous ground, and may through the deceitfulness of sin become so hardened that they will never find God any more.
If anyone who falls into open sin will repent as David did, and pray as he did in Psalm li., he will soon find that the multitude of God’s tender mercies is greater than he supposed.