The Resurrection

“He is not here: for he is risen, as he said.” Matt, xxviii. 6.

“TEXT to the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, His resurrection is the most important event in human history. Indeed it may be said that three facts concerning Jesus Christ are so intimately related as to be of equal importance — His incarnation, His crucifixion and His resurrection.

Without the incarnation neither the crucifixion nor the resurrection would have been possible; without the crucifixion the incarnation would have been of no avail for the salvation of a guilty world; without the resurrection the fact of the incarnation, and the eflicacy of the crucifixion would have lacked the attestation to which Jesus Himself appealed as the final “sign.”

anb 0ti)tt 3fnterpretation£( That Jesus rose from the dead has been called the best attested fact in human history. It rests upon the following concurrent testimony:

First, the personal witnesses of the resurrection were numerous, they saw Him repeatedly, knew Him intimately, knew His stature, features, the tones of His voice. They were the holiest men the world ever saw, incapable of falsehood. They were incredulous, hard to be convinced. They bore witness to the fact immediately, when their testimony, if false, could have been refuted. Every true Christian is a personal witness that Jesus is alive.

The resurrection of Jesus proves His deity, “Declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead:”

Completes our justification,

The fact-Jesus rose.

1 Cor. XV.
5-8.

John XX.
14-29.

Matt,
xxviii. 16,
17.

Mark xvi.
9-11.

Luke xxiv.

John XX.
24-28.

Rom. i. 4.

Rom. iv.

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I Thess.
iv. 14.

Eph. 1. 22,

Heb. xiii.

Heb. vii.
25.

“Who was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification;”

Makes the believer’s own resurrection sure, “For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him;”

Gives to the Church a living
head, ‘’ And gave him to be the
head over all things to the
Church;”

Restores to the sheep of God their great Shepherd, ‘’ Now the God of peace, that brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant, make you perfect in every good work to do his will;”

Establishes His High Priestly office, “Wherefore he is able to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them.”

anil (J^tfjer 3nterpretation£{ Gives the sinning believer an Advocate, “If any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father.”

Gives the Church a blessed hope, “Looking for that blessed hope.”

And the earth a coming King, “And the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David, and he shall reign over the house of Jacob forever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end.”

Surely it is well that the tremendous fact of the resurrection of Christ should be restored, in our faith and motive, to its biblical prominence. No one can read the Acts and the Epistles without seeing that the resurrection was, next to the cross, the central theme of the Apostolic preaching.

To-day both the incarnation and the resurrection are denied by men who claim that such denial is possible within evangelical lines; but

I John ii.

Titus ii. 13.

Luke i.
30-33.

Acts XV.
14-16.

Preach the
resurrection.

Modern
denial.

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I Cor. XV.

Tim. i.

2 Tim. ii. 17, 18. the Scriptures say that if Jesus did not rise there is no resurrection, our faith is vain, we are yet in our sins, and they who sleep in Jesus are perished.

No wonder that around this truth the Apostles, by the Spirit, threw the sternest sanctions, as in the case of Hymenaeus who, erring at this vital point, was delivered unto Satan that he might learn not to blaspheme.

Perhaps Peter best expresses the effect of the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, when he says, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to his abundant mercy hath begotten us again into a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ.”

That it was the re-birth of Christianity is, of course, patent to the reader of the Gospels and the Acts.. Nothing is more evident than that Christianity went into the tomb of anti 0ttt Snterpretationsf Joseph of Arimathea, with the body of Christ.

But something occurred which suddenly lifted that group of sorrowing men and women into an ecstasy of faith and joy, and they said it was the coming again to life and activity of their Lord and Master.

The fact that Christianity exists to-day proves that Jesus rose, but the final and unanswerable proof is the appearance of Jesus to Saul.

Harnack, the greatest of patristic scholars, contends that Saul was converted within ten years after the crucifixion. The resurrection had been, during all those years, the very central subject of controversy. This means that upon the denial of the resurrection all the dogmatism of SauPs strong, positive nature had concentrated.

The slow years passed. Then, not to some credulous, wonder-loving peasant or myth-dreamer, but

Luke xxiv.
19.

The final
proof.

Acts. xxvi.
12-20.

go

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What the
risen Christ
is doing.

Eph. i. 22f
23.

I Cor. xii.

I Cor. xii.
8-11.

Acts xvi. 7.

Heb. vii.
25.

to the very arch-denier himself, scholar, thinker, man of action, man of strong tenacity of belief, of inflexible will — the unanswerable demonstration was given.

The man who, after this, doubts the fact of the resurrection is not accessible to conviction by proof concerning any fact which he does not wish to believe.

The ministry of the risen Christ is in three parts: He is Shepherd of the sheep of God, according to Psalm xxiii. and John x.; the High Priest of the redeemed, according to John xvii. and Heb. vii.-viii.; the Head of the Church, ‘* Which is his body, the fulness of him that filleth all in all.”

As such He baptizes with the Spirit all who believe, thus uniting them to His body, endues them with gifts, guides them in service, renewing their life from His own, and procures for them the mercies anti (0tf)er Snterpretationsi needful for a pilgrim body in the world.

Never can the believer know the exceeding greatness of His power to usward who believe, nor enter into spiritual rest and joy, until he comprehends, in some measure at least, this three-fold resurrection work of Christ.

There is a disproportionate attention given to the Jewish earth-ministry of our Lord during three and one half years in Judea and Galilee; and a consequent neglect of the mighty and varied ministry of the ascended Christ, which has already lasted over nineteen hundred years. “This ought ye to have done, and not to have left the other undone.”

A caution.

Matt. X.
5, 6.

Matt. XV.
24.

Rom. XV. 8.

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The ministry of comfort

John X. 3.

Luke xxiv.
34.

Luke xxiv.
13-30.

John XX,
19, 20.

Tear
blinded,

John XX,
11-15.