Faith's Anchorage

Byeee importance of the resurrection may be gathered from the position its proclamation occupied in the preaching of the apostles. It was the first article in the creed they professed

and proclaimed. When the apostles were surrounded with the

high priests, and the whole senate, and the council of the children of Israel, Peter as the spokesman of the rest, in declaring the facts for which they stood, and of which they claimed to be witnesses, put the resurrection in the forefront,! and this notwithstanding the fact that he knew it must run counter to the prejudices of that assembly, seeing that the high priest was himself a Sadducee, and therefore one who denied the resurrection of the body.

The words of Paul in writing his first letter to the Corinthians,

“I determined not to know anything among you, save Jesus Christ,

and Him crucified,”2 have almost perpetually been used as serving

to define the-whole subject of his preaching. A reasonable and careful examination of the context will prove that is a misinterpretation. “Jesus Christ and Him crucified” is not the whole burden of preaching, neither is it the final nor central fact thereof.

It would be far more correct to say that the keynote of apostolic

teaching was expressed by the same apostle when he wrote, “It is

Christ Jesus that died, yea, rather, that was raised from the dead.”3

This is not to minimise the value of the preaching of Christ crucified,

but if Christ crucified be all, then there is no value in preaching

Christ crucified. It was His resurrection from among the dead

that demonstrated the infinite value of the mystery of His death.

When the apostle declared to the Christians in Corinth that he was

determined not to know anything among them, save Jesus Christ

and Him crucified, the reason lay in the fact of their carnality.

All kinds of disorders had crept into the church, and the tone of

the life of the members was carnal and not spiritual. It was

necessary to hold their thinking in the realm of the Cross, for they had not learned this first lesson, and could not therefore be led into the deeper and fuller truth. *Acts 5. of Cor. 22> *Rom. 8. 34,

In his letter to the Romans Paul distinctly places the resurrection before the mind as the anchorage for faith unto salvation. “If thou shalt confess with thy mouth Jesus as Lord, and shalt believe in thy heart that God raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.’’* And writing in the epistle to the Corinthians he makes a simple statement that at once reveals the true place of the resurrection in preaching and in faith. “If Christ hath not been raised, then is our preaching vain, your faith also is vain. Yea, and we are found false witnesses of God; because we witnessed of God that He raised up Christ: Whom He raised not up, if so be that the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, neither hath Christ been raised: and if Christ hath not been raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins.” *

While the preaching and teaching of the apostles were constantly occupied with the fact of the Cross, as to its place and value in the economy of redemption, they never failed to direct attention to the resurrection as the central verity, demonstrating to man’s intelligence, and communicating to his life, the value of the Cross.

The resurrection gave meaning to all that had preceded it. By it the Cross was proved to be more than a tragic death, and the life of Jesus infinitely more than an example. Upon the fact of the historic resurrection stands or falls the whole fabric of Christianity. Unless Jesus of Nazareth actually came back from the grave, then indeed have we followed “cunningly devised fables”* and have been hopelessly deceived. This has been recognised by the very enemies of Christianity. It was Strauss who said that “the resurrection is the centre of the centre.”

In contemplating the resurrection as the anchorage of faith, first let the historic fact be taken for granted and considered as an anchorage; and secondly, let an enquiry be instituted as to whether faith has actually the anchorage of the resurrection.

I, Let the facts as recorded in the Gospels be accepted as true. An appreciation of the value thereof will be discovered, by suggesting the questions arising in the mind of man, seeking redemption as he stands outside the grave in which Christ has been laid to rest; and secondly, by noticing how such questions are perfectly answered as the grave is opened, and the Man of Nazareth comes forth.

*Rom. 10. 9, 22 Cor. 15. 14-17. *2 Peter 1, 16.

Having reverently attempted to trace in order the work of Jesus in fulfilment of the mission of redemption, the mind is now fixed upon His grave. Against the entrance of that tomb a stone is laid. Upon that stone is the seal of the Roman governor. Within the tomb there lies the dead body of the Man of Nazareth. The questions arising, are the questions of reverence, and yet are questions honestly forced upon the mind. These are two, which may thus be simply stated. His life in its perfection was ever lived with the culminating fact of death upon His consciousness. This has been seen in the study of the approach to the Cross. In the process of the death, the declared intention has been that of dealing with sin, and creating a new moral value to be placed at the disposal of such as are enslaved by sin. Has the Man of Nazareth succeeded in this great work?

Closely allied is the second question. In looking forward to His death this Man has spoken of it as the pathway to something infinitely more. Having declared that He had come that men might have life, He moreover claimed that though He laid down His life, He would take it again, in order that it might be communicated to those who needed life. Is He equal to this declared purpose? With great reverence the mind has contemplated the passing of the King into the darkened way where lay the enemies of the race, with the avowed purpose of gaining victory over them and accomplishing an exodus. In the death grapple in the darkness has He won, or have they: Is He merged beneath the swelling waters of the unfathomable sea, or are they: Standing before the sealed tomb of the Man of Nazareth, man asks in the deep consciousness of his heart’s need and anguish, whether there has been accomplished in the mystery of the Passion, that which will issue in the loosing of man from his sin: He asks moreover, whether the infinite promises of individual life, which will enable him to overcome the things that have overcome him, can be fulfilled 2 A question concerning pardon, and a question concerning power surge upon the mind in the presence of the entombed Jesus.

The contemplation of His life and death have kindled within the heart a sense of love towards Him, and even though He has failed, He must ever hold His place for what He was, in the love of those who have beheld the vision. He meant well, He strove towards redemption, yea, so mightily, that none other can ever repeat the process. Has He failed, or has He succeeded? He is in the grave, and there is no answer so long as He abide there.

It would seem as though the very statement of these questions is all that is necessary to an unfolding of the infinite value of the glorious fact of His resurrection. How precious it is to stand in imagination in the tender light of the first day of the week, in the company of the women who are first at the tomb, and to listen to the first uttering of the evangel of hope, as sounding from the empty grave, its music breaks upon the heart, “He is not here; for He is risen, even as He said. Come, see the place where the Lord lay.”1 What tenderness is in the message, what glad exultant joy, and yet what a touch of quiet irony. And yet again, what gentle rebuke. “He is risen, even as He said.” These women and these apostles He has told again and yet again that He would rise, and yet they had come bringing spices to anoint Him dead. The angel revealed heaven’s rebuke in the phrase “even as He said.” And then what quiet majestic irony. All sin and all malice had united to put Him within the silent tomb. And now the angel quietly says “Behold the place where the Lord lay.” The grave is there, but it is empty. He is not here, for He has risen superior to all the forces that united to silence and entomb Him. That resurrection is indeed the centre of the centre, and all the questions of the seeking heart are answered, in the radiant splendour of the light that streams from the vanquished grave.

The exodus is complete, the foes met in the darkness are mastered. The waters have not o’erwhelmed the King. In their unfathomable deeps, only the enemies have perished.

Almost with trembling, and yet reverently let this fact be stated from the other side. If the mighty work attempted had failed of accomplishment, the grave would have held Him. Unless He had vanquished sin, there could have been no resurrection. Unless He had still retained in the mystery of laying down His life the authority to take it again, there could have been no impartation of these values of His death, and the virtues of His life. His own perfect confidence in victory was declared when out of the darkness of the experience of the Cross He cried, “It is finished.”2 The

*Matt. 28. 6, *John 19. 30, absolute vindication of that cry is to be found in the resurrection, in which God answered declaring also “It is finished.”

Here then indeed is faith’s firm foundation, its assured anchorage. By that empty grave man knows that sin is put away, and the infinite value of the Atonement is at his disposal. By that grave man is assured of the fulfilment of the promises made, and he knows indeed that the life taken again is at his disposal. Glad unutterable peace possesses all the soul, as faith takes reasonable action upon the testimony of the resurrection, and trusts without question or controversy, the accomplished work of the Redeemer.

II. The remaining section of this chapter is that of a restatement of the arguments for the historic fact of resurrection. Having considered how that fact, if granted, is indeed the anchorage for faith, it now remains to repeat in briefest form, the lines of proof. And yet nothing can be of more importance. It is utterly false to declare that it is unimportant, whether the Man of Nazareth did actually rise from the dead. It is unfair, and illogical, and outside the final possibility of reason’s acceptance, to affirm that the value of the resurrection remains if its fact be denied. The idea that the matter of supreme importance is value, apart from fact is absurd, because it is presupposing an impossibility. The value has been created by the fact. Had there been no fact, there could have been no value. Permanent values can only exist upon the basis of established facts. A value of perpetual force has never been created upon the basis of a so-called working hypothesis. Sooner or later the hypothesis will almost invariably cease to work, and when that happens, the value passes like the mirage of the desert. If the hypothesis is to continue, it will be because it is finally demonstrated as being based upon fact.

The permanent value therefore is the outcome of established fact. All the working values of the Gospel of grace are founded upon the fact of the resurrection of Jesus.

To follow this statement further. It is declared that the value is here, and we need take no time in arguing concerning the fact. That may be abandoned seeing that the value is now at the use of men. This again is evidence of short-sightedness. Abandon the fact, and the value will be lost. This may not be seen immediately, but in the process of years it will be seen. When the great rock foundations of our faith are reckoned of no account, the values that have accrued may seem to abide, but they will inevitably, even if slowly, lose their transforming power.

The fact of the resurrection has created the value of high life. Once deny the fact, and its value will cease to grip and regulate the consciences of men, and they will revert, sooner or later, to the bestial materialistic ideal of life, which issues in such rottenness as that of Rome and of Greece. To trifle with the foundations of God is to render the building insecure. The actuality of the resurrection of the Man Jesus is necessary to the permanent value of the Christian Gospel.

It is therefore absolutely necessary that the question be asked, did He rise: Take the apostolic formula of supposition: “If Christ be not risen,” there are certain inevitable deductions will follow.

First, His teaching was false for He distinctly declared that He would rise again, and so faith’s central claim was never realised, and all other claims are valueless. His one final sign was that of His own resurrection. “What sign showest Thou unto us, seeing that Thou doest these things.” “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” “We would see a sign from Thee.” “As Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the whale; so shall the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.”2 When He said these things, men did not understand them. But looking back at them, it is perfectly patent that to the mind of the Master, the resurrection was the one indisputable seal of the Divinity of His mission. Yet again earnestly and solemnly it must be declared that if He did not rise, either He was Himself deceived, or He was intentionally a deceiver.

“If Christ be not risen,” then to adopt the first supposition, He was mistaken, for He thought He would; or else, to adopt the second, if He never expected to rise, He deliberately attempted to deceive men, by promising them that He would.

And yet again, if He did not rise, His work was the direst failure. At the erection of the Cross, there was indeed to all human seeming, a final failure for Him. His own were against Him, His disciples abandoned Him, and they are seen scattering as fast as they knew

John 2, 18, 19. *Matt. 12. 38, 40.

how to fishing nets. They had had a dream of exquisite beauty in the days of their discipleship, but the whole thing had melted like the mirage of the desert. To affirm this in the face of the stupendous victories of Christ during nineteen centuries is an absolute absurdity. If He did not rise, then the victories were not gained by Him, but by the men who were His followers, who reconstructed an idea out of a dismal failure, and made it the dominating and all-victorious force that it has been in human history.

And yet this cannot be, or they abandoned hope of the Christ, and scattered. There must have been something which regathered them, and reunited them. Not the Cross, but something other, for the Cross broke up the unity, and scattered the units. Not one of them waited to watch. They are seen drifting away, with the sadness of a great love for a lost Leader in their hearts, feeling that while He was true indeed to them, He was utterly mistaken, and that the only logical sequence of the Cross is that they shall go back to their fishing.

But to take the larger outlook. “If Christ be not risen,” then the atoning value of His death cannot be maintained, and it is worthy of careful notice that the doctrine of Atonement always goes, where men call in question the fact of the resurrection.

And yet again. “If Christ be not risen,” then the world has no authoritative message concerning the life hereafter. If indeed He did not return, then has man no well-established hope of seeing again those faces loved long since and lost awhile. A man often says — thoughtlessly in all probability — that no one has ever come back to tell us anything concerning the life beyond. That statement is absolutely correct if Christ be not risen. No one, however, whose faith is fastened upon the resurrection can make that assertion. One has come back, and in His coming has brought life and immortality to light.

If Christ be not risen then there is no type of humanity, for all the perfections which seem to be resident in Him are spoiled by the revelation of His ignorance, or His attempt to impose upon the credulity of man.

“If Christ be not risen” there is no new power at the disposal of man, and he is left alone to struggle, and altogether unavailingly, with the forces of evil.

If Christ did not rise, what then did happen? What was it that recalled that scattered group of frightened souls, and turned them into men and women of such marvellous force, that within one brief generation they had filled Jerusalem with their doctrine, spoken to the known world, and undermined the corrupt Roman empire 2 How are these facts to be accounted for? It may at once be declared that every attempt to account for the victories of the Church apart from the resurrection is philosophically absurd, and historically without proof.

It has been affirmed that the early disciples were guilty of fraud, that they invented a story. Will this stand the test of one moment’s consideration of the fact that for this particular story they endured almost untold suffering, being excommunicated, ostracised, and in thousands of cases put to death 2 It may be that in the history of the race, individual men have been found, who, swept by some fanaticism, have been willing to die for fraud. Cases have not been wanting in which men have suffered and perished, in order that evil may reach the goal, and something dastardly be accomplished. But this is not a case of isolated individuals, but a whole company and society of men and women and children, ever increasing in number, all of them more or less having to suffer in those early centuries; and the central fact, for the declaration of which they endured all things, was the story of the resurrection, which, forsooth, it is announced they invented. Let the apostles be the first and most conspicuous illustration. All of them save one died violent deaths, and he was exiled to a lonely island.

The breaking out of persecution as chronicled in the Acts of the Apostles was based upon the fact that these men declared that the Man Who had been crucified to put an end to His teaching and influence, had been raised, and was alive. It is not within the compass of rational consideration to believe that men who so suffered, suffered for a story themselves had invented.

Again it has been said that Jesus never really died, but that He swooned upon the Cross, and that being placed in a grave He recovered, How then, it may be asked, did He escape from the tomb so carefully guarded by Roman soldiers, and from grave-clothes so marvellously wrapped, as those of Eastern burials were: Of course such a statement is to take away not only resurrection, but the death of the Cross, and all the value connected with it.

And yet His death is proven by the fact that it was carried out by Roman authority, and Roman soldiers, and is a matter of world history, even apart from the story of the Gospels. In the crucifixion of malefactors the Romans were ever careful to be certain of death, and for this purpose broke the bones after a lapse of certain time. His bones were not broken for the simple reason that He was dead already. Before His body was granted to Joseph of Arimathea, the Roman governor made careful enquiry concerning the actuality of death.

And yet one other argument may be referred to. It is asserted that the disciples saw certain visionary appearances after the crucifixion, and that they thought they saw Him. Under stress and strain of terrible excitement they imagined they had a vision of their lost Leader again alive. The statement has been made in this connection that they saw what they wanted to see, as people overwrought often seem to do. The answer to such a statement is of the simplest. ~There need be no argument. They had no expectation of seeing Him again. No thought was further from their minds than that of His resurrection. As to the hypothesis of visionary appearances, it might have been considered if but one or two had testified. No less than ten distinct appearances are recorded, and these not only to individuals, but to companies and crowds. First to the women. Then to Peter. Then to two men walking to Emmaus. Then to ten apostles, and subsequently to eleven. ‘Yet later to seven men approaching the seashore. Yet again to the whole number of the apostles, and afterwards to five hundred brethren at once. Then to James, and finally to the little group gathered round Him when He ascended.

Is it conceivable that all these were deceived by visionary appearances, and were deceived that whatever else their faults and failure in the coming years, there is absolutely no record of any one of them questioning the historic fact of the resurrection? Of course it may now be said that this is all upon the authority of the New Testament. That is at once admitted. The authenticity of the Gospel narratives is not now under discussion, but is taken for granted. And therefore there may be added to the proofs already cited, the wonderful history of Saul of Tarsus, who declared through over thirty years of consistent Christian life and testimony, that the miraculous change wrought in his attitude towards Christ, and in the whole fibre of his character, was brought about by an actual vision of Jesus of Nazareth risen and glorified. It has been said that the true account of what happened to Saul of Tarsus was that he had an epileptic seizure in a thunderstorm. So puerile is such a statement, that the only answer possible to it, is a suggestion that if it be indeed true, then men ought always to pray for a multiplication of thunderstorms, and an epidemic of epilepsy.

And yet finally these outside proofs are not the supreme ones. The supreme proof is the Church of Jesus Christ. As has incidentally been seen, at the Cross the disciples were frightened, and scattered. By the way of resurrection these were gathered and held in patient waiting until the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, Whose coming created the new society, which consisted not merely in the gathering together of individuals, but their fusing into one mystic unity. Then followed the growth and influence of that Church in every successive century. Within its border to-day there is the deposit of the only regenerative Gospel that man has ever heard. The resurrection of Christ is proven to-day by the Church on earth, with its ordinances, its living ministry, its Gospel of grace, and the marvellous victories won in every age and in every land by its toil, in spite of its weakness and its worldliness. The Church of Christ is the supreme credential of Christ.

Turning from this subject of resurrection with the great glad exultant cry, Christ is risen, there is in the cry the affirmation of His perfect victory, the declaration of the Divine seal set upon that victory, and the proclamation of a sure anchorage for the faith of men. The living risen Christ is the Centre of the Church’s creed, the Creator of her character, and the Inspiration of her conduct. His resurrection is the clearest note in her battle-song. It is the sweetest, strongest music amid all her sorrows. It speaks of personal salvation. It promises the life that has no ending, it declares to all bereaved souls that “them also that are fallen asleep in Jesus will God bring with Him,”! and therefore the light of His resurrection falls in radiant beauty upon the graves where rest the dust of the holy dead.

r Thess. 4. 14.