March, 1936
T H E K I N G ' S B U S I N E S S
89
Although they speak of the survival of personality or the continued influence of Jesus, He is really a dead Christ to them. Paul told us long ago the fearful consequences o f such a position: If Christ be not raised, our preaching is vain, our faith is vain, we are false witnesses, we are still in our sins, the dead in Christ are perished, and we are of all men most miserable (1 Cor. 15:12-19). If death conquered Him, then He is defeated; He said He would rise and is therefore mistaken; then everything He said would be undependable, our faith is vain, and there is no hope beyond for us or others. If the gospel ends in a grave, it is a dead gospel. How can any one claim to be a Christian and then deny the very foundation stone of the resurrection ? When we come to those whose doctrine may be sound enough, so often do we find them seeking the living Christ at the sepulcher of formalism. I think of those earnest souls who go regularly to church, sit reverently through the order of service, but come away none the better. They merely have carried spices to the grave o f a dead Christ so far as actual experience of Him is concerned. They have no sense o f His living, animating Presence. They sing about Him, pay preachers to preach about Him, but so far as experimental knowledge o f Him is concerned, He is still in the tomb, and they carry to Him the spices of conventional respect. These worshipers believe, theoretically, that He is alive, and they may desire to know Him per sonally, but they go to the wrong place to find Him. These women were at the grave while Christ was out on the highways. We look for Him in a round of church duties while He is out among the high ways and hedges, and we ought to be there, too, witnessing for Him. This coming to the grave did no good, either to the women or to others. “ Go tell my brethren”— there was their duty. He is not a corpse to decorate with the mere tribute of our lips or to honor with ethical observances. He is out where cross the crowded ways of life, and He would have us out there testifying o f Him. L iving in the R eality op C hrist ’ s P resence We are so slow to believe that He really is living among us today. These women had heard Him say definitely that He would rise on the third day. How clearly He had declared i t ! “ As Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly; so shall the Son o f man be three days and three nights in the heart o f the earth” (Matt. 12:40). “ And he began to teach them, that the Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected o f the elders, and o f the chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again” (Mk. 8 :31 ). “ The Son of man is de livered into the hands o f men, and they shall kill him ; and after that he is killed, he shall rise the third day” (Mk. 9 :31). “ Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up . . . But he spake of the temple o f his body” (John 2:19, 21). When these promises were called to the attention of the women at the grave, they remembered them. But why did they not start to the grave that morning saying, “ This is the day He will rise” ? They should have gone in antici pation, but instead they went solemnly to a cemetery! So do believers claim a theoretical faith in the promises, but we do not live as though we actually believed He is a living Person among us. He promised to be with us all the days, even unto the end of the age, but instead o f joy fully walking the highways in glad testimony to Him who died but liveth evermore, we congregate on Sundays in for mal tribute and bring Him our spices, then get up on Monday and live as though He were still in the grave!
W itnessing on the H ighways w ith C hrist Christ did not manifest Himself to these women at the sepulcher. The grave symbolized unbelief ; they should have been Out looking for Him on the highway. “ He is not here, but is risen.” Christ does not manifest Himself at the grave o f unbelief. We think of Him as One who lived in the past; we leave Him in Galilee or in theology, but He is more real and alive than anything else in all the world. When we leave the sepulcher and go out on the highways of obedience, He will make Himself known: “ He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth m e : and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest, myself to Him” (John 14:21). W e who believe are identified with Christ in His death and resurrection (Rom. 6 :4 ). Let us in this connection not seek the living among the dead. We are not merely buried with Christ, but risen. We are not only to count ourselves dead unto sin, but also alive unto God. Some believers spend all their time being corpses, mortifying the doings of the body in a negative experience. That is the error of asceticism, seeking life through death. Rather, we are to live unto God and find death to sin realized by constant living unto God. We are to know “ the- expulsive power of a new affection.” Believers are not to stay in the grave any more than Christ did. We shall find life in daily experience as we abide in -Him, not merely in the grave o f death unto, sin, but also in His resurrection life out on-the highway o f obedience and testimony.' T he V anquished G rave . A closing kindred thought in another connec tion presents itself. We seek the living among the dead with regard to our loved ones who have gone to be with the Lord. Do we not often magnify the grave, leaving our flowers there as though every thing had ended with the burial ? But faith should look beyond the sepulcher to where these dear ones are with Christ waiting for us to meet them again. It was not their bodies that meant most, and there fore our real treasure is not in the grave. And even their bodies are to be reclaimed, so nothing is lost! While flowers at the grave have their place, let us not sorrow as they who have no hope. Let us not seek the living among the dead. He has promised, “ Because I live, ye shall live also.” Swinburne may sing that “ no life lives forever; dead men rise up never,” but we know better. Where He is, we shall be also. Beware of seeking the living among the dead. Christ is not dead, but risen. Let us walk the highways in. the power o f His resurrection, testifying that He ever liveth! The Power of the Resurrection In the resurrection of Christ, the power o f God finds its highest and most triumphant expression— the undoing o f sin’s bondage in death, the pledge o f ultimate and com plete victory in unending life. . . . The New Testament standard of power is resurrection power. It is the pure power o f omnipotence, unaided and unlimited. “ God . . . raised him up.” It is that power that makes all Christian experience possible . . . Resurrection power has three phases, corresponding to the three tenses o f time: (1 ) already applied to the body of Jesus, lifting it from the tomb; (2 ) now being applied to His spiritual body, believers united to Him through His death and resur rection; (3 ) awaiting its application to the bodies, first of believers, then of all men. Everything depends upon it. Well may we regard the resurrection as the Gibraltar of the Christian faith. — N orman B. H arrison .
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