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TH E K I N G ’ S B U S I N E S S
Heaven and Immortality and of the recognition in Heaven of loved ones who have gone on before; there are prom ises of glad reunions in the city of God, and of many mansions which the Lord our God has gone to prepare for those who trust in Him: all guaranteed by the resur rection of Christ from the dead. The Eternal Deity of Jesus Christ In plain statements, Jesus proclaimed His oneness with God the Father. For example, He declared: “This is life eternal; that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou has sent” (John 17:3). If you want to see the deep suggestiveness of that state ment, put another name in place of the name of Jesus. Let it read like this: “This is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Simon Peter, whom thou hast sent.” One recoils at the thought of associating any human name in this way. But there is no revulsion of the soul from the assertion made by Jesus. He not merely associated Himself with the Father; He also plainly affirmed that He was and is God. He said, “He that hath seen me hath seen the Father” (John 14:9). Yes, and further, Jesus Christ accepted the homage of the soul, homage that alone belongs to God. When men bowed down to worship Paul, the apostle said: “Why do ye these things? We also are men of like passions with you” (Acts 14:14, 15). However, Thom as cried, “My Lord and my God,” and Jesus accepted the worship, telling Thomas that he was “blessed” for thus worshiping. Remember, too, that Jesus placed Himself in the center of the Trinity when He commanded His disciples to go and baptize believers, in the “name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.” Jesus also declared Himself as being absolutely es sential to the salvation of the soul, when He said, “He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life” (John 3:36). Suppose I believe on the Father, but not the Son of God. Then, “He that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him” (John 3:36). Jesus Christ changed the very structure of sin itself. Did you ever notice that while the Old Testament says that sin is this, and sin is that, and declares, “ the soul that sinneth, it shall die,” Jesus Christ said, “tie that believeth . . . shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned” (Mark 16:16)? Thus the sin—unbelief in Christ as Saviour—that had not expressed existence until Christ came, became the one great damning sin after His coming. Remember how Christ said to believers: “I will send him [the Holy Spirit] unto you. And when he is come, he will reprove the world of sin . . . because they believe not on me” (John 16:7-9). When one places these passages of Scripture, and many others, side by side, one is faced with but one conclusion: Jesus Christ was either the world’s greatest religious impostor, or He was the eternal Son of the eternal God. How are we to know which of these alternatives is true? The resurrection of Christ is the assured answer. Paul proclaimed in Romans 1:4 that Jesus Christ was “ declared to be the Son of God with power . . . by the resurrection from the ■dead.” When the scribes and Pharisees charged our Lord with speaking blasphemy, because He had claimed one ness .with the Father, His answer was: “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up” (John-2:19),
These words He spoke of His body (John 2:21). His resurrection, then, was the test of the truth of His claims to deity, and on the third day after His death, He demonstrated that He was the eternal Son of the eternal God. Once again, when the Jews said, “Master, we would see a sign from thee,” the Lord replied, “For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth” (Matt. 12:38-40). Thus our Lord staked His deity and sonship on His resurrection. This is the reason Christianity Has the power of God. Mohammed is dead; Buddha is dead; Confucius is dead; other religious leaders are dead. Jesus Christ alone is eternally alive, and being alive, He has assured forever that all the claims He made for Himself were the truth of God, and that He Himself is God. The Sufficiency of His Sacrifice The price of man’s redemption was the blood of Christ. But how do we know the sacrifice was sufficient to expiate sin? The answer is the empty tomb. However sincere the Lord Jesus Christ may have been, however holy in His conduct, however willing He was to lay down His life for us, if, after all, death had held Him under its power, then it is manifest that His death could not expiate our sin. If He could not recover His own soul and body from death and the grave, then He could not recover ours. The spectacle of a dead Christ has in it nothing of hope for sinners. If Christ had not risen, His life and death would have been, for those who knew Him, no more than a precious and a tragic memory—a memory that would not have warranted any sin-burdened soul in saying, “His death atoned for my sins; His blood redeemed me.” There is a beautiful passage in the Gospel of John, in which our Lord tells us: “I am the good shepherd, . . . and I lay down my life for the sheep . . . No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself” (John 10:14, 15,18). The Greek word translated “ lay down” may properly be rendered “ to pay down.” The death of Christ was not the involuntary sacrifice of His life, as a good shepherd might give his life in fighting wild beasts in the defense of his flock. No! No! It was the voluntary giving up of His life, by laying it down as a price paid for our redemption. This is exactly what He did. A certain Oriental custom well illustrates what the Lord Jesus Christ did in His work of redemption—of “ buying back” those who were enslaved to sin. In the market place in Bible lands it is customary for the purchaser and seller to bargain back and forth to de termine the price of an object offered for sale. The buyer lays his coins before the owner, and only when the seller picks up the money—literally, lifts the price, signifying his full satisfaction with the price paid—is the transaction recognized as complete. He was “ de livered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification” (Rom. 4:25). Jesus paid down His life, and God, by raising Him from the dead, pledged that the price had been accepted. Is it not plain that, without the resurrection of Christ from the dead, we are yet in our sins? Is it not equally plain, that if God raised Him from the dead, then God has accepted His great sacrifice, as being sufficient to justify the ungodly? (Continued on Page 15i)
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