168
April 1929
T h e
K i n g ' s
B u s i n e s s
God knows how long. I do not. He has fixed the time when it shall awake, or when it shall be changed, but you can not get rid of it. It shall be raised. Christ was the firstfruits. It has been said that you can rest the claims of Christianity upon the Resurrection. The reason for that is, the Crucifixion could not have taken place had not Jesus Christ, who is God, very God of very God, been incarnated. I said a few moments ago that He was crucified not only in my stead but to sat isfy the moral government of God. It was God who made that sacrifice, but it had to be in human flesh. When it was said that "God so loved the 'world,” of course bulk is included, but God did not love the world in bulk. He loved it in the con crete. Jesus Christ died for the individual man; in the stead of the individual. Therefore, the Incarnation is essential to the whole superstructure, is essential to the Resurrection and made it inevitable; therefore, the existence of Christianity is proven by the Resurrection. I heard one of the greatest men of the country—Dr. Patton—say the other night that he was perfectly willing to rest the claim of Christianity upon the Resurrection. That was a perfectly correct statement, but he was not discussing the fact as I am this afternoon. What is Christianity? A religion? No. Christianity is not a religion. Christianity is the life of the eternal Son of God in the heart of the redeemed, controlled and directed by the Holy Ghost. Why! Religion is a formula of a dead man. Christianity is the pulsating heart of the ever-living Christ. That is thé difference. Buddha gave a philosophical view of cer tain moral tenets. Confucius did the same, and others have done the same. But they are dead and there are no fruits. Chris tianity lives and therefore you know ex perimentally that Jesus Christ rose from the dead. Of course if He had not you would still be in your sins and you would not have taken a seat in this auditorium this afternoon. And therefore I say that you can rest the claims for the existence of Christianity on the Resurrection. I speak reverently when I say that God, working on His own plan, would not have redeemed a soul had not Christ passed through these steps and come from the grave in the body in which He was cru cified. When God created man and man per mitted sin to enter and he lost his estate before God, then every means of human government was devised to bridge the gap again. Law does not save anyone, not even a poor criminal. Law was intended to discipline, not to save. So I say, God, working on His own plan, would not have redeemed a soul without Christ’s sacri-
were reduced in the laboratory of time to one unit,—they could not produce the sinless satisfaction. You cannot offer a single fallen man as a satisfaction for justice. That is logically impossible. Then where are you going to get a sinless satisfaction? Through Jo seph and Mary? No. Because the trans mission through Joseph would have trans mitted the taint. Therefore the Holy Ghost conceived the body in which the eternal Son of God came, in that superr naturally conceived body, that He might stand as my Substitute and say to the God head, “He is guilty and would justify Di vine providence in his execution, but I stand in his stead and for him and in his stead let the divine power of the violated moral government of God and the power of the Godhead fall on me. Let him go free. I am his Substitute, provided that he accepts Me as such.” What are you going to do with the moral government of God? It does not make any difference what you think about it. It does not make any difference how much you hate it! The law had to be satisfied. God was not angry with the sin ner, but He was angry with sin, and He hates sin today as much as He ever hated it—enough to give His Son to be my Sub stitute, that He might redeem me from sin if I will accept the Substitute. Third: The Resurrection of the body of Jesus Christ is an essential doctrine. When He submitted His soul in the hands of His Father, His body had to be bur ied. The Incarnation not only pointed to the Crucifixion, but it guaranteed the Resurrection. Perhaps this is not stressed as much as it ought to be stressed. There are those today who can say that the Resurrection is the essential doctrine. It is true that it is essential, but remember it is third removed from the origin of essentials and you could not have the Resurrection if the Incarnation had not preceded the Crucifixion. You can not get rid of the body. You are perfectly willing, some of you, to ac cept the doctrine and fact of Christ’s res urrection, but I am going to say to you that you can not get rid of the body in which you live. You can be separated from it for a while. It must sleep. It is the only thing about us that ever sleeps. The mind never slumbers and the soul can not sleep, but the body must sleep. Why! Your soul is eternal and eternity can not sleep. But the body sleeps every twenty-four hours so that the white cor puscles of the body may repair the dam age of the day. This is indicative of the long sleep. So when the soul leaves the body, the body sleeps, but you are not rid of the body. Its sleep is definitely fixed. A defi nite period of time the body shall sleep.
self manifest and manifested the Father, and therefore the Incarnation is the es sential doctrine on which rests the infal lible proof of the Trinity, the infallible proof of the Deity and the infallible proof of the conception of His body. They pre sent the Son of Man and the Son of God, born of a Virgin, the Saviour of the world. There are those who deny that the doctrine is essential, or that the fact is essential, and yet any logician knows that God, working on His own plan, could not have been just and at the same time the Justifier of the unjust, had not Jesus Christ been born of the Virgin, the incar nate Son of God. He came in that form, in our flesh, to assume our position, to take our place, in order that He might be our Substitute. I do not mean for a moment to limit God when I use the words “can not.” I use them to explain to a finite mind, as best I can, an infi nite truth. There was no way in the economy of God by which Jesus Christ could become my Substitute except through the Incarnation. I challenge any intellect or any scientist on earth to re fute that statement. Second: The doctrine of the Cruci fixion —the vicarious, substitutionary cru cifixion of Christ—was logical and inev itable after the Incarnation. In order for God to be manifest, He had to be mani fest in something. His decree was that He was to be manifest in the flesh, and when He became manifest in the flesh, the cross became inevitable. He w a s not incarnated simply for a demonstration, but for a definite and fixed purpose; namely, the purpose to die. Jesus Christ came into this world for no other pur pose than to die. He did not come to live, nor to be an example, nor to teach us how to die. He came to die in our stead, that We might live and never die. He came to die for us, but, in a more glorious sense, He came to die in our stead. Therefore His substitutionary death w.as essential to satisfy absolute justice and at the same time release the mercy of God that it might be extended to fallen men. Perhaps some student will ask, “Why do you say that the Crucifixion was log ical and essential to satisfy the justice of God?” The reason is this: The moral government of God is unshaken and can not be altered. It is fixed, eternal. There fore, when man rebelled against the moral government of God, when he lost his estate in that government, when he lost his status in that government, then there had to be satisfaction of .that government. Where are you going to get satisfaction? Man was fallen, therefore all the indi viduals that have lived, are now living, and may live, could not produce, if they
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