THE K I N G ’ S B U S I N E S S
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Had God not raised Jesus from the dead, how should we have known whether He was what He claimed to he? The chief priests challenged God to deliver Jesus from the cross if He were His Son. God did more than they demanded. To deliver a man in the very act of being crucified would have been spectacular. To deliver a dead man from death itself was impossible apart from God. Noté very carefully that Jesus did not become the Son of God through the resurrection. He was declared to be the Son of God. II. It Teaches That the Sacrifice Of fered by Jesus for the Redemption of Men Is Accepted by God. How could we have known that Jesus had really accomplished our salvation by His death on the cross had God not raised Him from the dead? The resur rection of Jesus is God’s receipt in full, the debt is paid and the score wiped out. “Jesus paid it all; All to Him I owe; Sin had left a crimson stain; He washed it white as snow.” The resur rection is our guarantee that when Jesus says, “Thy sins be forgiven thee,” He has a right to do so, that eternal life is a real gift from Him over whom death has no power. See 1 Corin thians 15:12-19. III. It Teaches That We Also Shall Be Raised Prom the Dead. The actual resurrection of the human body of Jesus is the pledge and proof to every believer that his own body shall be raised from the grave. See Romans 8:11; 1 Cor. 15:20-23; l.Thess. 4:13- 18; Phil. 3:20, 21; 2 Cor. 5:1-5. In the interval between the death of the believer and the raising of his body at our Lord’s second coming, the be liever is incomplete. He is a redeemed spirit waiting for his redeemed body. The Westminster Shorter Catechism sums up concisely the teachings of the Scriptures thus: “The souls of believ ers at death are made perfect in holi
ness, and their bodies being united to Christ do rest in the grave till the resur rection.” Paul, in the passage in 2 Cor. 5, but voices the longing of every believer.- i IV. It Teaches the Kind of a Body That Our Resurrected Body Will Be. Paul describes it as a ‘body “con formed to the body of His glory,” Phil. 3:21. Note carefully how the resur rected body of Jesus was not .subject to the limitations of its ante-resurrection state, though it was still a real, material human body. The resurrected Jesus could eat and drink, could Be seen and handled, could walk and talk with His disciples. It was, better—it is a flesh and bones body. Luke 24:39, 42, .43. But this resurrected body has strange, new properties, that make it perfectly suited to the needs of redeemed spirits. Jesus could appear and disappear at will. Doors and walls were no longer barriers. Is not this a body worth longing for? V. It Teaches the Might of the Power That Now Works in the Believer to Make Him Holy. Eph. 1:19, 20; 3:20, 21. How many real believers, tired and weary in the struggle against sin and Satan have cried out with Paul: “O wretched man that I am who shall deliver me from this body of death?” Rom. 7:24. How many have found Paul’s triumphant solution of the prob lem? The power of the resurrected Christ is the power, and the only power, that can set the believer free. If that power was sufficient to deliver Him from the bondage of death, it is amply sufficient to deliver you from the bond age of sin. Have you surrendered yourself to Him that He may deliver you? ate ate It is the Easter time. Our thoughts are occupied with the Lord Jesus, and
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