208
April 1927
T h e
K i n g ’ s
B u s i n e s s
Significance of the Resurrection B y R ev . I. M. H aldeman New York
A subscriber has requested us to reprint the following article, which appeared in The Episcopal Recorder over thirty years ago. HE resurrection of Jesus Christ is the vertebrae of the Gospel. It is the Gospel. The good news that a man has risen from the dead. It is the one thing that rails off the testimony of Jesus Christ, from all other systems of religion. It was the one startling note that arrested the atten tion of the Athenian idlers, and drew multitudes to listen in the cities and villages, whithersoever the disciples preached; not because they exhorted to morality, or rightJ eous living,“or separation from thè ways of evil, or attain ment unto the highest measure of self-abnegation, did the people gather to hear, but because the disciples proclaimed, with unqualified utterance, that a man had risen from the dead, a man who had power to raise the dead, to give life and bring to judgment. This is the opening word, the transcendent statement in the Gospel message. And until we awake and return to preaching resurrection in all its bearings, both upon thè saved and the unsaved, the Church will continue to fail and weaken as a witness for the Christ of God. Indeed, we should arouse to the fact that the only method by which the Church may be saved from, and the dispensation delivered out of, the ethics of a mere humanitarianism, is by holding up this flashing wonder of the resurrection,* until all its multiform, significance may be seen and known. A joyful significance indeed to those who believe, and opening up vistas of glad anticipation to the heart of faith, but filled with thousand throated warnings to the unbe liever, and weighted with tremendous consequences to him who denies-it. ; R elation to S in Q uestion To the believer, the resurrection of Jesus Christ sig nifies that the question of sin has been settled forever. He; who died on the cross, died under the believer’s sin. • On the cross He changed places with the believer. Having assumed his burden, He could hot be released until He had completely and forever discharged the obligation. His ' resurrection is His release, and therefore His resurrection is the open faced testimony that the obligation has been met and discharged. And ’so long as He lives at God’s right hand, the question of sin and its judgment against theisinrièf, who believes in Him, cannot be reopened. God is satisfied. God is at rest. And there is nothing for the believing sinney to do, but rest rejoicingly where God rests, in thè risen man. Not only; has it settled the question of sin, but this resurrection of the Son of God has opened up also a new ..soupcfe of life to all who believe God’s testimony about ÌEffifi.' ,No longer need the believer draw his life or his daily living from the poisoned source in the first man, but from the last man, the second Adam. From this new source lie may, if he will, obtain new and spiritual life, a life for thè soul, a life for the body : even the very diseases of his body hiay be healed, not by restoring the life which is in the blood of the old Adam, but by bringing in the new resurrection life of the Son of God, so bringing it in
and living by His . faith that the believer may say even as an apostle has said, “I no longer live, but Christ liveth in me.”.; N ew S tand ing for B elievers The resurrection of Jesus Christ signifies that a new standing has been obtained for the believer. When Jesus died, He died on behalf of His people. And when He rose, in a two-fold way, He carried them up before God into the heaven of the heavens. He took them up there as the high priest took Israel in before Jehovah, repre sentatively, and in the second place He took them up as to essential life, and hid them with Himself in God. And thus before God, we are already arisen and seated in the heavenly places. Yea, “even as He is, so are we in this present world,” sons of God risen from the dead; and so near to God. “We cannot nearer be, For in the person of His Son, we are as near as He.” This resurrection is assurance to the living that the covenant dead shall rise. “Thy brother shall rise again,” He said, and when'the sister looked vaguely beyond Him to some far day, He said gently, and yet rebukingly, “I am the Resurrection and the Life, he that believeth on me, though he were dead (when I come) yet shall he live.” And thus when our hearts feel stifled, and memory brings back the “touch of a .vanished hand, and the sound of a voice that is still,” we look up yonder at the first sheaf, and we say softly, “In the end of the harvest He will come, and gather up His sheaves, and our dead shall rise.” P ledge of F uture C ond ition The resurrection of Christ is the pledge of what the believer himself shall be. The Son of God went up there as the forerunner, and by that He. said unto the Father: J’hexe,are others coming. I represent them. As I am, they shall be, for by and by, I shall go down again to bring them in, and present them without spot, a church without wrinkle or blemish, or any such thing, and therefore it is written, “When He shall appear, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.” We shall be like Him! Like Him in body, deathless, immortal, radiant with transfiguration glory, dynamic in power; and perfectly the agents of perfect spirits. Idke Him in character, and with Him to be associated in ever unfolding ways of administration and blessing. In short, the resurrection of Jesus Christ is, to all who believe, complete redemption and eternal salvation. To comprehend this, it is only necessary to suppose for a moment, that Jesus Christ!never rose from the dead. The cross becomes no longer a sacrifice, but the saddest of earth’s tragedies, and the midnight of failure. The faith we have rested in Him is- vain, He cannot uphold it, our sins have not been met or answered for, we are still un-: whipt of justice, unjustified and under the sentence of unillumined death. Those who died believing in Him have perished ip their sins, and hope is a word to mock us for lack of life. Oh! if it could be established that Mary’s Son never rose, there would fall on the bloom, and the gladness of time, such a blight that day would be turned
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