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‘And if Christ be not risen, then is out preaching vain, and your faith is also vain.’
1Co_15:14
I. This was the dilemma in which St. Paul seems to place them in his argument: Either Christ is risen, or the Christianity you profess is not the Christianity which Apostles preach; if you will sacrifice the one, you must be content to part with the other.
II. Must not this be the thought of any reverent mind, Take heed what ye do, ye know not what it may be when you claim the liberty to accept or reject any part of the revelation of God. A precept that seems unnecessary, or a doctrine which you think may be as well dispensed with, if you reject one or the other, you may be undermining the very foundations of the faith.
III. God’s revelation cannot be treated by fragments.—It cannot be pared away to suit the supposed necessities of modern thought, or to meet the ever-shifting difficulties of this or that class of minds. Nay, not thus can we contend for the faith once delivered to the saints. And though, doubtless, some truths may be rejected with less risk to the faith than others, just as some limbs of the body may be amputated without danger to life itself, yet this could never be with such a doctrine as that of the resurrection.
How can you and I know that He Who died on Calvary has indeed made atonement for sin unless we know that He is God? And how can we know that He is God except by the resurrection? How am I to know that the future is lighted up for me and for those who have gone before with a bright and glorious hope except by the resurrection?
—
Archdeacon Robeson.
Illustration‘We are told, in The Life of R. W. Dale, that, in the course of writing an Easter sermon, he came to a new realisation of the fact that Christ is alive. “I got up,” said Dr. Dale, in describing this experience, “and walked about repeating, ‘Christ is living, Christ is living!’ At first it seemed strange and hardly true; but at last it came upon me as a burst of sudden glory; yes, Christ is living. It was to me a new discovery. I thought that all along I had believed it; but not until that moment did I feel sure about it.” ’
THE CERTAINTY OF THE RESURRECTION
Let us think of some of the grounds for that certainty.
I. The Resurrection not expected.—First of all we have this fact, and I do not think its importance can be overlooked, the belief in our Lord’s Resurrection did not come with the Apostles. None of them were prepared for it. None of them in the least expected it. They did not even faintly hope that it might be.
II. The Resurrection a fact.—But after the Resurrection they have no longer any hesitation in believing in the reality of this stupendous miracle. Their conviction is firm and unshakable. It is the one subject of their teaching. It is the firm basis upon which all faith and teaching rests. It is a truth concerning which they cannot now keep silent; for which they are now prepared to die. For this extraordinary change in their whole moral attitude there is only one possible explanation, namely, that they had sufficient evidence to convince them that what they had once thought to be not only improbable but impossible had actually taken place, and that Christ had truly risen—the object of their worship.
III. The foundation of the Christian Church.—Apart from the Resurrection of Christ, and from the Apostles’ belief in it, how could they ever have attempted to do that which they did attempt, and which they succeeded in doing, namely, to found the Christian Church? What object, what motive could they have had to do anything at all, if Christ had not risen? Then the awful tragedy of Good Friday must have been the end. If it was the end of Christ it must have been the end of their work. When I ask myself what possible inducement they could have had to proceed further I am at a loss to think; for remember, they had no message to tell, they had no Gospel to proclaim. They could only tell of absolute and utter failure on the part of One in Whom they had trusted. It is no exaggeration to say that, in these circumstances, the founding of the Christian Church and its marvellous growth, apart from the Resurrection, would have been an even greater miracle, greater even than the Resurrection itself, and more utterly inexplicable. But, given the Resurrection, given that absolute certainty concerning it, all that is inexplicable and impossible otherwise at once becomes possible and explicable.
The Resurrection of Christ is the sole reasonable explanation of the existence to this day of Christianity.
Rev. Canon C. P. Greene.
Illustration‘Thousands and tens of thousands,’ said Dr. Arnold, ‘have gone through the evidence for the Resurrection piece by piece, as carefully as ever judge summed up on a most important case. I have myself done it many times over, not to persuade others, but to satisfy myself. I have been used for many years to study the history of other times, and to examine and weigh the evidence of those who have written about them, and I know of no one fact in the history of mankind which is proved by better and fuller evidence of every sort, to the understanding of a fair inquirer.’
THE NEED OF AN OBJECTIVE PROPITIATION
I. Practically, then, the words ‘If Christ be not risen’ mean ‘If Christ our Sacrifice were not, as such, accepted, with an acceptance evidenced by His Resurrection.’ If He were not—what then? Then, says the Apostle, not anxiously arguing but, as we have seen, appealing to open and indubitable certainties, you, you Corinthian converts and disciples, ‘are yet in your sins.’
II. How shall we explain this phrase, ‘in your sins’? Verbally, it might mean easily and naturally ‘under the power of your sins,’ involved in their coil, as they twist themselves serpentwise about you, and bind you down from obedience to your Lord. But then this interpretation, verbally possible, is negatived absolutely by fact. The Corinthians are contemplated by St. Paul as men actually and in fact delivered from the power of sin. And if so, he cannot mean here—when he says that, ex hypothesi, ‘Ye are yet in your sins’—that they were still in their old bad life. For as a matter of fact they were not. Whether the Lord were risen or not risen, fact was fact; they were morally liberated men. Then the only proper meaning left to the phrase is the meaning of judicial implication in sin. ‘Ye are yet in your sins’ in the sense of condemnation. Your Lord’s sacrifice has, on the hypothesis that the tomb never gave Him up, not won its end. Then your guilt is yet upon your heads.
III. Could there be a more impressive witness to the inexorable need of an objective propitiation, an atoning sacrifice, looking not merely man-ward to convict, to soften, to attract, but also and first God-ward, to satisfy? Here, as a fact, were men who had, biographically, found a wonderful moral transformation. They had been sorry for their sins; they had forsaken them; they stood as victors over them. Yes, but suppose per impossibile that all this had happened, and yet that the God-ward propitiation, the ‘deliverance up because of our transgressions,’ had not availed. Then the moral transfiguration would not for one hour have met and cancelled the judicial forfeit. They would be yet in their sins. They would be in condemnation still.
—
Bishop H. C. G. Moule.
Illustration‘If we do not mistake, the vast side of truth indicated here is one which calls for reverent and even urgent reaffirmation. It has occurred to us sometimes to hear or to read statements of the plan and purpose of, for instance, missionary enterprise in which the sin of man is indeed put solemnly in view, but only as a power on the will needing to be broken, not as an offence against the law needing, before everything else, to be lawfully forgiven. Let those teachers in the Church who have with joy made the fullest discoveries of the blissful power of the indwelling Lord to “subdue iniquities” and set free the whole soul for His service be the first also (none will do this more effectually than they) to emphasise the antecedent and everlasting necessity of the Lord for us in His “sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction.” Without Him thus, where, for all other blessings, should we be? Our faith would be vain; it would rest upon a cloud. We should be “yet in our sins.” ’