12-Chapter 5. The Triumph Of The Resurrection
Chapter 5. The Triumph Of The Resurrection
Christ is risen! With this victorious cry the gospel has passed through the lands. The message of the cross is at the same time a message of the resurrection (Acts 1:22; Acts 2:32). In this lies its invincibility. In itself a return of the Redeemer to heaven without a bodily resurrection were conceivable. The Son of God would have remained the Living One had He, immediately after death, returned to the glory of the Father in spiritual nature. Before His incarnation He had existed eternally in heaven without a human body, and had nevertheless been the fountain and prince of all created life (Acts 3:15; John 1:4). No: continued existence after death and ascent to the heavenly throne were not of necessity the same as resurrection of the body. And yet this last was precisely the prerequisite for the carrying through of the redemption, for it alone was:
[1] The Full Outworking of the Redeemer’s Victory over Death By a return to heaven without resurrection of the body Christ would not have been displayed as the complete conqueror of death (Psalms 16:10). He would have triumphed over death only spiritually and morally, but His victory over physical death would not have come to the front in a royal manner. His victory would have been, as it were, a “two-thirds” triumph but not a complete triumph; for of the threefold personality only two parts, spirit and soul, but not the body also, would have been included in the triumph of His resurrection. But still more. Without bodily resurrection Christ would not have been revealed as in any degree the conqueror of death. For death is not the cessation of existence but is the dissolution of the human personality, it is not extinction of being but the tearing asunder of the connexion between spirit, soul, and body. Conquest of death must therefore be displayed in the restoration of this oneness, in the re-establishing of this organic connexion of spirit, soul, and body, which, from the point of view of the body, means the reuniting of the body with the soul and spirit. Therefore without bodily resurrection no sort of triumph of life (1 Corinthians 15:54-57), without bodily resurrection no plain fruit of the victory. Only by resurrection of the body can it be shown that death has been conquered. And we must have so decided even did we not have in the four Gospels the testimony to the empty grave of Jesus (Matthew 28:1-20; Mark 16:1-20; Luke 24:1-53; John 20:1-31).
Further, the resurrection was necessary as [2] The Presupposition for the Arising of Faith in the Redeemed
“For faith comes through preaching” (Romans 10:14-17), and this goes back to the faith of the first period. The individual believes through the testimony of those who have believed before him, and their faith is unthinkable apart from the faith of the first generation (Ephesians 2:20). But it was precisely this faith that had collapsed after Christ’s death on the cross (John 10:19; John 10:25; Luke 24:21-22; Mark 16:14), and it was only re-established by the bodily resurrection of the Lord and His subsequent appearances as the Risen One (John 20:8; John 20:20; 1 Peter 1:21). Without the bodily resurrection no thinking man would ever have believed upon the Crucified One; for His end would have contradicted His own prior announcements of His resurrection and triumph (Matthew 16:21; Matthew 17:23; Matthew 20:19; comp. 12:40; John 2:19). The resurrection of the Lord is therefore the seal of the Father on the person and work of the Son (Acts 2:32). By His resurrection Christ is demonstrated to be the Prophet and the Son of God (Romans 1:4). The resurrection is the seal on
1. the testimony of the prophets (Psalms 16:10; Hosea 6:2; the “sign of Jonah,” Matthew 12:39-40; Isaiah 53:8-10);
2. the testimony of Jesus to Himself (Matthew 16:21; John 2:19-22);
3. the testimony of His apostles (1 Corinthians 15:15);
4. the truth that Jesus is the Son of God (Romans 1:4; Acts 13:33);
5. the Kingship of Jesus (Acts 13:34);
6. the full authority of Jesus as universal Judge (Acts 17:31); and it guarantees 7. our own future resurrection and glory (1 Thessalonians 4:14).
Therefore it is the most authentic and best attested event in the history of salvation. The first epistle to the Corinthians is acknowledged as genuine by the most radical critics of the Bible. It is in this epistle that Paul, appealing to hundreds of still living witnesses, sets before readers, some of whom were opposing and therefore critical (1 Corinthians 15:6), the following four chief proofs: i. The proof of experience. The Corinthians had themselves been saved through the message concerning the One who had experienced the resurrection of the body (1 Corinthians 15:1-2); ii. The proof from Scripture. Christ had not only died but had also been raised “according to the Scriptures” (1 Corinthians 15:3-4); iii. The proof of witnesses. More than half a thousand men, under the most diverse circumstances, had personally seen Him after His resurrection (1 Corinthians 15:5-12); iv. The proof from the necessity of the event in the history of salvation. “Is Christ not risen, then our preaching is vain, and your faith is vain; then those who have slept in Christ are lost; then we are the most wretched of all men” (1 Corinthians 15:13-19).
Consequently the cross and the resurrection belong together. The Crucified One dies so as to rise (John 10:17), the Risen One lives for ever as the Crucified One (1 Corinthians 2:2; Revelation 5:6) 11
Footnote 11: According to 1 Corinthians 2:2, Paul preached Christ as the “Crucified One,” where the perfect participle (estauromenon) expresses continuance; that is, that Christ as the Risen One is viewed as eternally connected with the cross. Thus Thomas also sees the Risen One with His wound-marks (John 20:27), and John sees the Lamb at the throne of glory “as if it had been slain” (Revelation 5:6).
Therefore the saving effects of the redemption were always brought into connexion with both of these facts in unison, thus the reconciliation of those to be led to faith in Christ (Romans 5:10); the putting away of sin in believers (Romans 6:10-11); their living fellowship with the Redeemer (1 Thessalonians 5:10); the lordship of Christ (Romans 14:9); His heavenly priesthood (Romans 8:34); His coming union with His glorified church (1 Thessalonians 4:14 ff.); the perpetuation of the love of His heavenly Father (John 10:17). The foregoing shows that the resurrection, in connexion with the cross, is [3] The Foundation of New Life for Believers That is to say, the sin offering of Christ can benefit the guilty sinner only when he believes on Him as the counterpart of the uplifted serpent (John 3:14), as the Lamb of God Who has taken away the sin of the world (John 1:29). But the resurrection was necessary to make this faith possible. For faith in the Lamb of God had not been possible apart from the display of the complete victory of Golgotha (John 19:30) by the triumph of the resurrection.
Therefore only in the raised and exalted Mediator does the salvation won for us on the cross become available. Only in the Lamb exalted to glory does grace stand open to all. And because we have thus through faith received the forgiveness of sins, and thereby in the judgment of God have been made righteous and become His children, therefore God has sent the Spirit of His Son into our hearts (Galatians 4:6). So the blessed fruit of that which took place in the sacrificial death of the Son of God, and in the reconciliation, is an organic union of the believer with Christ (Romans 6:5; Galatians 2:19-20), a fellowship of the redeemed in the death and life of the Redeemer. It is, as it were, an eating and drinking of His flesh and His blood (John 6:53; John 6:32-35; John 6:48-58), with which we may compare the Old Testament type of the eating of the sacrifice (Leviticus 7:32-34; Exodus 12:3 ff.; 1 Corinthians 5:7; Hebrews 13:10); and so Christ for us becomes Christ in us the hope of glory (Colossians 1:27).
Thus in the doctrine of substitution the Scripture deals with something much higher than a merely intellectual process of subtraction and addition, a mechanical accounting and carrying forward of guilt and merit, a sort of mercantile matter-of-fact entering or not entering the items of debit and credit. It is concerned with the organic interweaving of a completely new life-principle, divine, personal, all-penetrating.
Christ the Giver can give the gifts only in Himself. Only thus does He become really the Giver (2 Corinthians 9:15). He not only prepares the way and shows the way but is Himself the way (John 14:6); for He is not only Propitiator but propitiation (1 John 2:2; 1 John 4:10), not only Redeemer but redemption (1 Corinthians 1:30). The personal is spoken of as the thing, that the thing may be shown to be personal. Therefore faith in Him is not only an external assent, but a faith that brings into union with Him personally, that is into12 His fellowship, and with Paul and all the redeemed the watchword “in Christ” is the word that describes the origin and essence of their experience of salvation.
Footnote 12: Gk. pisteuein eis (e.g. Acts 10:43; Php 1:29; 1 Peter 1:8). With Paul the expression “in Christ” is found 164 times, as “justified in Christ” (Galatians 2:17), “God’s righteousness in him” (2 Corinthians 5:21). Of this blessed, life-penetrating secret all his letters speak, each in its particular and specially prominent aspect.
Thus: in Romans—justification in Christ; in Corinthians—sanctification in Christ; in Galatians—freedom in Christ; in Ephesians—oneness in Christ; in Philippians—joy in Christ; in Colossians—fulness in Christ; in Thessalonians—glorification in Christ.
Therefore the propitiatory sacrifice of Christ can only righteously benefit the guilty sinner if he is at the same time united to the holy Redeemer by the new birth. But the organic can only exist by the union formed by a head and members having the same nature (Hebrews 2:14-17), and therefore Christ must remain a man for ever. Only as man can He be the head of a human organism. But the body is of the essence of man. It is not “a prison of the soul,” as Plato, Aristotle, and Origen thought, but it belongs to the very idea of manhood. Without the body the man is “naked,” unclothed (2 Corinthians 5:3). And therefore Christ also, since He is to remain a man, requires eternally a man’s body. Without bodily resurrection Christ would, as it were, have left the human order, and could not be the completer and transfigurer of the work of redemption He wrought by His incarnation (Hebrews 2:14).
Therefore the bodily resurrection denoted the return of the Redeemer to full human nature, the immortalizing of His humanity in transfigured, glorified form. It indicated that Christ is the “last Adam” (Romans 5:12-21), the “second man” from heaven (1 Corinthians 15:45; 1 Corinthians 15:47), and that in heaven, at the right hand of God (Acts 1:11; Daniel 7:13; Revelation 1:13; Php 3:21), He is the creative Beginner and the organic “Head” (Ephesians 1:22) of a redeemed spiritual mankind. At the same time we face here an immense strain upon our powers of thought. For how can the Redeemer after His exaltation in glory be still “man,” and, moreover, in the form of a transfigured body ? Did He not Himself say to His own, “Behold, I am with you all the days” ? and above all, is He not the second Person in the Godhead ? Here appears anew the abyss of the eternal. The super-spatial and the super-temporal are to us wholly beyond explanation. When we here speak, as the Bible speaks, of the “material” and “corporeal,” it all has for us a sense which is incomprehensible. But the “eternal” is the very sphere into which Christ has gone.
Nevertheless the Holy Scripture teaches this eternal humanity of the Redeemer. It is this very fact which guarantees the operation and permanence of His work. His victory over death must include the endless continuance of His humanity. Only as the “Firstborn among many brethren” (Romans 8:29; Colossians 1:18 f.; 8Hebrews 2:11 f.) can He be the “cause of eternal salvation” (Hebrews 2:10; Hebrews 5:9; Hebrews 6:20). Only so can become possible the renewing of the individual and that the redeemed shall exist “in Christ,” only so are they “begotten again unto a living hope” (1 Peter 1:3). and united to a church as its members (Ephesians 4:15-16). Thus they can now experience the “power of His resurrection” (Php 3:10), and walk before Him in newness of life as risen with Him (Romans 6:5-11), and made alive with Him (Ephesians 2:5), and can in a living manner serve Him the living God (Hebrews 9:14; Romans 7:4-6). This all shows that the bringing again to life of the Crucified One was not alone a work of the Father on the Son, not simply a sealing and ratifying of His person after His finished work (Acts 2:32), and so “a resuscitation through the glory of Father” (Romans 6:4). At the same time, beyond all this, it was an indispensable element , in fact the most glorious wonder in the work of the Son Himself, as being, so to speak, a self-resuscitation 13 accomplished by the voluntary exercise of the power of His own Life (John 2:19).”Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life that I may take it again”(John 10:17-18).
Footnote 13: In the resuscitation Christ is passive, in the resurrection He is active. As resuscitation the Easter wonder is an act of the Father, as resurrection it is an act of the Son. In resuscitation the evidential preponderates, in resurrection the organic. But both are only different aspects of the same event.
Finally the resurrection is:
[4] The Basis of the Transfiguration of the World As such it unfolds itself in three ever-widening circles. It guarantees: in the life of the individual—the resurrection of the body; in the life of the earth—the appearing of the kingdom of glory; in the life of the universe—the transfigured new creation.
1. The resurrection of the body is possible solely through the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. His resurrection is the transfiguration of humanity in Him as its Firstfruits (1 Corinthians 15:20; 1 Corinthians 15:23; Colossians 1:18). The resuscitation of many Old Testament saints at His resurrection shows that the way to the resurrection of the redeemed is open (Matthew 27:52-53). His triumph over death guarantees to us our own resurrection (Romans 8:11; 1 Thessalonians 4:14). His body of glory is the pattern and type of our own future bodies (Php 3:20-21; 1 Corinthians 15:49). The resurrection of the “firstfruits” is the basis of all resurrection (John 5:26-29).
Even the resurrection of judgment is committed to the Son for the very reason that “He is a Son of man’ (John 5:27; John 5:29). So all resurrection, of both believers and unbelievers, is guaranteed by the resurrection of the last Adam. “Since through a man death came, so also through a man (the) resurrection of the dead. Even as in Adam all die, thus also in the Christ will all be made alive (1 Corinthians 15:21-22). Further
2. The Millennial Kingdom is based entirely on the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. For the promise given to David spoke of an eternal transfigured human kingdom (2 Samuel 7:13). But for this purpose an eternal human King is required, even the Son of man, who will yet appear on the clouds of heaven (Daniel 7:13; Matthew 26:64; Revelation 1:13). The continuing humanity of Christ in resurrection is thus the fulfilment in principle of the prophecy of the kingdom as given to David. The resurrection of the King is the foundation for the “re-birth” (Matthew 19:28) of the Messianic world, and that which will take place at the return of Christ will be only the historical manifestation of this “fulfilment” given long since at His first coming.
Therefore Paul says: “that God raised him (Jesus) from the dead—he declared thus: I will give you the inviolable blessings promised to David” (Acts 13:34; Isaiah 55:3; comp. Acts 2:30-31). Spiritual resurrection of Israel (Ezekiel 37:1-14): spiritual re-birth of the nations (Psalms 87:4-6; Isaiah 25:7-8; Isaiah 19:21-25); renewing of nature (Isaiah 41:18; Isaiah 55:12-13): elimination from the animal world of the destructive power of wild beasts (Isaiah 11:6-7): increase of the life-energy and the age of mankind (Isaiah 65:20; Isaiah 65:22)—in this manner in due time will the life-energy of the Risen One fill the whole earth, and the visible rule of Messiah will be re-birth and new life for the earthly creation (Matthew 19:28). But even the Millennial kingdom is only an introduction and prelude. The final goal is
3. The New Heaven and the New Earth after the great white throne (Revelation 21:1; comp. 20:11-15). Then will not only soul and spirit but matter and nature be completely transfigured. In the heavenly Jerusalem there will be gold “transparent as glass” (Revelation 21:18-21). Not simply spirit but spirit embodiment is the end of the ways of God with His creatures. But there also the event of Easter is the creative basis. The resurrection of the Heir of all things is the guarantee of the new heaven and the new earth. In His risen body matter was for the first time transfigured (John 20:27, and especially Luke 24:39-43), and there by the principle that matter is capable of transfiguration was revealed in the history of salvation and guaranteed. In this respect also Christ is the firstfruits (1 Corinthians 15:20; 1 Corinthians 15:23). From that time all transfiguration of heaven and earth rests on the resurrection of the body of the Redeemer; and after the great white throne the living activity of the Risen One will be displayed in the most universal manner. Therefore the final and most inclusive import of the resurrection is this: “Behold, I create a new heaven and a new earth” (Isaiah 65:17; 2 Peter 3:13). 14 Footnote 14: The significances of the resurrection given under [1]-[4] above are as follows:
1. Christological-cosmic, 2. Subjective-apologetic, 3. Objective-organic, 4. Eschatological-universal.