Resurrection

What are SOME OF THE GREAT TRUTHS CONFIRMED BY THE RESURRECTION of Jesus, and in the belief of which the believer is built up, by this glorious and life-inspiring doctrine? They are many and vast. Indeed, it would not be too much to affirm of the entire system of Divine truth, that it depended mainly for its evidence upon the single fact of Christ's resurrection from the dead. In the first place, it establishes the Bible to be the revelation of God. If the types which shadowed forth, and the prophecies which predicted, the resurrection of the Lord, received not their substance and their fulfilment in the accomplishment of that fact, then the Scriptures were not true, the types were meaningless, and the predictions were false. For thus do they unite in setting forth this glorious and precious truth. First, as it regards the types. What was the receiving back of Isaac after he had been laid upon the altar, and the knife raised to slay him, but the shadowing forth of Christ's resurrection? As the binding of him upon the wood prefigured the sacrificial death of Christ, so the unbinding of him from the altar, and his surrender to his father the third day from the time that he had received the command to sacrifice him, prefigured the risen life of Christ. Significant type! radiant with the glory of the risen Jesus! In the one part we see Him dying, in the other part we see Him rising. The one shadows forth His atoning sacrifice, the other His risen glory. And here did the mind of Abraham rest. His towering faith rose above the type; he looked beyond the shadow. His soul embraced the crucified and the risen Lord. Strong in the exercise of a prospective faith, he beheld before him as vividly, and he reposed in as firmly, the dying and the living Redeemer, as did John when the sweet voice broke upon his ear, "I am He that lives, and was dead." "By faith Abraham, when he was tried, offered up Isaac. . . . Accounting that God was able to raise him up even from the dead from where also he received him in a figure."

A part of the ceremony observed in the purification of the leper, points to the same glorious truth. "Two birds alive and clean," were to be brought to the priest. One was to be "killed in an earthen vessel over running water." The priest was then to "dip the living bird in the blood of the bird that was killed," and to "let it go out of the city into the open fields." The bird killed in an earthen vessel was a type of the human nature of our Lord crucified for the leprosy of sin, the atoning virtue of whose precious blood is of continual efficacy, typified by the running water; for the "blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from all sin." The living bird dipped in the blood of the bird slain, and then let free, was the type of the resurrection life of Jesus, who, as the great High Priest, "ever lives to make intercession for us," by pleading within the veil the merits of His atoning blood.

The type of the slain and the living goat embodies in vivid outline the same essential doctrine. Aaron was commanded to kill the goat of the sin-offering, and bring his blood within the veil. But upon the head of the live goat he was to place both his hands, and confess over him all the iniquities of the children of Israel, and then to send him away by the hand of a fit man into the wilderness. "And he shall let go the goat in the wilderness." Our adorable Lord was the glorious substance of this expressive type. Both parts met, and were realized in Him. "He was delivered for our offences, and rose again for our justification."

The prophetic Scriptures are equally as explicit in setting forth the resurrection of Christ. It will not be necessary that we quote them accompanied with any lengthened comment, as in a former part of this work allusion has already been made to the Scripture prophecies concerning the Redeemer. "You are my Son, this day have I begotten You." "My flesh shall also rest in hope. For You will not leave my soul in hands, nor will You suffer Your Holy One to see corruption." "I will make an everlasting covenant with you, even the sure mercies of David." Now mark how exactly these portions of the prophetic Scriptures are quoted by the Apostle Paul, and strictly applied by him to the resurrection of Christ. "But God raised Him from the dead; and He was seen many days by them who came up with Him from Galilee to Jerusalem, who are His witnesses unto the people. And we declare unto you glad tidings, how that the promise which was made unto the fathers, God has fulfilled the same unto us, their children, in that He raised up Jesus again; as it is also written in the second Psalm, You are my Son; this day have I begotten You. And as concerning that He raised Him up from the dead, now no more to return to corruption, He said on this wise, I will give you the sure mercies of David. Wherefore he says also in another Psalm, You shall not suffer Your Holy One to see corruption. For David, after he had served his own generation, by the will of God, fell asleep, and was laid unto his fathers, and saw corruption: but He whom God raised again, saw no corruption." How brightly does the doctrine of the risen Savior shine throughout this remarkable portion of God's holy word! Truly the life of Jesus is the life of the Scriptures. Again, "Your dead men shall live, together with my dead body shall they arise." "I know that my Redeemer lives." Thus does the resurrection of Christ from the dead confirm the truth of God's holy word. The types find their substance, and the prophecies their fulfilment, in Him who was emphatically the "plague of death, and the destruction of the grave."

The resurrection of the Redeemer established the truth of His Godhead. Thus the Holy Spirit speaks by the apostle- "And declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead." His miracles had already proved the truth of His Divine Sonship. Yet there wanted one other evidence, the crowning one of all- the resurrection. This one evidence would put the final seal to the truth of His Deity. If not, then all that He had previously said, predicted, and done, would prove but to have been, as His enemies have asserted, the stratagem of a designing man, attempting to impose upon the credulity of a few devoted but deluded followers. But this return to life on the exact day which He had predicted, breaking, by the exercise of His Divine power, from the cold embrace of death and the imprisonment of the grave, put at rest forever the question of His Deity, and declared Him to be the Son of God. Oh, how truly and properly Divine did He now appear! August and convincing as had been all the previous attestations of His Godhead, His life one succession of the most astonishing and brilliant achievements of Divine power and goodness, diseases healed, sight restored, demons ejected, the dead raised, tempests hushed, and winds stilled, His death marked by prodigies of terrible and surpassing wonder and sublimity- the earth heaving beneath His feet, the sun darkening above Him, the graves opening around Him; yet never had His Godhead shone forth with such demonstrative power and resplendent glory, as when He broke from the tomb and rose triumphant over hell, death, and the grave. Then did He fulfil this prediction, and redeem this pledge- "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up again." Receding for awhile from Communion with life- as if to create a pause in nature, which would awaken the interest and fix the gaze of the intelligent universe upon one stupendous event- He disappeared within the very domain of the "king of terrors," wrapped around Him its shroud of darkness, and laid Himself down- Essential Life locked in the embrace of death, immortality slumbering in the tomb! But He rose again! bursting from the cold embrace, and awaking from the mysterious slumber, He came back to life, all radiant, immortal, and Divine!

Saint of God! need you a further and stronger evidence that your faith has credited no cunningly devised fable? that He to whose guardianship you have committed your precious soul, is able to keep it until the morning of your own resurrection glory? Behold it in the risen life of the incarnate God! He has come up from the grave, to make good all His previous claims to Deity, thus to encourage and confirm your belief in the truth, dignity, and glory of His person, and to assure you that He that "believes in Him shall not be ashamed." Now may you take up the triumphant strain, as it falls from the lips of the departing apostle, prolonging it until another shall catch it from your expiring tongue: "I know in whom I have believed, and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him against that day."