Expositions of Holy Scripture | Page 2

until the bright cloud, which was the symbol of
the Divine Presence, received Him out of their sight, was but the end of the process
which began unseen in morning twilight. He laid aside the garments of the grave and
passed out of the sepulchre which was made sure by the great stone rolled against its
mouth. The grand avowal of faith in His Resurrection loses meaning, unless it is
completed as Paul completed his 'yea rather that was raised from the dead,' with the
triumphant 'who is at the right hand of God.' Both are supernatural, and the Virgin Birth
corresponds at the beginning to the supernatural Resurrection and Ascension at the close.
Both such an entrance into the world and such a departure from it, proclaim at once His
true humanity, and that 'this is the Son of God.'
Still further, the Resurrection is God's solemn 'Amen' to the tremendous claims which
Christ had made. The fact of His Resurrection, indeed, would not declare His divinity;
but the Resurrection of One who had spoken such words does. If the Cross and a
nameless grave had been the end, what a reductio ad absurdum that would have been to
the claims of Jesus to have ever been with the Father and to be doing always the things
that pleased Him. The Resurrection is God's last and loudest proclamation, 'This is My
beloved Son: hear ye Him.' The Psalmist of old had learned to trust that his sonship and
consecration to the Father made it impossible that that Father should leave his soul in
Sheol, or suffer one who was knit to Him by such sacred bonds to see corruption; and the
unique Sonship and perfect self-consecration of Jesus went down into the grave in the
assured confidence, as He Himself declared, that the third day He would rise again. The
old alternative seems to retain all its sharp points: Either Christ rose again from the dead,
or His claims are a series of blasphemous arrogances and His character irremediably
stained.
But we may also remember that Scripture not only represents Christ's Resurrection as a

divine act but also as the act of Christ's own power. In His earthly life He asserted that
His relation both to physical death and to resurrection was an entirely unique one. 'I have
power,' said He, 'to lay down my life, and I have power to take it again'; and yet, even in
this tremendous instance of self-assertion, He remains the obedient Son, for He goes on
to say, 'This commandment have I received of My Father.' If these claims are just, then it
is vain to stumble at the miracles which Jesus did in His earthly life. If He could strip it
off and resume it, then obviously it was not a life like other men's. The whole
phenomenon is supernatural, and we shall not be in the true position to understand and
appreciate it and Him until, like the doubting Thomas, we fall at the feet of the risen Son,
and breathe out loyalty and worship in that rapturous exclamation, 'My Lord and my
God.'
II. The Resurrection interprets Christ's Death.
There is no more striking contrast than that between the absolute non-receptivity of the
disciples in regard to all Christ's plain teachings about His death and their clear
perception after Pentecost of the mighty power that lay in it. The very fact that they
continued disciples at all, and that there continued to be such a community as the Church,
demands their belief in the Resurrection as the only cause which can account for it. If He
did not rise from the dead, and if His followers did not know that He did so by the
plainest teachings of common-sense, they ought to have scattered, and borne in isolated
hearts the bitter memories of disappointed hopes; for if He lay in a nameless grave, and
they were not sure that He was risen from the dead, His death would have been a
conclusive showing up of the falsity of His claims. In it there would have been no atoning
power, no triumph over sin. If the death of Christ were not followed by His Resurrection
and Ascension, the whole fabric of Christianity falls to pieces. As the Apostle puts it in
his great chapter on resurrection, 'Ye are yet in your sins.' The forgiveness which the
Gospel holds forth to men does not depend on the mercy of God or on the mere penitence
of man, but upon the offering of the one sacrifice for sins in His death, which is justified
by His Resurrection as being accepted by God. If we cannot triumphantly proclaim
'Christ is risen indeed,' we have nothing worth preaching.
We are told now that the ethics of