In this sequence of our meditation through these days, we arrive at the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. Last night we were occupied with His transfiguration.
Maybe some of you will think that the next eminence, the next peak, the next epoch in the course of things, should be the cross. But if you think again, you will see that the cross has been present in everything that we have said. It has been throwing its light and meaning down the past upon every part of the way. We have been moving in the light of the cross all the time.
The cross also carries power right on into eternity—its values. You can never get away from the cross. It stands above everything. So that we are not, at the moment, giving it particular and exclusive consideration; we are letting the cross direct all our thoughts in every connection.
We come to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus—a vast and comprehensive matter, with limitless aspects. It is not our intention to try to cover, or even touch upon, all that ground.
These days, we have one inclusive object: it is to see God’s Son as God’s universal horizon, range, and character for all things. Within that horizon, God has concentrated His whole attention in purpose and activity.
The Son of God is the horizon of the Father for all men. Resurrection in the Lord Jesus brings that horizon very clearly into view, perhaps in a supreme way, in three main aspects.
This is different from all other seeming resurrections, which were not resurrection but resuscitation. We have those who were brought back to life from death in Old Testament times, but theirs was not a resurrection. It was but a resuscitation. They were the same people afterward, and they went back to the grave.
We have some in the New Testament who were brought back from death, like the widow’s son at Nain, like Lazarus. But they were the same afterward—the same people—and they went back to the grave eventually. That was not resurrection.
Jesus is unique in this. He is not the same, and yet He is the same. His identity is the same. There are things about Him which can be recognized: “That is the same Jesus.” And yet there is a difference—a very great difference—in Him.
He is not just a spirit. He has a body which can be touched and handled. In it are borne the marks of His death, His crucifixion, which can be seen and touched. He can eat and drink with them. These are marks of the same Jesus, and yet, how different—how different!
Though the doors may be closed and barred for fear of the Jews, He is suddenly in the midst. It does not seem that He appears and disappears; He is just present and absent. So we could go on with the change, with the difference.
A difference which means everything for us and for the church.
Now, because our time is very limited, I want to resolve all this into one or two quite definite matters. They are quite obvious things, very apparent in the New Testament.
The resurrection of the Lord Jesus is always spoken of as the supreme demonstration of divine power. To use the words of the apostle, this is:
The exceeding greatness of His power,
which He wrought in Christ,
when He raised Him from the dead.
The power which exceeds all other power. It was in the power that lay behind the resurrection of the Lord Jesus that the apostles and the church gloried. Paul spoke of “the power of His resurrection.”
Christ risen is therefore the embodiment of divine power in its superlative expression. The greatest power known in creation outside of Christ is the power of death. No one can deny it.
In every realm of man—the physical, moral, and spiritual—the great battle in creation, in nature, is always with death: to overcome death, to hold death back. That is true; we know it. The greatest power outside of Christ is the power of death.
Many of our brothers and sisters here in the medical world spend their whole lives trying to stave it off, keep it back, postpone its triumph. Well, they may succeed for the time being, but they all know that in the end they are going to be defeated.
Paul looked out upon some of you doctors: you are going to be defeated men and women, and your whole life’s work by this thing that you are fighting in the physical way. Some of you work on the land, and you know that that is what you are up against all the time. Your whole life has to be given to keeping this death at bay, keeping it from gaining territory and swallowing up your life’s work.
The battle—is it not everywhere? And we know it in our own selves, not only physically, but morally. You are in conflict with some force that is seeking to bring you down morally, to crush us down, crush us down, so that our morale is broken.
And as for the spiritual man, if there is conflict in other realms, we know it here all the time. It is this terrific force of death in this universe with which we are having to wrestle, which is the realm of our encounter.
All that, as we know from the Bible, from our own natures, and from the deeper meaning in creation, is the fruit of sin—the fruit of the evil. It is an evil thing, death. We are not only encountering an abstract force; we are encountering something evil, something that wants to spoil, to mar, to destroy beauty and joy and everything that is good. It is evil—death.
That is all outside of Christ. And it does give tremendous meaning and force to this: that in the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, that mightiest force in this universe has been destroyed, has been nullified, has been overcome.
As on the one side of human history death is the most powerful force in creation because of sin, there is another side to human history. That is the side which the New Testament describes and defines in that one simple phrase of two words: in Christ.
In Christ, there is a greater power through His resurrection than this terrible thing that is everywhere outside of Christ.
That battle, that unceasing battle, that unrelenting battle of the ages, was entered into by Him in His cross. And through death He destroyed him that had the power of death. In resurrection, that triumph is brought out for all believers.
The testimony of Jesus raised from the dead is that the most powerful adverse force in this universe has been destroyed in Him and by Him personally.
That is why there is always such an inspiration, such an uplift, such a wonderful sense of release, when in the Spirit we dwell upon His resurrection—singing the songs of resurrection, reading the Scriptures of resurrection, speaking together of the risen Lord.
There is no mere historic thing, no mere feast on the religious or ecclesiastical calendar, no mere annual observance, in that for true believers and experience. When in the Spirit—not just in the letter, in the history, but in the Spirit—we dwell upon Christ risen, something wells up in us: a new hope.
We know exactly how Peter felt and what he meant when he said:
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
who hath begotten us again unto a living hope
by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.
If ever there was a man on this earth who needed to know that, it was Peter. A living hope! For the last picture of him in the Gospels before the resurrection is of a man going out and weeping bitterly over the utter mess that he had made of his life.
A living hope—a life completely transformed by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. It is a power to do that. It is a power.
Then the next thing that is so clear in this resurrection context is that it was a mighty release, an emancipation, for the Lord Jesus Himself.
He had said, “How am I straitened, pent up, limited, until it is accomplished!” One who from eternity knew that His significance was of universal value, that He was to stand related to the whole race and creation for its good and value; One who knew that He Himself was, in His very being, a universal Person, comprehending heaven and earth.
He has not come into something new by His resurrection and ascension. When it is said that all authority in heaven and on earth had been given to Him, that was His eternal right—what belonged to Him forever. He has received it through His cross for men, but that is inherent to His Person.
But here He is, pent up in a few miles, a little country no larger than the country of Wales itself; pent up to all the limitations of earthly manhood—time, distance, and so on. Groaning for the day when His great world ministry could be launched, when He could be launched upon it. “I am straitened,” He says. “I am straitened.”
You know something about that in your own little way. Hard enough it is to be confined, restricted, to a limited sphere in life. You have a large concern, a large heart, and you get pent up. How you groan for the day to come when you may be released from all that.
Some of you today are just groaning in your limitations and your restrictions, sharing the sufferings of your Lord in that matter. But His resurrection was His emancipation, His release. And what a mighty release it was!
What did happen exactly? Well, of course, it was His personal release; we know that. And in those forty days of His resurrection, we are able to discern something of what that meant. Time no longer matters. He is here and He is there without any time limit.
It took Him days to get from one point to another before, but He is before them in Galilee after His resurrection. “I go before you,” He said, “into Galilee.” And you may be quite sure that those men did not lose any time trying to get to that appointed rendezvous.
No, they were making for it, just as truly as those who dragged their weary way to Emmaus after His death returned to Jerusalem as runners in a marathon. The distance became as nothing by this new heart begotten in His resurrection.
They were making their way for the appointed place, but He said, “I will be before you.” He was waiting for them every time. Distance is nothing—not only the mileage of a little country, but, we know, worldwide, universal, round the earth.
We know Him to be here this morning, but He is just as truly there in China, in India, in the remotest parts of the earth at this very moment. His release! Time and distance have been destroyed in the resurrection. God bless the inheritance that is for us. We have not to wait for Him. In ourselves and in sense, He is ever present.
But while it was His personal, physical release, it was the release of the life that had been pent up in Him. What a mighty life within Him!
You only have to go to your Gospels again, and you see that it does not matter how many people there are in need of life, how many places are calling for life: He can give it. Give it with impunity; give it prodigally; give it without any sense of impoverishment.
A life that is in Him, touching death in all its forms—in disease, in infirmity, even unto death itself—the life gives itself. And yet, how limited during those three years and a few months!
But now the life that is within Him, so full, so strong, is released—released for all mankind, released for the whole world as a spiritual power to be received by all who will receive.
Released life—is not this what He meant when He said:
Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die,
it abideth by itself alone.
He said, “I am alone. I am alone.” There is no more lonely Person in this world than Jesus. Even with thronging, throbbing crowds around Him, He was alone.
Except the corn of wheat fall into the ground and die,
it abideth by itself alone.
It remains alone. But if it dies, what happens? Its life is released into many another corn, to a growing harvest to cover the earth. And that is what happened. Mighty life in Him was released in resurrection.
In that release, the wonderful change took place: from the local to the universal, from time into eternity, from the temporal to the spiritual. There are great changes in the resurrection—many-sided changes.
All this we are prepared to accept as true, and much more. We believe it concerning the Lord Jesus. But the challenge of this has to be met by us individually and collectively.
I said that the second thing is the real vocation and nature of the church as His body. And what is the purpose of a body in any case, in any kingdom? It is to contain, express, and give forth the life, is it not?
The central vocation of the church—when we speak of the church, we must not just lose ourselves in some visualized body of people—we must remember that we are members of His body according to the Scriptures. Individually, that which is intended to be true of the whole is intended to be true of each member, of each individual. This is the challenge.
There should be, there can be, and if we are going to be true to all that Christ risen means, there must be about us something that corresponds to Christ. There must be eternal value in our lives—not something just for an hour, or for a time, or for a life here.
There must be eternity about us, that we mean something far bigger than this life. There is something in us that is far greater than this life and time, and time has no power over that something.
Can I correct that and say, over that Someone: Christ in us and we in Christ—not only about us individually, but collectively. This is the test. There must be something that is a great reality, which is beyond the confines of our own little circle.
Any true expression of the church of Jesus Christ, the body of Christ, in any locality, should really have a universal significance—not living unto itself, not turned in upon itself, not just occupied with itself and its own spiritual building up and activities, but always as a channel, a vehicle, of this life beyond itself.
That is a glorious possibility. Again, look at your New Testament and you will find it like that. Churches in certain areas had a testimony, a ministry, which was spoken of far afield. Paul said, “I have only to speak to them about you and what is going on among you; already they know.” It got there. It got out.
Oh, it is a glorious release, this. It must be like that, friends. God save us from being less than the resurrection of the Lord Jesus would make us in life.
I am not speaking now of any literal movement about the world; that is not possible for the majority of you. But I am saying this: there should be something coming from all of us which is super-local, which is beyond ourselves and beyond our little circle. That is a ministry of Christ without these limitations—eternal and universal in value.
It is true: when you get really, in a spiritual and living way, onto the basis of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, it just works like that. You have not got to advertise. You have not got to publish. You have not got to write it up. You have not got to do anything by way of propaganda in the business sense.
You have not got to do any organizing to get it out, making plans and launching enterprises. The New Testament knows nothing of that. It is what someone has called the spontaneous expression. It will be like that.
All that we have got to be concerned with, dear friends, is to live on the basis of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and the rest will follow. The rest will follow. Report will go out: “There is life with those people. You want to touch life? That is where you will touch it.”
Christ-risen life is the testimony of Jesus, and that life knows no bounds now, since it had its release in His resurrection. That is, let me repeat, the supreme vocation of the church, the churches, and each member.
But it is not only the power, not only the vitality; it is the very nature of that life. The nature of that life: this is a life which has met sin and conquered. This is a life which has met evil and destroyed it. This is a life which has met the powers of darkness and put them out.
It is a life which has overcome in this universe. Therefore, it is a holy life. The vocation of the church is to minister that life—the very issue, really, of Christ’s resurrection. The nature of the church, because of that life, should be holiness.
Life that does not, in its very nature—not by creed or doctrine about sin and sinfulness, but in its very nature—abide anything unholy or unclean. “That you should be holy and without blemish”; a church which is to be presented a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing.
If we really do express Christ’s risen life in any company, that ought to be noted about us: there are people who will not put up with anything evil. They will not countenance sin. They will not stand for anything questionable, anything doubtful. A people holy unto the Lord.
I close by reminding you of the third thing mentioned at the beginning. This, of course, is far from being a perfect realization in our lives. It is progressive with us; it is progressive with us.
You can read your own spiritual history under the hand of God, if you are having a spiritual history—that is, if you really are alive to the Lord. If you can read and interpret your own spiritual history, you can see this very clearly.
The one thing that you are being taught by the Lord—although the Lord is trying to teach you—is that there is a life in you which is superior to your own life, and that has in it all the vitality, the energy, the potentiality, of a complete transformation of you.
Very remarkable, as you look again into the New Testament, to see that this resurrection life and power was so marvelously at work and manifested. It was always over against the background of human frailty. God saw to it. God saw to it.
Here you have no big people as the world counts bigness. If they had been big, they were going to be made very small when they got here. Saul of Tarsus had been big in his own realm, and others had been like that, and the Lord sees to it that there are no big people with great reputations that the world is going to take any account of in this realm.
Oh, how Christendom has gone astray on this thing—always wanting to attach labels of importance to its representatives, its servants, its ministers. The more degrees you can put behind the name, well, the better for Christendom. The more honors that can be associated with the person, the honors of this world in achievement and qualification, well, the better their standing. The Lord knows nothing about it and will have nothing of it.
I suppose that Paul of Tarsus could have graduated with the highest honors in any university, because he has defeated all the intellects of the ages, and they are still trying to get the better of him, and they cannot.
No, but what is he? What did he think of himself? What has the Lord done with him?
I glory in infirmities.
I glory in weakness.
When I am weak, then am I strong.
What a change! Now, it is as though I gave some background of this divine activity to make the vessel know its own infirmity, weakness, and limitation, that this power may be manifest. That ought to count with us. There it is. There it is, so clear.
It is an appropriating thing. We have got to lay hold of the power of this resurrection over our physical infirmities. We may have great physical infirmity and weakness and suffering, an agonizing limitation physically, and yet God by His life can come in and carry through in complete triumph anything that He wants to accomplish.
That is the great fact about the apostle. That is the great fact about the church in its history: a life that is so manifestly, so obviously, superior to all human strength and all human weakness.
Dear friends, take this to heart. We are not just to give way and succumb to our infirmities and say that they rule, and they govern, and they dictate. If the Lord wants something—perhaps there are times when He does not, and therefore divine life will not come to us—but if the Lord wants something, if that is in the will of God, there is life for it, when we are in utmost weakness and limitation, for us to lay hold of.
I take it that Timothy was a delicate young man. Paul said, “Take a little wine for thy stomach’s sake and thine often infirmities,” and he was apparently, from other things, not robust perhaps in any way. And so to him the apostle said, “Lay hold on life. Lay hold on life.”
Something we must learn to do: lay hold on life over against this background of infirmity. But this is progressive. We do not learn this all at once; we learn it through the years.
More and more, perhaps feebleness on the one side increases as the years go on, but there should be a corresponding—indeed, a superabundance—of that other life. It should be like that, showing with growing weakness that life is quite capable of coping with all those conditions and well able to do it.
But this progress has a glorious consummation—a glorious consummation: the resurrection of the body. That marvelous fifteenth chapter of 1 Corinthians. When that is reached, great transformation of the body takes place in the final stage of resurrection.
All these infirmities go. Then Christ risen, and all that Christ risen and eternal life as universal life, as limitless life, will be displayed in fullness.
We are moving toward the great test and consummation of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus in a resurrected race. If we read again our own spiritual history, we shall see that the Lord is moving us onward, ever onward, along this line: knowing Him and the power of His resurrection, with that goal ever in view.
Man in the full expression and enjoyment of Christ risen from the dead. Lord, keep us moving that way. We will just sing a verse.