‘RISEN WITH CHRIST’
‘If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God.’
The resurrection of Christ stands not alone as a great and glorious reality. St. Paul avers that others participated in it. Strictly rendered, his words are, ‘If then ye were raised together with Christ.’
I. A wonderful fact.—There is indeed a very notable oneness between the actual experience of Christ and the spiritual experience of the redeemed.
(a) Dying with Christ, then, means the crucifixion of the old man with Him.
(b) Buried with Christ—the destruction of the whole body of sin.
(c) Raised with Christ—the great quickening which results in freshness of being.
In other words, Christians, in and through Christ, are severed from the old life of fallen nature, and lifted up to the new life of purity and happiness.
II. A practical duty.—St. Paul enjoins those who are baptized into Christ, and buried and raised with Him, ‘to seek those things which are above.’
III. A sublime encouragement.—Christ was ‘received up into heaven.’ All our happiness descends to us from Him. Believing in Him, we ‘rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory.’ What, then, will be our bliss when we see Him in the glory which He had with His Father before the world was? and what our dignity when we are made like Him? We know not now; but the mere thought is ecstasy!
Illustration
‘ “Christ is risen—He is risen indeed.” The Greek Church asserts the fact popularly, not only in the church but in the street. The Czar of all the Russias comes out of his palace, and, seeing the sentinel, kisses him and says, “The Lord is risen,” and the soldier says, “He is risen indeed.” One cabman in the street gets off his stand, and another gets off his sleigh, they embrace, and the one says to the other, “Christ is risen,” and the other answers, “He is risen indeed.” There the man in the street has only one thing to say that Easter morning, that Christ is risen. Now we Westerns are not so minded, but I hope this Easter morning you sing up the old song in your hearts. It is not only assertion, it is something more—it is a hymn of joy; and I hope that every one of you will sing up in your heart this morning the old song of the Church, “Christ is risen—He is risen indeed.” ’
(SECOND OUTLINE)
RESURRECTION POWER
Alive unto God—that is to be our position. Pray that you may indeed ‘know Him, and the power of His Resurrection,’ as He ought to be known by all His saints.
The ‘power of His Resurrection’ suggests wholesome doctrine.
I. If we are ‘risen with Christ’ we have left our grave-clothes behind us, as Jesus left His in the tomb. He did not go about during His risen life with the garments of death clinging to Him. Christ calls upon us to show forth to the world that we have done with the grave, that we are walking ‘in newness of life,’ in the power of His Resurrection.
II. During our Lord’s forty days’ post-resurrection sojourn He appeared ten times only to His followers.—The inference is that the ‘risen life’ of Christ was spent chiefly in communion with God. And the spiritual life of His people will suffer because of the stress of earthly things, unless they get more into contact with heaven and God, unless they, like Him, anticipate the Ascension, and ‘in heart and mind thither ascend.’ In this busy age, especially, we have need to restore our souls by communion with God.
III. This ‘risen life’ ought to be practically manifest in its blessed activities.—‘Seek those things which are above.’ In that one word ‘Seek’ we have expressed the outward life of Christian effort; we have expressed also the true aim of a consecrated life—‘those things which are above.’
—Archdeacon Madden.
Illustration
‘You must have remarked, in studying the Epistles of St. Paul, how he identifies the Christian with his Lord, in His Crucifixion, His Death, and His Resurrection. He identifies the Christian with the Crucifixion of Christ. Referring to his old self-life, he says, “I am crucified with Christ”; he also uses the peculiar phrase “the old man” in reference to his former self, and speaks of it as being crucified. This “old man,” meaning the old corrupt, sinful self, is to be crucified, so that it can no longer dominate the “new man.” The believer must so identify himself with his Lord’s Crucifixion that he is to reckon the corrupt body of sin, the old evil life, as crucified with Christ. He identifies the true man of God with the Death of Christ. “Ye died” (Colossians 3:3); “Planted together in the likeness of His Death”; “Reckon yourselves dead indeed unto sin” (Romans 6:5; Romans 6:11). In Colossians 3:5 you have the word “mortify,” showing continuity of teaching on this point. This is the Apostolic doctrine as regards the believer’s attitude to sin: he is dead to it. He identifies the Christian with the Resurrection of Christ: he is risen with Christ. Buried with Christ, and raised with Him too. The life which we now live 2in the power of the Son of God is equivalent to a resurrection from the dead—it is a “risen” life.’