RESURRECTION FRESHNESS
‘Even so we also should walk in newness of life.’
Christ being the Head, rising, He draws up the body, just as, if you could conceive it, a natural dead body placed in a horizontal position, and suddenly the head, reviving, lifts itself up, and necessarily the limbs, by the act of the rising head, are lifted up too. So it is with Christ and us.
I. New in its formation.—In this present life, our souls begin to be drawn up to ascending desires, to nearer communion, to loftier enjoyments, to a more heavenly-mindedness. Afterwards, at the resurrection, by the same process, our bodies will be raised up. When He appears in the heavens, by a necessary, irresistible, attractive force, our bodies will be raised from the grave, and we shall be ‘for ever with the Lord.’ So that the Divine life in a man’s soul does not take place till there is first a death, and a burial, and a resurrection within him; and all that is the result of a certain union with the Lord Jesus Christ; so that Christ’s death, and Christ’s burial, and Christ’s resurrection are, to that man, not only facts done for him, but things done in him, things actually taking place at this moment, real, felt, producing direct, visible results. And when you trace the secret inworkings, in a Christian’s soul, of such strange, unprecedented things as these, surely, to such deep and wondrous mysteries, we can only justly apply the Apostle’s words, and say, It is ‘newness of life’!
II. New in its constitution.—But as the formation of it is ‘new,’ so it is in its own constitution. God’s way of making a ‘new’ thing is not man’s way of making a ‘new’ thing. God uses up the ‘old’ materials; but, by His using and moulding them, makes them ‘new.’ Thus, ‘the new heavens and the new earth’ will only make another heaven and earth formed out of the old materials. It will not be a second creation, and ‘new’ to that which now is; but there will be such a purifying, and restoring, and beautifying the earth and sky, as will constitute them as ‘new’ as if they had just started into another existence. From that moment everything to that man is with reference to Christ. What it is to Christ, that he wishes it to be with reference to him. To hold converse with Christ, to please Christ, to glorify Christ, to be like Christ, to wait for Christ, this is ‘life.’ And if you contrast that singleness of purpose—the tenderness, the unselfishness, the largeness which this element of a forgiven sinner’s love throws into that man’s constitution—with that little, Christless, hopeless, loveless thing that that man used to be; can you use any better word to express the change than ‘newness of life’?
III. New in its variety and progression.—But, once more, the Christian’s ‘life’ is ‘new’ by reason of that ceaseless variety and never-ending progression—that constant ‘newness’—which it has in it. The enemy of souls knows well the importance of this feature in true religion. He knows that the fact of novelty, or the love of novelty, is a part of our constitution; and therefore he calls a religious life one of sameness; and I am persuaded that it is he who carries on that thought a little further, so that many men have a feeling that it will be a dull thing to be praising God for ever and ever. But is it not the world which has the sameness? To go on, day after day, with tastes and perceptions which are continually diminishing by age or repetition, in the midst of objects, of which we are soon able to take the true measure, and which, if they never deteriorate, at least can never increase—this is what makes ‘life’ such a flat thing to many of you! But he who has set himself to be a Christian—he has to do with the infinities of God.