The Resurrection of Christ.
I. When Christ died, all died. His death was not for Himself, but for mankind. And by all being thus subjected to the punishment of sin in Him the sin of the world was taken away. But it remained that the positive results of redemption should be assured to us. He was delivered for our offences, but, in order to our justification, He must be raised again. His death for sin was the voluntary carrying out to the utmost of His assumption of that whole nature which had incurred death as the penalty of sin. But His resurrection was the sign that that penalty was all paid, and He, our representative, discharged.
II. Now, what have been to us, what to our world, the consequences of this resurrection of our Lord? Let us take them, by reversing the negative process of reasoning, in our text. If Christ be raised, the dead are also raised. We have dwelt much on Him as the head of our race. He, the Head, is raised, and is in glory. By this He has become the firstfruits of them that sleep. As truly as the first ears of the ripened grain are not alone, but are a sample of the innumerable multitude which are to follow, so truly our risen Saviour is but what His people shall be. Their bodies, like His body, shall pass into death. Their bodies, unlike His body, shall see corruption. But the mighty power of Him, their Head, abiding in and working in them, shall again bring their bodies, but changed and glorified, up out of the dead of the earth, and repossess them with their spirits, and beautify and invigorate them for a blessed eternity.
III. The great doctrine of the resurrection of the body was ever in old times the mark of the Christian creed. Still, it is to be feared, it remains a stumblingblock even now to some Christian minds. An immortality of the spirit they are prepared to grant, but a rising again of the body seems to them a strange and, indeed, a needless thing. Let us remind such persons that the salvation to be wrought for man by Christ must be as entire as that fall into sin, out of which it is to raise him. In that fall the body became an instrument of iniquity; by that salvation it must become an instrument of holiness. That salvation does not free it from death, the consequence of its inherited and actual sin; but it puts the man into communion with that energising Spirit, which shall quicken the whole man body, soul, and spirit into glorious and heavenly life.
IV. Our text draws for us another important inference from Christ's resurrection. "If Christ be raised, our faith is not vain; we are not still in our sins." That empty tomb witnesses that we are justified before God. That stone rolled away declares that our redemption is achieved. Now at length is the victory won for man. Now the kingdoms of this world are wrested out of the hand of the prince of this world, and are becoming the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ, and He shall reign for ever and ever.
H. Alford, Quebec Chapel Sermons,vol. iv., p. 146.
Reference: 1 Corinthians 15:17. W. J. Woods, Christian World Pulpit,vol. ix., p. 381.