To the question, What has the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead done for us Christians? a great many answers may be given.
I. Of these the answer which is, perhaps, of the first importance, the answer which Christ's own Apostles would have given, is this: that by rising from the dead Jesus Christ proved that He had a right to speak about God, a right to speak about the old religion of His countrymen, a right to speak about the religious conduct of the most influential classes among His countrymen; above all, that He had a right to speak about Himself as He had spoken. When He was asked to give a sign that is, a something which might be accepted as evidence of the commission which He had from heaven, He gave this: He said that just as the old prophet Jonah had been buried out of sight in the whale, and yet had been restored to his ministry and to his countrymen, so He Himself, though He should be stricken beneath the pangs and convulsions of death, though laid in the darkness of the tomb in the very heart of the earth, yet would at a given time burst the fetters of the grave and would rise again. Accordingly, when this prediction had been actually realised, the fact was appealed to, as we see from the Acts of the Apostles, by the earliest preachers of Christianity, almost in every single sermon. It was the fact which evidently did their work, in compelling men to listen to what they had to say about their risen Lord and in making faith in Him at least easy, better than any other topic; and St. Paul puts it forward when he begins his great Epistle to the Romans by simply saying that Jesus had been "declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead."
II. But the Resurrection has done other things for us besides this its great evidential achievement. It has endowed Christians, who treat it as a serious matter of fact, with the grace, the great grace, of hope. St. Peter feels the preciousness of this when he exclaims that God, the Father of our Lord, is blessed, if only because, from His abundant mercy, He has begotten us again unto a lively hope by His Son's resurrection from the dead. No man who has not a clear belief in a future life can have permanently a strong sense of duty. A man may, indeed, persuade himself during various periods of his existence that this sense of duty is the better and purer from not being bribed by the promise of future reward or stimulated, as he would perhaps say, unhealthily by the dread of future punishment. But, for all that, his moral life, if he has not an eternal future before him, is, depend upon it, feeble and impoverished. It is not merely that he has fewer and feebler motives to right action; it is that he has a false estimate, because an under-estimate, of his real place in the universe. He has forfeited, in the legitimate sense of the term, his true title to self-respect. He has divested himself of the bearing, the instincts, and the sense of noble birth and lofty destiny which properly belong to him. He is like the heir to a great name or a throne who is bent on forgetting his lineage and responsibilities in a self-sought degradation. Man cannot, even if he would, live with impunity only as a more accomplished kind of animal than are the creatures around him. Man is by the terms of his existence a being of eternity, and he cannot unmake himself; he cannot take up a position which abdicates his higher prerogatives without sooner or later sinking into degradations which are in themselves a punishment. He needs a hope resting on something beyond the sphere of sense and time, and God has given him one by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.
III. There are three forms of interest which must be accorded to such a fact as the Resurrection. The first is the interest of curiosity in a wonder which is altogether at variance with the course of nature. This interest may exist in a high degree, observing and registering the fact, yet never for a moment getting beyond the fact. Then there is the interest of active reason which is satisfied that such a fact must have consequences, and is anxious to trace them, an interest which may lead a man to say that the Resurrection does, intellectually speaking, prove the truth of the mission of Christ, although the man may know nothing of the power of Christ's blood and of His Spirit. The third kind of interest is practical, moral, spiritual. It is an effort to answer the question, What does Christ's resurrection say to me? what does it mean to me? If it is true, if Christianity through it is true, what ought to be the effect on my thoughts, my feelings, my life? And St. Peter would answer all these questions. Thought, feeling, life, should be invigorated by the force of that living hope. But then this absorbing moral interest does not come of any ordinary process of observation and reason, like these two earlier forms. St. Peter says, using a remarkable expression, "We are begotten unto a lively hope." It is not the outcome of our natural mind or of common-sense, though it does not contradict it; it is the product of the Divine breath playing upon the soul and giving it the new birth, the new capacity for life. Of this birth the Father is the Author; the Eternal Spirit is the instrument; union with Jesus Christ, the perfect Man, the essence and the effect.
H. P. Liddon, Church Sermons,vol. i., p. 309.
The Hope of the Resurrection.
The religion of Jesus Christ presented one great contrast to the heathen religions with which it found itself in conflict: it pointed steadily forward, while they looked wistfully backward. The religions of classical heathenism were religions of regret; the Gospel is a religion of hope. Two great ideas are involved in the fact of the Resurrection, ideas influencing human thought and action at every turn, ideas coextensive in their application with human life itself.
I. By opening out the vista of an endless future, it has wholly changed the proportions of things. The capacity of looking forward is the measure of progress in the individual and in the race. Providence is God's attribute. In proportion as a man appropriates this attribute of God, in proportion as his faculty of foresight is educated, in the same degree is he raised in the moral scale. The Christian is an advance on the civilised man, as the civilised man is an advance on the barbarian. His vista of knowledge and interest is not terminated abruptly by the barrier of the grave. The Resurrection has stimulated the faculty and educated the habit of foresight indefinitely by opening out to it an endless field of vision over which its sympathies range.
II. The Resurrection involves another principle not less extensive or less potent in its influence on human life. The Resurrection does not merely proclaim immortality. It declares likewise that death leads to life; it assures us that death is the portal to eternity. Thus it glorifies death; it crowns and consecrates the grave. Death issuing in life, death the seed and life the plant, and blossom, and fruit this is the great lesson of the Gospel.
III. See how far-reaching are the applications of this lesson to human life. Through darkness to light, through sorrow to joy, through suffering to bliss, through evil to good this is the law of our heavenly Father's government, whereby He would educate His family, His sons and His daughters, into the likeness of His own perfections. Accordingly we find this same principle extending throughout the Gospel teaching. Everywhere it speaks of renewal, of redemption, of restitution yes, of resurrection.
IV. So to the true Christian all the ills of life have an inherent glory in them. Not only do they deserve our pity, deserve our respect, deserve our alleviation. There is a great potentiality of future good in them. No degradation of human character, no abasement of human life, no depth of human vice, is so great as to forfeit its claim to the consideration of the Christian. How can it forfeit this claim when hope is shut out from none, restitution is denied to none? It was the common taunt of the heathen against the Christians in the early ages that they gathered about them the lowest of the people, the outcasts of society, the scum of mankind. They proudly accepted the reproach; they avowed that their shame was their glory. Had not their Master been taunted with the companionship of publicans and sinners? Was it not their special mission, as it had been His before them, to call not righteous men, but sinners?
J. B. Lightfoot, Sermons on Special Occasions,p. 233.
References: 1 Peter 1:3. H. P. Liddon, Christian World Pulpit,vol. i., p. 376; W. Hubbard, Ibid.,vol. xxiii., p. 163; M. G. Pearse, Ibid.,vol. xxx., p. 85.