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THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 
 

 

 
 OF JESUS 
 
 A MESSAGE OF HOPE 
 AND CHEER 
 
 By W. T.’CONNER, D.D. 
 
 Professor of Systematic Theology in the Southwestern Baptist 
 Theological Seminary, Fort Worth, Texas; Author 
 of “A System of Christian Docttine’”’ 
 
 
 
 NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE 
 
 SUNDAY SCHOOL BOARD 
 OF THE 
 
 SOUTHERN BAPTIST CONVENTION 
 
Copyright poe 
 
 Sunday School Board 
 Southern Baptist Convention 
 Nashville, Tenn. 
 
 Printed in the United States of America 
 
To BLANCHE HORNE CONNER 
 WHOSE LIFE EXEMPLIFIES THE 
 RESURRECTION POWER 
 OF GOD 
 

 
PREFACE 
 
 This book is meant primarily to convey a 
 message. It is not intended to try to settle the 
 questions over which scholars debate so much 
 as it is to enable Christians to grasp something 
 of the significance of the resurrection of Jesus 
 for life and destiny. If the book shall be used 
 by the Head of the church to help some of its 
 readers to come anew into fellowship with the 
 living Christ and know afresh something of his 
 resurrection power, then the author will have 
 his reward. 
 
 I am indebted to Prof. H. E. Dana, head of 
 the New Testament department in the South- 
 western Seminary, for helpful suggestions. 
 
 W. T. CONNER. 
 

 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 PSAP TER CONE ido) olde eae R NG Be 11 
 The Fact of the Resurrection of Jesus 
 HAPTER E WO 8 ee i En Ea 39 
 The Nature of the Resurrection of 
 Jesus 
 RETA PTER PHREE cet hla ene 55 
 
 The Significance of the Resurrection of 
 Jesus for Our View of God 
 RAE E OUR hic tt he uy tte Dy, 71 
 The Significance of the Resurrection of 
 Jesus for His Own Person 
 PILAR ELVES ie ieee eels era aeel 87 
 The Significance of the Resurrection of 
 Jesus for Our Salvation 
 2) STAG ofS ha Ba eR ee A ne SD ac 107 
 The Significance of the Resurrection of 
 Jesus for the Future Life 
 PPAR CER OE VEN | i000 Pee ai iek ys bus 123 
 
 The Significance of the Resurrection of 
 Jesus for the Coming of the King- 
 dom of God 
 
AW 
 
 Rit 
 
 ue 
 
 
 
THE FACT OF THE RESURRECTION 
 OF JESUS 
 
Aon 
 CS panty et 
 ee pe th eae 
 
 ey 
 oa Khe 
 
 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 THE FACT OF THE RESURRECTION 
 OF JESUS 
 
 THE RESURRECTION A SURPRISE 
 
 HE resurrection of Jesus was one of the 
 greatest surprises in the history of the 
 world. In fact, it was such a great surprise 
 that many men do not yet accept it as a fact. 
 It was a surprise to the enemies of Jesus. 
 They had taken precautions, not against his 
 resurrection, but against his disciples’ stealing 
 away the body of Jesus and putting out a false 
 report that he had risen. They sealed the 
 tomb with the seal of the Roman Empire and 
 put a heavy guard around it to see that the 
 disciples of Jesus played no trick on them 
 (Matt. 27: 62-66). They recalled the state- 
 ment of Jesus that he would rise from the dead. 
 Perhaps they had seen enough of the impres- 
 sive personality of Jesus and of his power over 
 men to conjecture that it would not be so dif- 
 ficult to get men to believe that such a man had 
 risen from the dead. Perhaps there was a kind 
 
 [138] 
 
14 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 
 
 of dumb consciousness on their part that it 
 would be a moral anomaly for such a man’s 
 career to come toanend. They may have felt, 
 half-unconsciously, that death should not 
 speak the last word concerning such a man. 
 
 Anyway, they took precaution against his 
 disciples’ getting out any false reports on the 
 subject. There may have been something of 
 the uneasiness in their hearts concerning Jesus 
 that there was in the guilty conscience of 
 Herod concerning John the Baptist. If only 
 the dead would stay dead for those who dis- 
 patch them! Somehow murdered kings have 
 a way of coming back to Lady Macbeths. They 
 won't stay out of the way when they are put 
 out of the way. 
 
 But in this case the crucified Lord did not 
 come back to his murderers in a vision pro- 
 duced by a guilty conscience; he came back in 
 personal appearance to his friends and disci- 
 ples. If only these enemies of Jesus had 
 thought to take precaution against the power 
 of God as well as against the trickery of the 
 disciples! When a man sins, he always over- 
 looks one factor in the situation; and unfor- 
 tunately that factor happens to be the only 
 one that counts in the long run—namely, God. 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS bs. 
 
 The resurrection of Jesus, however, was a 
 surprise to the friends of Jesus as well as to 
 his enemies. His disciples, when they came to 
 believe in him as Messiah, expected him to re- 
 main here and rule over Israel. The enthusi- 
 asm of the people ran so high in this direction 
 at one time that they were going to take him 
 by force and make him a king (John 6: 15). 
 Not even the most spiritually discerning of his 
 followers thought he would fulfil his mission 
 by death. When Jesus announced to them 
 that he would die, the spokesman of the twelve 
 dared to take him to task for it, and to tell 
 him that such a thing could never be (Mark 
 8: 31ff). 
 
 If the disciples did not expect Jesus to die, 
 much less did they expect him to rise after he 
 died. When the women went to the tomb on 
 the resurrection morning, they were saying, 
 “Who shall roll us away the stoner” (Mark 
 16: 3). They expected to find that stone 
 there, and the tomb sealed and the body of 
 Jesus within. The purpose of their visit was 
 to anoint the body. But when they got there 
 and found the stone rolled away and saw the 
 “young man,” they were “amazed.” And 
 when they heard the message about his being 
 
16 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 
 
 risen and were invited to look on the place 
 where his body had lain, they fled in trembling 
 and “‘astonishment” (Mark 16: 3-8). When 
 the women reported these things to the apos- 
 tles, their word appeared to these apostles as 
 “idle talk,” and they disbelieved them (Luke 
 24: 10,11). Peter then ran to the tomb (per- 
 haps John with him, John 20: 1ff), stooped 
 down, looked in and saw the “linen cloths by 
 themselves,’ and departed to his house “won- 
 dering at that which had come to pass” (Luke 
 24: 12). That same day two of his disciples 
 were going to a village named Emmaus. As 
 they journeyed and talked about the recent 
 happenings in Jerusalem, the unrecognized 
 Christ joined them; and when he inquired what 
 they were communing about, they told him 
 about the strange providence of God that al- 
 lowed the chief priests and rulers to crucify 
 the “prophet mighty in deed and word before 
 God and all the people.” Then they said, “We 
 hoped” (Luke 24: 13ff). As much as to say, 
 “Our hope is gone; it is a thing of the past.” 
 The ruthless slaying of the mighty prophet. 
 had dashed their hopes to pieces. But they 
 went on to add, as if a faint gleam of new hope 
 were beginning to appear in their hearts, that 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 17 
 
 “certain women of our company amazed us” 
 by going to the tomb early and coming back 
 and reporting that they did not find his body 
 and that they had seen a vision of angels who 
 said that he was alive. 
 
 So it is perfectly evident from the gospel 
 accounts that the disciples did not expect Jesus 
 to rise from the dead and that they were sur- 
 prised when they discovered that he had. In 
 fact, the word surprise is too mild to express 
 it. They were astonished, amazed at the 
 strange things happening around them. They 
 could not grasp the situation. They seemed 
 to be like men in a dream—seeing strange 
 things and trying to grasp what it all meant. 
 
 They should have been better ready to grasp 
 this glorious fact of the resurrection of Jesus, 
 because he had told them that it was coming. In 
 view of the plain statements of Jesus before- 
 hand that he would die and rise from the dead, 
 it is a little strange that they seemed to be ut- 
 terly unprepared for either his death or resur- 
 rection. 
 
 Some people would have us believe that 
 Jesus never really foretold his death and resur- 
 rection, but that the statements to the effect 
 that he did are unhistorical, that these state- 
 
1S THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 
 
 ments got into the gospel accounts later on 
 from those who had come to believe that he 
 had died and risen and who were looking back 
 on the events of his life through a haze that 
 caused them to see things that really were not 
 there. There are a number of things that would 
 show this view of the matter to be wrong; but 
 all that is necessary to say here is that, if one 
 believes that Jesus did die and rise from the 
 dead, he will not be apt to have much trouble 
 with the statements that he foretold his death 
 and resurrection. On the other hand, if he did 
 not die and rise, there is nothing to Christianity 
 any way and there is no need to go any fur- 
 ther with the discussion. Jesus himself, when 
 challenged by his enemies, staked all his 
 claims on his future resurrection from the dead 
 (Matt. 12: 38ff). 
 
 But it is not at all impossible to understand 
 how the disciples should have failed to expect 
 Jesus to die and rise again even in the face of 
 the fact that he had predicted that he would 
 do so. For one thing, the idea of his death 
 was always an unwelcome one to them and one 
 that they would not for a moment entertain. 
 In fact, it has been suggested, and perhaps 
 with some justification from the gospel records, 
 
- THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 19 
 
 that toward the end of his ministry there was 
 a kind of coldness, .even estrangement, that 
 grew up between Jesus and his disciples due 
 to his insistence on the idea of his coming 
 death. He was looking forward to his death 
 and resurrection as the crowning event of his 
 ministry, as the main thing for which he came 
 into the world. They were expecting a tem- 
 poral kingdom to be set up and scheming who 
 should get the big places when it was set up. 
 His conception and outlook for the kingdom 
 were totally different from theirs. The main 
 events therefore to which he was looking for- 
 ward in founding the kingdom had no place in 
 their conception of the matter. Consequently 
 the idea of his death and resurrection could 
 find no lodgment in their minds until these 
 events took place before their eyes. Ideas that 
 have no relation to other ideas already in our 
 minds can not find a lodging there. Especially 
 is this true if the new idea is one that is not 
 wanted. When such an unwelcome idea comes 
 into mind, it gets such a cool reception that it 
 soon retires and seeks a more congenial atmos- 
 phere. Getting the disciples of Jesus to wel- 
 come the thought of his coming death was 
 about like getting a Baptist to welcome the idea 
 
20 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 
 
 of infant baptism or getting a country deacon 
 in Texas to believe in evolution. 
 
 Jesus indicates that his disciples ought to 
 have been prepared to expect his resurrection 
 from their reading of the Old Testament (Luke 
 24: 25, 26, 44ff). He saw the doctrine of the 
 resurrection in these scriptures (Luke 20: 27- 
 38 and parallels). God is not the God of dead 
 men but of the living. But the disciples did 
 not see the resurrection power of God in the 
 Old Testament as Jesus did, nor did his pre- 
 dictions of his own death and resurrection take 
 hold of their minds and hearts. Hence when 
 he died, they were utterly downcast and con- 
 founded, and when he rose from the dead, they 
 were astonished and amazed. It took them 
 some time to adjust themselves to the new and 
 strange situation. It was so much more glori- 
 ous than anything they had anticipated that 
 their whole mental lives had to be revolution- 
 ized to allow for this new and glorious fact. 
 
 THE CONVICTION OF THE DISCIPLES 
 
 In spite of the fact, however, that the disci- 
 ples were slow to believe in the resurrection of 
 Jesus, it is evident from the New Testament 
 that they did come to accept it as a fact. 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS ai 
 
 Evidently they accepted it because there was 
 nothing else to do. They believed him alive 
 from the dead, not because they expected it, but 
 in spite of the fact that they did not expect it. 
 It wholly misrepresents the situation to say 
 that these disciples were looking for his resur- 
 rection, that they were over-credulous concern- 
 ing the matter, and that therefore they came 
 to accept the idea that he had risen without 
 sufficient evidence. The situation as we find 
 it in the New Testament was exactly the oppo- 
 site of this. They were not expecting him to 
 rise; they were therefore slow to believe, but 
 did come to believe because the evidence forced 
 them to it. The other view is very plausible in a 
 way; that is, one can easily imagine its taking 
 place that way. But we need not deceive our- 
 selves in regard to the matter. The fact that 
 we can imagine that it might have taken place 
 that way is no evidence that it did take place 
 that way. We can imagine that a good many 
 things might have taken place during the 
 course of human history. But to imagine a 
 thing taking place and to have evidence that it 
 did take place are two different things alto- 
 gether. And there is no evidence that the dis- 
 ciples came to believe in the resurrection of 
 
22 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 
 
 Jesus by any such process as the one we are 
 here considering. All the evidence in the New 
 Testament is to the effect that they came to 
 believe in the resurrection of Jesus because 
 they had dependable evidence that he was alive 
 from the dead. Anybody who advocates the 
 other view gets it, not out of the New Testa- 
 ment, but out of his own head. Now if a man 
 wants to imagine a story like that and pass it 
 off as an imaginary story, that is all right. He 
 is entirely within his own rights in doing so. 
 But nobody has a right to pass off such an 
 imaginary story as that, without the slightest 
 historical or rational evidence to support it, 
 and expect other people to accept it as an ac- 
 count of facts. 
 
 What was it then that caused the disciples 
 to believe that Jesus had risen from the dead? 
 That question can quickly be answered. It was 
 because he appeared to them. He manifested 
 himself alive. They did not witness the resur- 
 rection, but they did see the risen Christ. They 
 knew that he was alive in the same way that 
 one to-day knows that his neighbor, or his 
 wife and children are alive. One knows as a 
 matter of experience, by the testimony of the 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 23 
 
 senses and by personal communication with 
 the living. 
 
 Jesus appeared to them one at a time and in 
 groups. He appeared to Mary (John 20: 16), 
 tometer (1 Cor. 152.5), to James, (1: Cor, 15: 
 7), to the two on the way to Emmaus (Luke 
 24: 13ff), to ten of the apostles (John 20: 
 19ff), to all of the eleven apostles (John 20: 
 26ff), to seven on the Sea of Galilee (John 
 21: 1ff), toa group on the mountain in Galilee, 
 possibly five hundred of them (Matt. 28: 16ff; 
 1 Cor. 15: 6). There may have been other 
 appearances, besides the one to Saul, to be 
 discussed later. These show, however, that 
 he appeared under different circumstances and 
 often enough that it could not have been a 
 matter of illusion. They saw him, were in- 
 vited to touch him (Luke 24: 39), heard his 
 words. They record for us definite instruc- 
 tion that he gave them (Luke 24: 25ff, 44ff; 
 Matt. 28: 16ff, ef al.). 
 
 Much has been made at times of the dif- 
 ferences in the accounts of the four Gospels 
 in recording these appearances. Whatever 
 else may be said about it, the differences show 
 that we have here independent accounts. One 
 account does not slavishly copy or reproduce 
 
24 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 
 
 another. This greatly enhances the value of 
 the testimony. If we had one writer slavishly 
 and mechanically copying or reproducing an- 
 other, that would cast suspicion on their testi- 
 mony. The writers do not appear as men 
 afraid their accounts will not be accepted. In 
 fact, they do not seem to be thinking so much 
 about that as they do about recording the facts 
 that they have seen and experienced. And all 
 the accounts do agree on the main thing; 
 namely, that Jesus abundantly manifested him- 
 self alive from the dead. When we are listen- 
 ing to witnesses, what we expect of good wit- 
 nesses is not that they shall agree in all de- 
 tails, but that they agree on the main points 
 at issue. And all the Gospels bear witness to 
 the fact that Jesus gave to his disciples con- 
 vincing evidence that he was alive from the 
 dead. Practically everybody to-day admits 
 that the disciples believed that Jesus rose. 
 There is no satisfactory way of explaining how 
 they came to believe this except on the sup- 
 position that he manifested himself in convinc- 
 ing evidence to their unexpecting and there- 
 fore skeptical minds. 
 
25 
 THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE DISCIPLES 
 
 Another factor in the evidence that Jesus 
 rose is the change that came over the disciples 
 when they came to accept the fact of his resur- 
 rection. They came to believe that he was alive 
 and this belief wrought a revolution in their 
 lives. They were altogether different men after 
 they realized that their Lord had risen from 
 the dead. These men who had their hopes all 
 dashed to pieces and who had consequently 
 been utterly disheartened by the death of Jesus, 
 after a little while became as brave as lions 
 and went out in Jerusalem and proclaimed the 
 resurrection of Jesus with such boldness and 
 power that thousands of people, doubtless in- 
 cluding many of his enemies, accepted their 
 message and believed in Jesus as the living and 
 ascended Christ. These men bore testimony 
 to the resurrection when their testimony meant 
 social ostracism, the loss of worldly goods and 
 sometimes of life itself. What gave them their 
 confidence and boldness in proclaiming this 
 message? What made them so persistent in 
 their testimony? What gave their testimony 
 such power with the people? Were they be- 
 side themselves? What gave their message 
 such transforming power in the lives of men? 
 
26 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 
 
 Was all this simply the result of a psycholog- 
 ical situation? What produced such a psycho- 
 logical situation P 
 
 With the enemies of Jesus absolutely in con- 
 trol of the situation in Jerusalem, with Jesus 
 himself out of the way, with his handful of 
 discouraged disciples utterly disappointed and 
 broken in spirit, will somebody please tell us 
 how a psychological situation could arise such 
 as we See in the early chapters of Acts? How 
 could these few discouraged disciples suddenly 
 become so transformed as to proclaim the 
 resurrection in such power as to win thousands 
 of hostile men and so as to produce consterna- 
 tion in the ranks of the enemy? 
 
 If we admit the resurrection as a fact, then 
 all is accounted for. If Jesus rose from the 
 dead and manifested himself to his disciples, 
 we can understand how they came to believe 
 him alive, how they were transformed, how 
 they bore witness to the resurrection in such 
 power as to convince multitudes of others. But 
 on any other assumption the whole situation 
 remains unexplained and can not be explained. 
 
 THE TESTIMONY OF PAUL 
 
 There is another evidence from the New 
 Testament for the resurrection of Jesus that 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS rot 
 
 demands attention. It is the conversion and 
 career of Paul. It is not necessary to review 
 here the facts of Paul’s life. It is sufficient to 
 say that he started out as a bitter persecutor 
 of the church. All at once he changed and 
 became the greatest preacher and advocate of 
 Christianity that the world has ever seen. Let 
 us ask ourselves the question: What changed 
 Saul of Tarsus from the bitter persecutor of 
 Christianity to its ablest advocate and most 
 enthusiastic propagandist? Many answers 
 have been proposed to this question. But in 
 reality there is only one answer. That is the 
 answer that Paul himself has given. He says 
 that he was changed by the appearance to him 
 of Jesus alive from the dead (1 Cor. 9: 1; 15: 
 8; Acts 9: 3-8; 22: 6-11; 26: 12-18). Paul 
 testifies definitely to the fact that Jesus ap- 
 peared to him. He gives us this testimony in 
 a book (1 Corinthians) that practically all 
 critics, conservative and liberal, admit came 
 from the hand of Paul before 60 A.D. 
 
 What shall we say about his testimony? For 
 one thing practically nobody would deny his 
 sincerity. His sacrificial life and intense ear- 
 nestness would forbid the idea that Paul was 
 insincere. He took his religion seriously. He 
 
28 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 
 
 did this before his conversion. When he was 
 convinced that this new sect was wrong and 
 ought to be stopped, he went to work to stop 
 it. And when he became convinced that the 
 Christians were right, he did not hesitate to 
 cast in his lot with them, though it meant a 
 life of suffering and hardship and the loss of 
 all that a Jew counted dear in life. 
 
 Nor could anyone say that Paul was men- 
 tally unbalanced. His writings are too sane, 
 manifest too much mental poise and sound in- 
 telligence for that. Paul was an enthusiast, 
 but not a fanatical one. Fanaticism lacks the 
 element of sanity and mental poise. This man 
 Paul is too well known as a sane, intelligent 
 thinker and constructive worker to call him a 
 fanatic. Any man would impeach his own in- 
 telligence who accused Paul of lack of intelli- 
 gence or Sanity. 
 
 But if Paul was sincere and mentally poised, 
 what shall we say of his testimony to the ef- 
 fect that Jesus changed him by appearing to 
 him alive from the dead? We should here 
 remember also that the living Christ was the 
 center and inspiration of Paul’s life. It is not 
 simply a question of Paul’s testimony to a de- 
 tached event. But it is a question of an event 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 29 
 
 that revolutionized a great life. It is also a 
 question of the inspiration and sustaining 
 power of that life—a life of incessant and 
 arduous labors and sacrificial and unselfish 
 service to God and man. Paul testifies that 
 the living Christ appeared to him, changed the 
 course of his life and guided and sustained him 
 in all his labors. Jesus and the resurrection 
 were central in his message (1 Cor. 15, ef al). 
 Christ became so real to him and so dynamic 
 in his life that he could say, “For me to live 
 is Christ” (Phil. 1: 21). 
 
 Now was Paul mistaken about all this P Did 
 he see Jesus? Was the Christ with whom he 
 believed himself in spiritual communion only 
 an illusion? Do men get inspiration for lives 
 of sustained and heroic self-sacrifice from dis- 
 eased and over-heated imaginations P 
 
 We maintain that there is no rational way 
 to account for Paul’s conversion and career 
 other than the way in which Paul himself ex- 
 plains it; namely, that he was arrested in his 
 mad career of persecuting the Christians by 
 the appearance to him of the living Christ, and 
 that from his conversion on he lived in spir- 
 itual fellowship with this living Christ who 
 was the inspiration and power of his life. We 
 
30 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 
 
 challenge anybody to give any other rational 
 explanation of the conversion and career of 
 Paul. Moreover, we affirm that there is no 
 other explanation. Paul’s explanation meets 
 every requirement in the situation and accounts 
 for all the facts. No other hypothesis does 
 account for the facts. If Jesus rose from the 
 dead, Paul is accounted for. Otherwise, Paul 
 is a hopeless enigma. Of course, if we accept 
 Paul’s account, we must believe in a super- 
 natural Christianity. But to believe in a su- 
 pernatural Christianity is more rational than 
 to believe in a world in which a career like 
 Paul’s could come uncaused and remain for- 
 ever a hopeless riddle. 
 
 FELLOWSHIP WITH THE LIVING CHRIST 
 
 Jesus Christ has transformed the lives of 
 hundreds and thousands as he transformed 
 Paul. He has uplifted nations and trans- 
 formed civilizations. No parallel to his up- 
 lifting and transforming power can be found 
 in history. A unique effect must have a unique 
 cause. The only adequate cause, the only 
 cause that really explains the influence and 
 power of Christ in the world, is the living 
 Christ. This can be shown more definitely by 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 31 
 
 keeping in mind that this uplifting and trans- 
 forming process is inseparable from two things. 
 One is the proclamation of Jesus as risen Re- 
 deemer and Saviour from sin. One may 
 preach and teach anything else in the world 
 than Jesus as the crucified and risen Saviour 
 of sinners and no such results follow in human 
 life. Let those who believe that an atoning 
 and risen Christ is not essential to Christianity 
 produce results corresponding to those being 
 produced in every mission field of the world 
 by evangelical Christianity ; then it will be time 
 enough to consider seriously reducing Chris- 
 tianity to some system of ethics or philosophy 
 that leaves out the cross and the empty tomb. 
 
 But to secure such results not only must 
 Christ be proclaimed as risen, he must be be- 
 lieved in as the Redeemer who conquered sin 
 and death in the resurrection. Believing in 
 him merely as teacher and example will not 
 produce such results, nor will believing in any 
 other person or truth. 
 
 To put the matter a little differently, there is 
 nothing that uplifts and transforms men like 
 fellowship with the living Christ. To live, by 
 faith, in communion with him as the living 
 Lord, triumphant over sin and death, lifts men 
 
32 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 
 
 up out of themselves, their littleness, their sins 
 and sordidness as nothing else does. This 
 fact constitutes a valuable, an indispensable 
 element in the evidence for the resurrection of 
 Jesus. Our fellowship with him is based on 
 the resurrection, and, on the other hand, our 
 fellowship with Christ is assurance of his 
 resurrection. We could not have living com- 
 munion with a dead Christ. If he be not risen, 
 he could have no power in our lives except a 
 post mortem influence. But the power of 
 Christ in the lives of men is not simply the in- 
 fluence of a dead man—the uplifting power of 
 his example and his teachings; it is the trans- 
 forming power of a living but unseen person- 
 ality. It moves on a different plane altogether 
 from the influence of a dead man, such as 
 Napoleon, Washington or Lincoln. It is a 
 unique fact in the history and experience of 
 mankind, and unique facts, when clearly es- 
 tablished as facts, must be given unique ex- 
 planation, must be referred to unique causes. 
 Such a unique explanation is found in the 
 resurrection of Jesus. To reject the resurrec- 
 tion of Jesus on the ground that it is excep- 
 tional might be a rational procedure if it were 
 not for the fact that there is a whole series of 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 33 
 
 facts following the resurrection, and vitally 
 linked up with it, that would be left without 
 explanation. But since we have this series of 
 facts connected with the resurrection and de- 
 pendent directly on it, it would be irrational 
 to reject the resurrection and leave these facts 
 unexplained. 
 
 Some people, too, object to the idea of fel- 
 lowship with the living Christ on the ground 
 that such an experience is mystical and that 
 mysticism can not be admitted. By this is not 
 meant mystical in the sense of mysterious, dif- 
 ficult to understand, but mystical in the sense 
 of direct and conscious contact of the soul with 
 the divine. But there is no use for one to ob- 
 ject to a fact on the ground that his philosoph- 
 ical assumptions will not allow the fact to be. 
 If a fact does not agree with our assumptions 
 or prejudices, then so much the worse for our 
 assumptions. We can not change a fact sim- 
 ply by denying it the right to be. That is the 
 method of Eddyism. But Mrs. Eddy and her 
 followers are not the only people in the history 
 of the world who have tried to get rid of un- 
 welcome facts by denying them the right to 
 exist. 
 
34 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 
 
 Christian mysticism is a fact. Conversion 
 and communion with God in Christ are facts, 
 and there is no use to deny them. But the 
 objector may say that he is not denying the fact 
 of conversion or even of some kind of mystical 
 experience, but that he denies the Christian’s 
 explanation of these; that is, the objector de- 
 nies that the Christian has feesieee with the 
 living Christ. 
 
 But in answer to this we would ask: How is 
 a normal and repeated conscious experience to 
 be understood? Is it best understood from the 
 point of view of the consciousness of the one 
 having the experience or from the point of 
 view of one who does not have it? Who is 
 most likely to understand and be able to ex- 
 plain an experience, the man who has the ex- 
 perience or the man who does not? Who can 
 best understand what is involved in the experi- 
 ence of seeing, the man who sees or the blind 
 man incapable of seeing? Any experience that 
 becomes so normal and regular in human ex- 
 perience that it can be reduced to order is to be 
 understood in terms of the laws that govern the 
 experience. The fact that there are laws that 
 govern the experience is the thing that makes 
 it a norma! experience. An experience that is 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 35 
 
 irregular, spasmodic, not subject to discover- 
 able law, nor to control, is considered abnor- 
 mal. Here is the difference between the mental 
 and moral life of an insane man and a sane one. 
 
 What has just been said means that any 
 normal experience is to be understood in terms 
 of that experience, not in terms of some other 
 experience. A certain realm of experience is 
 in that sense to be subject to home rule, not to 
 foreign domination. 
 
 If we apply this principle to Christian ex- 
 perience, it means that Christian experience is 
 not to be interpreted in terms of physical or 
 biological science. Faith that deals with the 
 unseen or spiritual world has its own laws and 
 is not to be subject to the domination of science, 
 in the sense of physical science. And the ob- 
 jection to Christian experience on the ground 
 that it is mystical usually has its foundation 
 in unreasoning prejudice against any reality 
 that cannot be interpreted in terms of the phy- 
 sical or biological sciences, or in terms of nat- 
 uralism. 
 
 The laws then that govern the Christian’s 
 fellowship with the living Christ would likely 
 furnish the best key to the interpretation of 
 that experience. Can one discover any such 
 
36 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 
 
 laws? Yes. As stated above, one of them is 
 that such an experience comes only in connec- 
 tion with a knowledge of Christ as crucified 
 and risen Redeemer, and faith or trust in him 
 as such a Redeemer. Here you have both the 
 objective and subjective factors necessary to 
 knowledge in any realm: you have the univer- 
 sal subject-object relation. Under no other 
 conditions do you have this experience. More- 
 over, where you have these conditions, you 
 do have universally, in characteristic form, this 
 experience. Besides, in proportion as these 
 conditions fade out and disappear you have 
 the corresponding disappearance of this ex- 
 perience. You may have all sorts of factors 
 entering into Christianity, but so long as you 
 have these factors present—proclamation of 
 Christ as crucified and risen Redeemer and 
 faith in him as such—so long does this char- 
 acteristic Christian experience remain. But 
 when factors enter in that obscure or destroy 
 these factors, then the characteristic Christian 
 experience is obscured or disappears. 
 
 This, it seems to me, amounts to a demon- 
 stration that Christ as the living Saviour is the 
 cause and explanation of the Christian’s ex- 
 perience of conversion and of fellowship with 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS o7 
 
 God. It seems that one will have to deny the 
 fact or admit the Christian’s explanation of the 
 fact. 
 
 The Christian’s fellowship with the living 
 Christ then carries with it the conclusion that 
 Christ rose from the dead. 
 
 CONCLUSION 
 
 Jesus rose from the dead. This is one of 
 the foundation facts of Christianity. Without 
 this fact, there could be no Christianity. This 
 idea of the resurrection of Jesus is set forth 
 every time Christians meet on the Lord’s day, 
 the first day of the week, to worship God in 
 the name of Jesus. We do not celebrate the 
 resurrection of Jesus on Easter Sunday alone. 
 Every Sunday is Easter for the Christian. 
 Every return of the first day of the week re- 
 minds us that Jesus is alive. We keep no 
 Jewish Sabbath as devotees of Mosaic legal- 
 ism; we celebrate on the Lord’s day the tri- 
 umph of the Saviour over sin and the grave, 
 giving us freedom from legalism through the 
 conquering grace of God. The very existence 
 of a Christian church as the body of Christ 
 involves his living as the animating power and 
 presence of the body. The ordinance of 
 
38 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 
 
 baptism is a constant testimony, not only to his 
 atoning death, but also to his triumphant resur- 
 rection from the dead. “Behold, I am alive 
 for evermore, and I have the keys of death and 
 of Hades” (Rev. 1:18, Am. Rev.). 
 
THE NATURE OF THE RESURRECTION 
 

 
CHAPTER II 
 THE NATURE OF THE RESURRECTION! 
 
 F the resurrection of Jesus is to be accepted 
 as a fact, the next question of interest to 
 us would be: What kind of a transaction was 
 itP Just what was it that took place in the 
 resurrection P 
 
 Certainly this is a question that any man 
 would want to approach with caution. No- 
 body with any sense of his own limitations or 
 any consciousness of the greatness of the 
 world in which he lives or of the God who rules 
 the world would care to rush into the discus- 
 sion of this question with a cock-sure answer 
 to all its problems. 
 
 Yet it is a question that we would not and 
 cannot avoid. We inevitably face it when we 
 begin to think on the question of the resurrec- 
 tion of Jesus. 
 
 
 
 *On this topic compare, ‘“‘The Resurrection Body,’ by Dr. 
 Wilbur W. White, published by the Doran Co.—a book that 
 came to my hands after this chapter was written. 
 
 [41] 
 
42 
 THE EMPTY TOMB 
 
 A number of people to-day are inciined to 
 deny the resurrection of the body of Jesus. 
 I do not mean those who deny a future life 
 altogether, those who look on death as the end 
 of all things, nor those who deny that we can 
 have any knowledge of life beyond death, or 
 any rational basis for hope concerning such 
 a life—not outright materialists nor agnostics 
 in their view of life. There is an increasing 
 number perhaps who, while they do not dog- 
 matically deny the bodily resurrection of Je- 
 sus, are skeptical about it, and say that they 
 do not regard it as essential to Christianity. 
 These people either deny outright, or are 
 skeptical in regard to miracles in the physical 
 realm. They accordingly interpret the resur- 
 rection of Jesus to mean the persistence of his 
 personality beyond death. Somehow, they 
 hold, he succeeded in communicating with his 
 disciples and thus assured them that he lived 
 on in spite of death, that he transcended death 
 and its power. Those who take this position 
 do not deny all value to the evidence for the 
 resurrection of Jesus as given in the Gospels, 
 but they seem to think that these early Chris- 
 tians confused the spiritual and physical and 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 43 
 
 that the evidence for the bodily resurrection of 
 Jesus is inconclusive. In some cases, it seems 
 to me, they do not squarely face the question 
 as to the value of the evidence for the bodily 
 resurrection of Jesus. 
 
 I would not care to say that such a view is 
 entirely without value or comfort. It would 
 be worth something to believe that Jesus in 
 his spiritual personality lived on after death. 
 But we are interested, first of all, in what the 
 facts indicate; and there are many things in 
 the New Testament that point clearly in the 
 direction of the bodily resurrection of Jesus. 
 And on the basis of the evidence given in the 
 New Testament I maintain that the resurrec- 
 tion of Jesus included the raising of his body 
 from the dead. 
 
 On the morning of the resurrection, when 
 the women came to the tomb, they found the 
 stone rolled away and the tomb empty (Luke 
 24: 2, 3). They were invited to look on the 
 place where the body had lain (Mark 16: 6). 
 When Peter and “‘the other disciple’ went to 
 the tomb they also found it empty (John 20: 
 2ff). They entered the tomb and saw the 
 linen cloths lying to one side, but the body of 
 Jesus was not there. That is really the first 
 
44 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 
 
 capital point made by the gospel writers with 
 reference to the matter: the body of Jesus was 
 gone, Joseph’s tomb was empty. 
 
 Another thing is that they saw Jesus (Mark 
 16: 11, John 20: 18, 1 Cor. 9: 1, et al) ; they 
 heard his words (Matt. 28: 18-20, Luke 24: 
 17, 25ff, et al) ; they touched him (Matt. 28: 
 9); he ate before them (Luke 24: 43). It is 
 true that they did not readily recognize him 
 (Luke 24: 16ff, John 21: 4, et al); that he 
 passed through closed doors (John 20: 19 
 ff, 26) ; and seemed to vanish from their sight 
 at times, perhaps at will (Luke 24: 31). 
 
 Some would solve this problem by denying 
 the reliability of the records on some of these 
 points. They would regard some of the state- 
 ments about his eating and about the disciples’ 
 touching Jesus as “unconscious materializa- 
 tions.” But if this were granted, you still have 
 the other passages in which Jesus is seen and 
 heard, and the emphasis placed by the records 
 (for they do seem to emphasize it) that the 
 tomb was empty. We cannot, therefore, get 
 rid of the idea of the resurrection of the body 
 of Jesus by eliminating one or two passages; 
 to get rid of this idea we would have to re- 
 construct the whole story. It is plain on the 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 45 
 
 surface of the gospel accounts that the body 
 of Jesus was not to be found by the disciples 
 of Jesus. Moreover, it might be remarked 
 that the method of solving a problem like this 
 by eliminating those statements in the records 
 that do not agree with our notions of what hap- 
 pened is too easy a method and hardly seems 
 a fair way to deal with the records. Unless 
 there are other reasons for eliminating such 
 statements, we had better try to find some 
 other way out of our difficulty. 
 
 The old question that has been so often 
 asked, but never answered, is still calling for 
 answer. If the body of Jesus did not rise from 
 the dead, then what became of itP Did the 
 disciples get possession of it and conceal it? 
 How could they get possession of it when the 
 tomb was sealed with the seal of the Roman 
 government and guarded by Roman soldiers ? 
 Besides, if they could have got possession of 
 the body, what motive could they have had 
 for concealing it and then trying to deceive 
 others in regard to the matter? They were 
 utterly dispirited and downcast. There was 
 no conceivable reason why they, at the risk of 
 their lives, should practice a fraud and publish 
 a deliberate lie in regard to the matter. They 
 
46 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 
 
 had everything to lose and nothing to gain 
 by such a course. The very idea is prepos- 
 terous. | 
 
 The body of Jesus then did not pass into the 
 hands of his disciples. If his body was not 
 raised from the dead, it follows that it re- 
 mained in the hands of his enemies. But when 
 the disciples began to testify that Jesus had 
 risen from the dead, why did not his enemies 
 produce the dead body and settle the whole 
 controversy ? That would have settled the mat- 
 ter. The resurrection of Jesus was the main 
 element in the preaching of the first Chris- 
 tians. Their testimony could have been re- 
 futed once for all by producing the body of 
 Jesus. Surely the people who put Jesus to 
 death and’ who had charge of his body were 
 the biggest simpletons the world ever saw in 
 a situation like that if they never thought of 
 stopping the whole movement by bringing to 
 view the dead body of Jesus. Why did they 
 not do it? There is only one answer: it was 
 not in their possession. And the disciples did 
 not have it. There was no conceivable rea- 
 son why they should work themselves up into 
 a fanatical frenzy and seek to deceive the 
 world by hiding the body of Jesus and 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 47 
 
 reporting that he had risen. Besides, they 
 could not have got possession of the body if 
 they had desired. 
 
 There is only one conclusion that the facts 
 will allow. The body of Jesus rose from the 
 dead. The tomb was empty. The body could 
 not be accounted for. His body revived and 
 came out of the tomb and was seen by the 
 disciples. 
 
 THE RESURRECTION MORE THAN RESUSCITATION 
 
 But while the New Testament records de- 
 mand a belief in the resurrection of the body 
 of Jesus, these same records forbid the idea 
 that the resurrection was simply a resuscita- 
 tion of his body. It was not the restoration 
 of Jesus to the natural plane of life. His body 
 was not raised as a body of flesh and blood, 
 subject to death and decay. While it is not 
 distinctly stated, yet it is likely that the peo- 
 ple whom Jesus raised from the dead during 
 his earthly life were raised back to the natural 
 plane, with bodies of flesh and blood, to die 
 again as all men die. It was not that kind of 
 a resurrection that Jesus had. It was some- 
 thing more significant and glorious for both 
 himself and for us. 
 
48 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 
 
 While, as previously stated, then, the New 
 Testament makes it clear that the body of Je- 
 sus rose from the dead, still the significance 
 of his resurrection does not lie primarily or 
 mainly in the physical or natural realm. The 
 significance of his resurrection lies mainly in 
 the spiritual realm. His body, in the resur- 
 rection, was transformed and glorified. After 
 the resurrection, it seemed to have powers 
 transcending the ordinary powers or laws of 
 matter. He was so changed that he did not 
 seem to be easily recognizable even by his 
 disciples. He seemed to have the power to 
 appear and vanish at will, and to go tars 
 closed doors. 
 
 Some one has suggested that this process of 
 transformation was not completed until the 
 ascension. That is not at all impossible and 
 may be true. If so, it would help to relieve 
 the difficulty about his body’s having in it, af- 
 ter the resurrection, the wounds in the hands 
 and side and about his eating with his disciples. 
 Be that as it may, there will likely be some 
 difficulties remaining with any view. I am not 
 expecting to work out any view, nor to find 
 any worked out by anybody else, that will re- 
 lieve all the difficulties. I am inclined to think 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 49 
 
 that the realities of life and experience are too 
 great and glorious to be entirely comprehended 
 in any of our explanations. For that reason 
 Iam always suspicious of theories that explain 
 everything. Such theories usually explain by 
 eliminating some of the facts. They simplify 
 by flattening things out too much. Often- 
 times they eliminate the most glorious facts 
 of life and leave us those that are least mean- 
 ingful and inspiring. 
 
 DANGER OF SIMPLIFYING THE FACTS 
 
 One such process of oversimplification is to 
 reduce the meaning of the resurrection of Je- 
 sus to a belief in his spiritual immortality. The 
 facts do not seem to be satisfied with such an 
 explanation. They seem to require that we 
 believe in the resurrection of the body of Je- 
 sus from the tomb. 
 
 On the other hand, it is just as much a mat- 
 ter of oversimplification if we regard the resur- 
 rection as being the revivifying of his body and 
 raising it to the natural plane of life. Nor 
 was it simply giving him back a body of flesh 
 and blood, but not subject to death in the fu- 
 ture. His body evidently had higher powers 
 and capacities than it had before. And this 
 
50 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 
 
 probably applied to his whole personality. His 
 resurrection might appropriately be spoken of 
 as the rebirth of his whole personality on a 
 higher plane—a plane transcending the pres- 
 ent order of things. 
 
 SEEN ONLY BY DISCIPLES 
 
 This may account for the fact that Jesus, 
 after the resurrection, did not manifest him- 
 self to the world generally. There is no record, 
 so far as I recall, that Jesus, after rising from 
 the dead, manifested himself to any except his 
 own disciples and friends. He appeared “not 
 to all the people, but unto witnesses that were 
 chosen before of God.’’ So testified one of 
 these chosen witnesses, even the leader among 
 them (Acts 10: 41). This fact has appeared 
 to some people to throw suspicion on the value 
 of the evidence for the resurrection. If God 
 raised him from the dead, and wanted all men 
 to believe in him as alive from the dead, why 
 did he not have Christ appear to all menP 
 Why did he not appear to his enemies, to the 
 chief priests, to Pontius Pilate, yea, to the 
 whole world, and let all men know that he was — 
 alive from the dead P 
 
 This objection overlooks the fact that the 
 resurrection of Jesus was more than the resus- 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS Sl 
 
 citation of a dead body. The significance of 
 his resurrection lies mainly in the spiritual 
 realm. He did not rise simply to live endlessly 
 on the same plane as before. The old life was 
 transcended. For a man to see anything more 
 in the resurrection of Jesus than the resuscita- 
 tion of a dead body that man must have spir- 
 itual perception; he must be able to see in Je- 
 sus the risen Lord of glory, and it takes more 
 than physical vision to see him thus. 
 
 We might look at the matter from either 
 side—the side of Jesus or the side of the wit- 
 ness. From the side of Jesus it is possible 
 that the resurrection had wrought such a 
 change in him that physical eyes alone could 
 not see him. Perhaps this would help to ac- 
 count for the fact that the disciples were so 
 slow in recognizing Jesus at times. Then again 
 on the side of the witness we must remember 
 that, granting that men could have seen him 
 with physical eyes alone, yet it takes more 
 than witnessing physical miracles to produce 
 moral and spiritual results. Many of these 
 people had seen the miracles of Jesus; yet they 
 would not believe. They had seen Lazarus, 
 whom Jesus had raised from the dead; but 
 the only result produced with some of them 
 
we THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 
 
 was to infuriate them so that they plotted to 
 put both Jesus and Lazarus to death (John 
 12: 10, 11). Spiritual results are not easily 
 produced. Perhaps if he could have mani- 
 fested himself to some of these people they 
 would have been ready to try to put him to 
 death again. If they hear not Moses and the 
 prophets, neither will they be persuaded, if 
 one rise from the dead (Luke 16: 31). The 
 resurrection of Jesus was a fact whose signifi- 
 cance lay primarily in the moral and spiritual 
 realm rather than in the physical. It is en- 
 tirely possible, therefore, that to see him after 
 the resurrection required more than physical 
 eyes. Be that as it may, it is certain that to 
 see him with only physical eyes would have 
 produced no moral and spiritual results. The 
 only man, other than a disciple, to whom Je- 
 Sus appeared, so far as definite record goes, 
 was Saul of Tarsus, and in Saul’s case he be- 
 came a disciple at once because he saw Jesus 
 with more than physical vision. 
 
 We might repeat then that the resurrection 
 of Jesus included the raising of his body from 
 the grave, but it was much more than the 
 reviving of his body and bringing it back 
 to.the natural plane of life. It was the raising 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 30 
 
 of his whole personality to a higher plane of 
 being. Death was the gateway by means of 
 which he entered upon a larger and more glori- 
 ous life. In thinking of this, we must remem- 
 ber that the resurrection was followed by the 
 ascension. His resurrection and ascension 
 were parts of one transaction. Some other 
 phases of this matter (bearing on the nature. 
 of the resurrection) will come out in the dis- 
 cussion of the significance of the resurrection. 
 We will, therefore, devote the rest of our space 
 to the significance of the resurrection of Je- 
 sus. What is its meaning for us and for the 
 world? 
 

 
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE RESUR- 
 RECTION OF JESUS FOR OUR 
 VIEW OF GOD 
 

 
CHAPTER III 
 
 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE RESURREC- 
 TION FOR OUR VIEW OF GOD 
 
 S there a God? If so, what kind of a God 
 
 is heP These are questions of prime im- 
 portance for man. If the question, Is there a 
 God? be answered in the negative, then it 
 makes little difference how any other question 
 is answered. Some men insist that this ques- 
 tion, as well as all others, shall be investigated 
 in a spirit of cold-blooded indifference with ref- 
 erence to the outcome. I should rather say 
 that any man who comes to this question in 
 such a spirit thereby shows that he has no ap- 
 preciation of the significance of the question 
 and is consequently foredoomed to failure in 
 his investigation. No man can succeed in ar- 
 riving at truth in regard to moral and spiritual 
 questions who does not have an appreciation 
 of the tremendous importance of the questions 
 he is dealing with. Such an appreciation is 
 
 [ 57] 
 
58 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 
 
 necessary to spiritual insight, and spiritual 
 insight is the prime qualification for knowing 
 Spiritual truth. A recent writer has well said: 
 ‘That state of mental equilibrium which we so 
 often praise as being impartial and free from 
 bias is unsuited to the investigation of the sig- 
 nificance of life.’’? 
 
 The second question is of scarcely less im- 
 portance than the first. If there is a God, what 
 kind of a God is he? Everything in human 
 life depends on the answer to these two ques- 
 tions. In all ages of the world, men have ap- 
 proached these questions in every conceivable 
 way and have arrived at all sorts of conclu- 
 sions. The best minds of the race have given 
 their most concentrated and prolonged atten- 
 tion to the idea of God. It is a question that 
 men cannot let alone and would not if they 
 could. They cannot let it alone, because it will 
 not let them alone. The question of God is 
 much more fundamental and important, more 
 all-persuasive in interest for mankind than the 
 questions of government, industry, and society. 
 The condition of the stock market or the state 
 of the weather are of temporary interest, but 
 
 
 
 ““Must We Part With God?” by Ernest F. Champness, pub- 
 lished by The MacMillan Co. 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 59 
 
 the question of God is permanent. The stock 
 market may be bad to-day, but it will improve 
 tomorrow. The weather may be foul to-day, 
 but it will be fair tomorrow. But if there is 
 no God, or if he is not good in character, then 
 nothing can ever be any better. In fact, if 
 there is no God, then there is no good or bad, 
 no better or worse. Everything is just blind 
 fact without meaning or value. 
 
 Our question in this chapter is: What is the 
 significance of the resurrection of Jesus for our 
 view of God? What bearing does it have on 
 our idea of God? One does not have to think 
 on the question very long before he sees that 
 it means everything for our conception of God. 
 
 In discussing the significance of the resur- 
 rection of Jesus for our view of God, it will 
 be understood, of course, that there is no in- 
 tention of minimizing the other factors in the 
 life of Jesus, for instance, the teaching of Je- 
 sus concerning God. But it is meant that, tak- 
 ing these other factors for granted, we shall 
 think about the significance of his resurrection. 
 Furthermore, we will remember that it is the 
 meaning of the resurrection of Jesus that we 
 are considering. The same Jesus who gave us 
 such comforting and meaningful words about 
 
60 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 
 
 the heavenly Father is the same Jesus who 
 rose from the dead. What is the meaning of 
 his resurrection for our view of God? 
 
 GOD A FACT 
 
 Jesus rose from the dead. That fact takes 
 God out of the realm of speculation and theory 
 and brings him down into the realm of history 
 and of fact. Men have employed their keenest 
 thought and most subtle arguments to validate 
 the idea of God. Doubtless much of their ar- 
 gument has been valid and much of it faulty. 
 There is no disposition on the part of the writer 
 to deny the value of these efforts. These argu- 
 ments have shown, to say the least of it, that 
 the idea of God is an idea intellectually re- 
 spectable in any company. So far as intel- 
 lectual standing is concerned, no man need 
 apologize for believing in God. The idea of 
 God is able to stand its ground among the great 
 ideas of the mind. 
 
 But the idea of God arrived at by means of 
 a process of reasoning is often in a state of un- 
 stable equilibrium. What argument estab- 
 lishes argument can often overthrow. There 
 are systems of thought other than theism that 
 can claim great intellectual respectability and 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 61 
 
 strength. Many people have often clung to 
 their faith in God in spite of the intellectual 
 difficulties rather than because of the strength 
 of the arguments for theism. This is not to 
 say that belief in God is irrational, but rather 
 that many people, in spite of intellectual con- 
 fusion on this subject and in spite of arguments 
 the subtlety of which they could not penetrate, 
 have been guided by their hearts and con- 
 sciences and have held on to God. In fact, it 
 is doubtful if very many people have ever 
 come to believe in God because of the cogency 
 of the intellectual arguments for God. These 
 arguments have rather been used to validate a 
 belief in God that men already had; they have 
 been used to clarify already existing faith. Men 
 have probably believed in God more because 
 their moral nature called for God than be- 
 cause intellectual considerations demanded 
 such belief. Many people have been like the 
 old lady who said to her pastor, after he had 
 preached a learned and eloquent sermon to 
 prove the existence of God: “Pastor, I still be- 
 lieve in God, in spite of all your argument.” 
 Moreover, men need that God shall be more 
 than an idea to them. The idea of God may 
 be validated as a factor in an intellectual 
 
62 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 
 
 system, but a bare intellectual idea of God will 
 have little vitality and power in the lives of 
 men. God should be more than a conclusion 
 at the end of a syllogism; he should be a living 
 power. For God to be such a living power in 
 the lives of men he must reveal himself in the 
 world of objective fact. Man’s life is not a life 
 of mere intellectual contemplation nor of bare 
 inner, mystical experience. It is first of all a 
 life related to an objective social order. Man 
 is a factor in such an order and is utterly de- 
 pendent on it. This is true of man’s religious 
 life as well as of any other phase of his life. 
 The power and persistence of idolatry testify 
 to man’s need of a concrete, historical revela- 
 tion of God. The doctrine of God, apart from 
 such a revelation in the objective world, will 
 no more meet man’s religious need than the 
 idea of bread will satisfy his physical hunger. 
 
 Such a revelation of God we have in Jesus 
 Christ. He came into the world in obedience 
 to the Father (John 3: 17; 5: 36, 38, et al); 
 he was the embodiment of God’s love and life, 
 so that he was the revelation of God (John 1: 
 18, et al) ; he died on the cross in obedience to 
 God (Phil. 2: 8, et al) ; God raised him from 
 the dead (Rom. 8: 11, et al). His resurrec- 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 63 
 
 tion, therefore, was the act of God. He was 
 crucified at the hands of wicked men. God 
 intervened on his behalf. He had lived such 
 a life as no other man had ever lived—a life 
 wholly given up to the will of God and unre- 
 servedly devoted to the service of mankind. 
 For such a man, yea, for the sinless Son of 
 God, to die at the hands of wicked men made 
 his death the supreme crisis in the history of 
 the world. Such a deed was a challenge to 
 God himself. And God did not decline the 
 challenge. He accepted it and showed his 
 hand. He entered the lists and showed him- 
 self God in the realm of history and of objec- 
 tive fact. The resurrection was God’s deed; 
 it was a deed of triumph over wicked and god- 
 less men. God’s voice rang out in this supreme 
 crisis of the world saying in very deed that sin 
 and hatred, superstition and darkness should 
 not rule the world. Many times God seems 
 to be silent in great crises. He seems not to 
 care while right is being crucified and wrong 
 is on the throne. But for God to remain silent 
 and inactive at this supreme crisis would have 
 been too much. It is difficult to see how there 
 could have been any God; a God who would 
 not have intervened now (Is it too much to 
 
64 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 
 
 say it?) would have abdicated his throne. He 
 would have resigned in favor of the forces of 
 evil. In that case the devil would have been 
 God over the world; he would have been su- 
 preme with an unchallenged supremacy. 
 
 No, God did not remain silent and inactive. 
 He spoke a word that sent terror to the very 
 depths of hell, a word that meant the over- 
 throw of sin and Satan. Wrong should not, 
 could not, go thus unrebuked. God must 
 speak; and he did. He spoke a word that was 
 unmistakable in its meaning. 
 
 The resurrection of Jesus thus gives us a 
 God revealed in the realm of objective fact. 
 No man can believe in the resurrection of Je- 
 sus and not believe in God. If we accept the 
 resurrection of Jesus, God is for us no longer 
 a problem of thought; he is a datum of his- 
 tory. Instead of being a problem of thought 
 he is the one fact who solves, or will solve, all 
 the problems of history and of experience. I 
 do not mean by this that we get an immediate 
 intellectual solution for the moral and spiritual 
 problems of life; I mean rather that we have 
 God as a datum of history and experience and 
 that we can trust him to straighten out all the 
 tangled skeins of history and experience. 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 65 
 
 As Jesus faced the situation on the night be- 
 fore the crucifixion, he invited his disciples to 
 believe in God and believe in himself (John 
 14: 1). Ina few hours, he was in the hands 
 of his enemies and in a few more he was on 
 the cross. Then he was dead. All their hopes 
 were gone. The darkness of despair hung 
 over them. Surely men never faced a more 
 hopeless situation. All was lost. But God 
 intervened and turned defeat into victory. And 
 if God could come out victorious in that situa- 
 tion, he can come out victorious in any situa- 
 tion. If he could be trusted there, he can be 
 trusted anywhere. The darkest point in hu- 
 man history becomes the brightest. Joseph’s 
 tomb, in which all their hopes were buried, be- 
 came the focal point of light to brighten all 
 history and to fill the world with hope and 
 gladness, to change gloom into joy and dark- 
 ness into light. 
 
 GOD A DOER 
 
 The resurrection of Jesus then not only 
 brings God into the realm of fact; it also throws 
 light on the question as to what kind of God 
 he is. Perhaps I should say that it throws 
 light on what kind of God he is by bringing 
 him into the realm of fact. 
 
66 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 
 
 He is no impersonal or semi-personal princi- 
 ple or. abstract force; he is a person; he is a 
 doer. The resurrection of Jesus is his deed. 
 This event in human history is not simply an 
 illustration of a universal law that human per- 
 sonality survives death; it may be that, but it 
 is much more than that. It represents the fact 
 that God stepped in at this particular point in 
 history. He stepped in because he chose to 
 do so. He was waiting and watching for the 
 opportune moment to intervene, and when that 
 moment came he did intervene. Jesus had 
 been telling men that God was the heavenly 
 Father, that he was interested in the lives of 
 men,. that he took a hand in human affairs. 
 Now, when the supreme crisis in human his- 
 tory came, he vindicated the word of Jesus. 
 He made bare his holy arm and showed that 
 he was a Father who cares, that he would not 
 stand by and see the world go utterly to ruin 
 and wickedness reign. He did care and be- 
 cause he cared he acted. All was lost without 
 God, but he was there and there to save the 
 day. | 
 
 The resurrection of Jesus shows that God 
 is concerned, tremendously concerned, in hu- 
 man affairs. The God of some present-day 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 67 
 
 philosophers is a God who knows perhaps, 
 who thinks as the philosophers do, but who 
 does nothing more. He sees the evil of the 
 world, the suffering of man, but takes no hand 
 in affairs. Prof. Royce has said that the value 
 of the idea of God is that we can know that in 
 anything that comes to us there is one who 
 understands.t. But we want a God who will 
 do something, as well as one that understands. 
 It looks very much in this case as if the philos- 
 opher had made his God, and made him in 
 his own image. His God is a great Philoso- 
 pher who thinks, who contemplates, but does 
 nothing. Such a conception of God reminds 
 us of the old saying about the weather, to the 
 effect that much has been said about the 
 weather but very little ever done. | 
 
 It was over against this idea of an inactive 
 Philosopher-God, whose only function is to 
 furnish a principle of intellectual unity for 
 the world, that Professor William James de- 
 veloped his conception of a God who is a doer. 
 He says that, whatever else may be said about 
 God, he is no gentleman’; that is, he is not 
 afraid to soil his hands by getting down in the 
 
 
 
 *The Religious Aspect of Philosophy, Chanter BBE 
 3“Pragmatism.” 
 
68 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 
 
 mire and dirt of the world and working to make 
 the world better. Now undoubtedly Professor 
 James is right on this point. God is a worker. 
 He works to make the world better; he works 
 to bring in a kingdom of righteousness and 
 truth in the world. This was manifested su- 
 premely in the resurrection of Jesus. 
 
 Moreover, he is a moral God. He took a 
 hand by raising Jesus from the dead, because 
 the moral interests of the world were at stake. 
 He could not afford to stand idly by when the 
 supreme moral interests of mankind were im- 
 perilled. 
 
 GOD SUPREME 
 
 Professor William James, in his pragmatist 
 philosophy, gives us a God who is a doer, but 
 limited in power’. Professor James thinks 
 that God probably works along with us finite 
 beings to make the best he can out of the world, 
 but that even God himself cannot guarantee 
 the outcome. Here undoubtedly the God of 
 Professor James is not the God of our Lord 
 Jesus Christ. The God who raised our Lord 
 Jesus Christ from the dead was a God of su- 
 preme power. Paul speaks of God’s power 
 
 
 
 *See his “Pragmatism” and ‘“Pluralistic Universe.’’ 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 69 
 
 in raising Christ from the dead as if it were 
 the supreme exhibition of power (Eph. 1: 19- 
 21). And Paul was right. Nothing but al- 
 mighty power could have raised Jesus from the 
 dead and placed him at the right hand of God. 
 
 The resurrection of Jesus manifested God’s 
 supremacy over nature. Nature has no power 
 to transcend death or conquer its power. 
 Death is a law of nature. Nature is so con- 
 stituted that one of its inevitable laws is that 
 man must die. And on that subject nature has 
 no other word to say. But God had another 
 word to say in the case of Jesus. That word 
 of God unloosed the bands of death and Je- 
 sus came forth alive forevermore. Such an 
 idea gives great offense to many ‘“‘modern” 
 minds. Nothing like a miracle is to be allowed. 
 Nevertheless we cannot undo the facts of 
 history in order to suit the prejudices of the 
 modern mind. What has been written has 
 been written, and will probably have to stand. 
 And one thing that stands out as clear as sun- 
 light in the resurrection of Jesus is that the 
 God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is 
 supreme over the order of nature. 
 
 The moral supremacy of God is also mani- 
 fested in the resurrection of Jesus. The forces 
 
70 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 
 
 of evil put him to death. But God showed 
 himself greater than the forces of evil. If Je- 
 sus had remained under the power of death, 
 it would have been a demonstration of the 
 supremacy of sin and darkness in the world. 
 The moral order of the world would have been 
 utterly wrecked. Every moral cause would 
 have been in despair. But God intervened and 
 showed himself supreme over the forces of 
 evil. The resurrection of Jesus is a demon- 
 stration of the fact that no good cause for 
 which men fight need ever be despaired of. 
 Nothing is ever settled until it is settled right. 
 Why? Because there is a God and he is su- 
 preme over all the world. The man who fights 
 for right can count God on his side. God and 
 one make a majority. 
 
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE RESUR- 
 RECTION OF JESUS FOR HIS 
 OWN PERSON 
 
che 
 
 3 
 
 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE RESURREC- 
 TION OF JESUS FOR HIS OWN 
 PERSON 
 
 E have seen something of the sig- 
 
 nificance of the resurrection for our 
 view of God. Let us ask ourselves now: 
 What does the resurrection of Jesus mean to 
 his own person? When we think of Jesus 
 himself, what difference does his resurrection 
 make? 
 
 We can very soon see that it has tremendous 
 significance. Suppose Jesus had not risen. It 
 is easy to see in that case that he would not be 
 the Christ of the New Testament and of our 
 Christian experience at all. He would be an- 
 other Jesus altogether and our gospel would 
 be another gospel. In that case Jesus would 
 be only a historical character and his gospel 
 would be for us only the post mortem influ- 
 ence of a good man. It is to be feared that for 
 many professing Christians Jesus means very 
 
 little more than this. 
 [78] 
 
74 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 
 
 This phase of the matter will be discussed in 
 the following chapters. Here our question is 
 rather: What difference did the resurrection 
 mean to Jesus himself? We are so accustomed 
 to thinking of what the resurrection means to 
 us that we forget that it meant something for 
 Jesus. In fact, too many people look on the 
 whole life and experience of Jesus as a kind 
 of stage show. They overlook the fact that 
 the experiences of Jesus were for him genu- 
 ine human experiences as much so as ours are 
 for us. 
 
 Of course, it will be impossible to separate 
 the matter altogether from the thought of what 
 Jesus means to us, but thinking of it primarily 
 with reference to him, his own person and ex- 
 perience, our question is: What did the resur- 
 rection signify for Jesus? And again remem- 
 bering our limitations, we would reverently 
 answer that it means, first, 
 
 VICTORY OVER SIN AND DEATH 
 
 Jesus battled with sin through his whole life. 
 And it was no sham battle that he fought with 
 Sin; it was as real as ever battle was in the 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 75 
 
 moral realm. He was tempted in all points 
 like as we are, yet without sin (Heb. 4: 15). 
 At the beginning of his public ministry, he was 
 tempted to turn aside from the hard road of 
 suffering and death and win his kingdom by 
 an appeal to the popular imagination by throw- 
 ing himself in a spectacular and miraculous 
 way from the pinnacle of the temple, or by a 
 compromise with sin and Satan, a compromise 
 that would not have given him his kingdom 
 because it would have acknowledged the 
 supremacy of the devil. Jesus had to decide 
 whether he would fight out with sin to the 
 bitter end the question of supremacy in the 
 world, or whether he would choose the easier 
 way of compromise. But he had insight 
 enough to see that complete victory over sin 
 could never be won so long as there was any 
 compromise; the battle must be to the bitter 
 end. The question must be decided once for 
 all whether God or Satan should be supreme 
 in the world, and to fight it through was the 
 only way to determine it. This bitter fight 
 with sin kept up throughout the whole life of 
 
 
 
 7On this point cf G. Campbell Morgan, ‘‘Crises of the Christ”; 
 Black, ‘‘The Dilemmas of Jesus’; and my “System of Christian 
 Doctrine.” 
 
76 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 
 
 Jesus. It was a war in which there was no 
 surcease, no flag of truce. The devil offered 
 a flag of truce several times, but Jesus always 
 declined. If he had accepted a flag of truce, 
 it would have meant the loss of the whole war. 
 The thing for which he was fighting was the 
 absolute eradication of evil, its complete ex- 
 termination. Nothing less than that would be 
 a victory for him. That is why the devil tried 
 so hard to get Jesus to accept a compromise. 
 A compromise would have meant victory for 
 the enemy. 
 
 The only means by which Jesus could win 
 was to put himself without reservation into 
 the fight. To spare himself meant to lose. 
 This is the only way his followers can win. 
 That is the reason so many of us do lose in 
 the fight; we are not willing to put ourselves 
 without reserve into the conflict. We are too 
 anxious to spare ourselves. We can win only 
 by losing; we can win only by dying; we can 
 save our lives only by losing them. 
 
 This means that Jesus declined to use any 
 but moral means to accomplish moral ends. 
 He did not believe that the end justifies the 
 means; in fact, he knew that moral ends can 
 not be reached by carnal means; that spiritual 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS a7 
 
 battles are not won by carnal weapons. There- 
 fore he declined to worship Satan in order to 
 win the supremacy of the world or to cast 
 himself down from the temple in order to win 
 the admiring allegiance of the multitude. He 
 knew that any allegiance thus won could be 
 as easily lost as won. He declined thus to be 
 acclaimed king; he was hailed as king of David 
 by the multitude in the triumphal entry; but 
 when he did not seize the throne and crown 
 they crucified him. He could have avoided the 
 cross by following their lead, but in that case 
 he would have been only one more among the 
 great kings of the earth whose thrones have 
 crumbled and whose crowns have decayed. 
 
 Jesus gained his final victory on this ques- 
 tion in the garden of Gethsemane. Here he 
 got his final consent to spare not himself, but 
 to fight with sin to the bitter end, even to the 
 giving up of his own life. In obedience to the 
 Father’s will, he drank the bitter cup of sor- 
 row and death. 
 
 When Jesus died on the cross, it seemed that 
 sin had triumphed. Apparently the battle was 
 lost. But to the surprise of his friends, the 
 dismay of his enemies and the consternation 
 of hell and its forces, Jesus arose. The tomb 
 
78 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 
 
 was found empty. His apparent defeat was 
 his victory. By losing his life, he had saved 
 it; by giving it away he had kept it. The vic- 
 tory of sin was its defeat. By his own un- 
 compromising fight with sin he had conquered; 
 and by conquering sin he had conquered death. 
 The sting of death is sin (1 Cor. 15: 56), and 
 by extracting the sting of death he had de- 
 Stroyed its power. Having destroyed its power 
 he came forth on the morning of the third day 
 a victor over sin and death. 
 
 Sin and death are inseparably connected. 
 They are not two things, they are only two 
 phases or aspects of the same reality. By iden- 
 tifying himself with a sinful race in the incar- 
 nation, Jesus came under the power of what 
 Dr. Mullins calls the sin-death principle.t He 
 identified himself with the human race to the 
 last possible limit, except by personally shar- 
 ing in its sin. But although he did not share 
 in its sin, he did share in the woe that grows 
 out of sin. He shared in this more completely 
 perhaps than would have been possible if he 
 had been a sinner. Had he been a sinner he 
 could not have had perfect sympathy for sin- 
 
 
 
 *See “The Christian Religion in Its Doctrinal Expression,” 
 by E. Y. Mullins. 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 79 
 
 ners. His perfect character was manifested 
 in his complete sympathy for sinners and his 
 unreserved identification of himself with all 
 their woe. Having identified himself with 
 man for man’s salvation, he did not draw back 
 from anything that belonged to man. In fact, 
 according to Hebrews, he took our nature that 
 he might die for us (Heb. 2: 14). He did 
 not decline to die because he realized that for 
 that purpose he had come into the world (John 
 12: 27). 
 
 By thus sharing man’s lot to the bitter end 
 he conquered sin and death. He shared the 
 common lot of mankind and thus redeemed 
 mankind. He conquered mankind’s worst 
 enemy, sin and death, and came off victorious 
 over them. 
 
 Again, the resurrection brought Jesus into 
 a position of 
 
 LORDSHIP OVER THE WORLD AND OVER MANKIND 
 
 This comes out as distinctly in Peter’s state- 
 ment on the day of Pentecost as anywhere else 
 in the New Testament. He says, in speaking 
 of the resurrection, that God has made him to 
 be both Lord and Christ (Acts 2: 36). They 
 had crucified this Jesus, had put him to an 
 
80 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 
 
 open shame, had treated him as if he were 
 the vilest of criminals: but God has reversed 
 the matter; he has highly exalted him and given 
 him a name that is above every name, that in 
 the name of Jesus every knee shall bow, of 
 things in heaven, and things on earth and 
 things under the earth (Phil. 2: 9, 10). Paul’s 
 statement indicates that God did this as a moral 
 reward for his suffering and death in obedience 
 to the will of God. 
 
 This lordship that came to Jesus, then, was 
 not something to be taken for granted; it was 
 not a matter of course. It was something that 
 was morally conditioned and morally achieved. 
 It is true that one might gather from Paul’s 
 statement and from John’s Gospel that some- 
 how this state of exaltation and lordship was 
 potential in this man Jesus because of his pre- 
 existent life and divine glory. But even this 
 must not be allowed to take the moral element 
 out of the life and achievement of Jesus. There 
 was no mechanical guarantee of reaching the 
 goal in his case, no more than there can be in 
 ourcase. The only guarantees and assurances 
 that can be given in the moral realm are moral 
 in their nature. 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS $1 
 
 Paul’s statement also carries with it the idea 
 that this lordship of which Jesus comes into 
 possession is universal: it includes everything 
 in heaven, on earth and under the earth. It is 
 difficult to see how his statement could have 
 been made more sweeping and universal than 
 that. The question has sometimes been de- 
 bated whether Jesus was Lord over the whole 
 universe, or was Lord only over mankind.’ It 
 is difficult to see how he could be admitted as 
 Lord over mankind unless he were Lord over 
 the universe. Man is a moral being. The 
 moral realm is the highest we know. If Jesus 
 is Lord there, he must be Lord everywhere. 
 There is nothing to be gained by bisecting the 
 world and admitting Jesus as Lord over only 
 a part of it. If he is Lord of the moral world, 
 he is Lord in the realm of the highest. Why 
 not then Lord of all? Perhaps those who take 
 the other position deceive themselves by rea- 
 soning that man is only a small portion of the 
 universe and that Jesus can be admitted as 
 Lord over man without too great offence to 
 the majesty of the vastness of the universe. It 
 is true that man is only a small portion of the 
 
 
 
 *See MackIntosh, “‘The Doctrine of the Person of Jesus Christ.” 
 
82 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 
 
 universe spatially considered. But space is 
 not the ultimate measure of things. The ulti- 
 mate measure of things is conscience, or man’s 
 moral consciousness, if you please. True 
 greatness is not the greatness of space, nor of 
 military power, nor of intellectual shrewdness, 
 but it is the greatness of moral goodness. That 
 is why Jesus progressively rules the world 
 rather than Plato or Napoleon or Columbus or 
 Galileo. Jesus developed in his life and demon- 
 strated on the cross absolute and unquestioned 
 moral goodness. Hence God could commit to 
 him power without reserve: he was made Lord 
 of all. Perhaps one might more accurately say 
 that the possession of absolute goodness is the 
 possession of unreserved power. Ultimate 
 power, power in the moral world, is the power 
 of goodness. To try to wield any other kind 
 of force in the moral world, or in order to pro- 
 duce moral results brings only confusion and 
 failure. Perhaps this was one thing that kept 
 Jesus from appealing to spectacular claptrap 
 or military power. He who thinks that the 
 world can be dazzled into goodness or forced 
 into righteousness only fools himself and 
 wastes his energy. 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 83 
 
 Without doubt the New Testament writers 
 thought of Jesus as coming into universal 
 lordship in the resurrection. Matthew reports 
 Jesus as saying after the resurrection: “All 
 authority hath been given unto me in heaven 
 and on earth’ (28: 18). In Romans 1: 4 
 Paul says that Christ was “declared to be the 
 Son of God with power, according to the spirit 
 of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead”’ 
 (Am. Rev.). I do not believe, however, that 
 this translation does justice to Paul’s thought. 
 The American Bible Union translation gets 
 nearer the thought when it says that he “was 
 instated as the Son of God with power accord- 
 ing to the Spirit of holiness, by resurrection of 
 the dead.’ What Paul means to say is not 
 that the resurrection demonstrated or marked 
 out Christ as the Son of God, but that by the 
 resurrection he was instated in a position of 
 power that rightfully belonged to him as the 
 Son of God. The resurrection was the inau- 
 guration of Jesus into a position of authority 
 and power that was rightfully his as the Son 
 of God.t_ The resurrection of Jesus marked a 
 
 
 
 1For this interpretation I am indebted to the late Dr. Wm. 
 Arnold Stevens, of Rochester Theological Seminary, who was, 
 I think, the greatest interpreter of Paul I have ever known. I 
 would not want the reader to hold Dr. Stevens responsible for 
 any exact statement of mine, but the general idea is the same. 
 
84 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 
 
 transition in the state of being of Jesus: it was 
 a transition in which he came into the posses- 
 sion of universal authority and power. This. 
 seems to me to represent the conception of the 
 significance of the resurrection found every- 
 where in the New Testament. 
 
 The resurrection marks the transition of 
 Christ to a state or condition of 
 
 SPIRITUAL OMNIPRESENCE 
 
 This matches the idea of his universal au- 
 thority and power. He is not limited in au- 
 thority and power, nor is he limited in spir- 
 itual presence. After predicating his universal 
 authority and on the basis of this authority 
 commanding his followers to “make disciples 
 of all the nations, baptizing them into the name 
 of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy 
 Spirit,” etc., he says: “And lo, I am with you 
 always, even unto the end of the world” (Matt. 
 28: 18-20). Here he promises his universal 
 presence to his people as they go in his name 
 to Christianize the nations of the world. Some 
 have objected to considering these the actual 
 words of Jesus. They represent, so it is ob- 
 jected, too advanced theological ideas. They 
 do not fit back into the situation at that time 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 85 
 
 with its undeveloped theological thought. But 
 if one accepts the resurrection as a fact, then 
 there is nothing at all improbable in words like 
 these from the lips of the risen Saviour. Of 
 course, if Jesus did not rise from the dead, 
 then such language at that time, or at any 
 other time, sounds out of place. In that case, 
 it can only represent the conscious or uncon- 
 scious invention of an over-enthusiastic Chris- 
 tian of those early days who perhaps could 
 not distinguish historical fact from his own 
 fancies. 
 
 But there is one strange thing about it. If 
 Jesus did not rise from the dead, and this lan- 
 guage represents only the theological invention 
 of a later generation read back into the mouth 
 of Jesus, it is passing strange that the experi- 
 ences of thousands upon thousands of Chris- 
 tian workers since that early day have been of 
 just such a nature as would fit in exactly with 
 this supposed promise of Jesus; that is, their 
 experience fits in exactly with the supposition 
 that he did rise. They have experienced such 
 joy, inspiration and patience as only a living 
 Saviour could give. Do you say it is illusion P 
 Then this illusion has borne strange fruit, has 
 produced strange results. If such an illusion 
 
86 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 
 
 can produce such fruit, then we must live in a 
 world of illusion, and joy and moral inspira- 
 tion and moral goodness itself must be an il- 
 lusion. 
 
 We see then that the resurrection of Jesus 
 marks the difference between a Christ who 
 only lived and died some centuries ago and 
 who influences the world by his example and 
 teaching—the post mortem influence of a good 
 man—and a Christ who by conquering sin and 
 death became the universal, spiritual Lord of 
 our lives and of the world visible and invisible 
 —the eternal King of the ages. 
 
 \ 
 
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE RESUR- 
 RECTION OF JESUS FOR OUR 
 SALVATION 
 

 
CHAPTER V 
 
 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE RESURREC- 
 TION OF JESUS FOR OUR SALVATION 
 
 N the history of Christian thought much 
 
 emphasis has been placed on the death of 
 Jesus in relation to our salvation, but compara- 
 tively little on his resurrection. This is not in 
 harmony with the teachings of the New Testa- 
 ment, nor does it answer the needs of man’s 
 moral and spiritual life. In this chapter we 
 propose to consider something of the signifi- 
 cance of the resurrection of Jesus as bearing 
 on the question of our salvation. 
 
 THE RESURRECTION ESSENTIAL TO THE SAVING 
 WORK OF CHRIST 
 
 It has sometimes been stated that the resur- 
 rection of Jesus is significant for our salvation 
 in that it signified God’s acceptance and ap- 
 proval of his atoning work in his death. Per- 
 haps this is true, although I do not recall any 
 place in the New Testament where just that 
 idea is presented. Paul does present the 
 
 [89] 
 
90 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 
 
 thought that the exaltation of Jesus (which 
 certainly included the resurrection) was a 
 moral reward for his act of obedience in giv- 
 ing himself to the death of the cross (Phil. 2: 
 9). It was because of his obedience, consum- 
 mated in the death of the cross, that God highly 
 exalted him and gave him the name that is 
 above every name. Paul does not explain what 
 it was in the death of Jesus that made it an 
 act of obedience to God. But the New Testa- 
 ment writers present his whole life as a life of 
 obedience. This comes out very clearly in 
 John’s Gospel. Jesus in that Gospel says 
 many times that he came to do the Father’s 
 will. To do the Father’s will is his meat and 
 drink, the great passion of his life (John 4: 
 34, et al). His death was also in obedience 
 to the Father’s will (Phil. 2: 5ff).- This obe- 
 dience found its reward in his resurrection 
 from the dead. We would miss it, however, if 
 we should think of his resurrection, as being 
 only God’s seal of approval on his atoning 
 work, in the sense that his death was what 
 saved us apart from the resurrection, and that 
 the resurrection was just God’s way of letting 
 us know that his death was accepted as an 
 atonement for our sins. The New Testament 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 91 
 
 rather presents the resurrection of Jesus as it- 
 self an integral and essential factor in the sav- 
 ing work of Christ. He was delivered up for 
 our trespasses and raised for our justification 
 (Rom. 4: 25). Paul says again that if Christ 
 be not risen from the dead we are yet in our 
 sins (1 Cor. 15: 17), and that without the 
 risen Christ our preaching and our faith are 
 vain, there is nothing in them (1 Cor. 15: 14). 
 
 The resurrection of Jesus is the pivot on 
 which New Testament Christianity turns. As 
 already noted, it gives us a universal, spiritual, 
 omnipotent Christ rather than a local, national 
 one. The Christ of the New Testament is not 
 merely a Christ who lived and died at a cer- 
 tain point in human history; he transcended 
 death, rose victorious over it, and thereby be- 
 came for us a Saviour of universal spiritual 
 power. His kingdom is therefore not of this 
 world. It is a kingdom that knows no lim- 
 itations of national boundaries, or race or color. 
 Peter made a great discovery when he discov- 
 ered that God is no respecter of persons, but 
 accepts men of any nationality or race when 
 they come to him in the right spirit (Acts 10: 
 34). The resurrection of Jesus was the pivotal 
 point in New Testament history, because it 
 
92 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 
 
 marked the transition from a Christ limited by 
 time and place to one who transcended all such 
 limitations. This was the point at which Chris- 
 tianity broke away from Judaism. His rising 
 from the dead made Christianity a universal 
 religion rather than a sect of Judaism. The 
 Christians of the New Testament were not men 
 who looked back merely to the Christ mani- 
 fested in history; they looked up to the Christ 
 who rose above the limitations of time and 
 place and became a universal Saviour, one 
 who could be reached by complying with the 
 spiritual conditions, on the part of men of all 
 races and climes. 
 SALVATION NOT MERELY ESCAPE FROM 
 PUNISHMENT 
 
 Consider again the statement that the resur- 
 rection of Jesus has its significance for our 
 salvation in that it was God’s seal of approval 
 on the death of Christ as an atonement for 
 our sins. This statement betrays a leaning to- 
 ward the idea that salvation is a legalistic 
 transaction in which we are let off from the 
 punishment for our sins on the ground that 
 Christ bore our punishment. Especially is this 
 true if one sees in the resurrection of Jesus 
 nothing but a seal of God’s approval on the 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 93 
 
 death of Christ as an atonement for sin. Such 
 a view does not look upon the resurrection as 
 an essential factor in Christ’s saving work, but 
 simply as a seal of approval on his saving 
 work. It views his death as an atonement for 
 sin in the sense that it is the one and only sav- 
 ing work of Christ. Such a view of atonement 
 looks on the death of Christ as being vicarious 
 and nothing but that. Undoubtedly his death 
 was vicarious, but as Dr. Mabie says, it is 
 more than vicarious; it is vicario-vital. 
 What is salvation? In the minds of many 
 people it seems to amount to about this. Christ 
 bore the punishment of my sins and therefore 
 when I believe in him God pardons me, and 
 his pardon means that I am set free so far as 
 the punishment of my sins is concerned. They 
 claim to get this idea of salvation from Paul, 
 especially Paul’s doctrine of justification. It 
 is easy enough to get this idea of salvation from 
 Paul’s writings. All one has to do is to con- 
 sult his dictionary and exercise his logical fac- 
 ulty a little. One can read in a Greek lexicon 
 that Paul’s word which is translated “justify” 
 means to “declare just.””’ One then reasons 
 that Paul therefore teaches that justification is 
 
 *See “The Divine Reason of the Cross,’”’ by H. C. Mabie. 
 
94 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 
 
 simply a transaction in which God “declares” 
 one just, but does not make him just. It is a 
 transaction in which one is set right in his rela- 
 tion with the law, but not made right in char- 
 acter. One is declared just on the basis of 
 Christ’s atoning work without being made right 
 in heart and life. This conclusion is easy 
 enough and is a good example of the fact that 
 young preachers (and others) need to be given 
 two warnings in trying to get at the meaning 
 of the New Testament: one is to beware of the 
 lexicon and the other is to beware of logic. If 
 one will just stick closely to his lexicon and be 
 logical, there is no further guarantee needed 
 that he will never get at the meaning of the 
 New Testament and never understand Chris- 
 tian principles. Because Paul uses here a term 
 that had a forensic history or was used in legal 
 procedure, to say that therefore he used it in 
 a legalistic sense is not to interpret Paul but 
 to make oneself the slave of the dictionary. A 
 dictionary is a good thing as a servant but it 
 is a very poor master. One could probably 
 get at the sense of what Paul says better with- 
 out a lexicon than he can when he thus be- 
 comes the slave of the lexicon. To understand 
 what Paul means by justification we must do 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 95 
 
 two things besides consult the lexicon. We 
 must take into account his whole discussion 
 and we must consult our own experience of 
 salvation. When we do this we will find that 
 justification with Paul was no legalistic trans- 
 action in which we are let off from the punish- 
 ment of our sins, but a revolutionary act of 
 God in which we are made new creatures in > 
 Christ Jesus. But somebody says that is not 
 justification but regeneration. Well, it is re- 
 generation; but regeneration and justification 
 are not two transactions, they are one. Justi- 
 fication is a regenerative transaction. It is the 
 justification of life (Rom. 5: 18) ; that is, jus- 
 tification and life are one and inseparable. In 
 Paul’s thought, sin, condemnation and death 
 go together; so do faith, justification and life. 
 When the objection is made to Paul’s doctrine 
 of justification that it encourages one to live in 
 sin (Rom. 6: 1), Paul goes on to show that 
 the justified man is one who has died to sin 
 and risen to walk in newness of life. And he 
 is not setting forth this dying to sin and rising 
 in newness of life as something in addition to 
 justification, but as an implication of justifica- 
 tion. The idea, then, is not that one is regener- 
 ated in addition to justification, but rather that 
 
96 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 
 
 justification itself involves regeneration. Re- 
 generation is an aspect of justification. 
 
 It has sometimes been said that justification 
 gives one a new standing with God, while re- 
 generation gives him a new nature; justifica- 
 tion changes one’s relation to God, while re- 
 generation changes the man himself in his 
 inner life. But after all, each of these state- 
 ments is saying the same thing in different 
 ways. A man’s moral nature is nothing apart 
 from his relation to God. There is nothing 
 about a man deeper or more fundamental than 
 his relation to God. To change the man’s re- 
 lation to God therefore is to change his moral 
 nature. A new relationship with God means 
 a new heart; it means a new creation. 
 
 To talk therefore about Paul’s doctrine of 
 justification as legalistic is to miss the point. 
 It is not legalistic. Paul uses forensic termi- 
 nology, it is true; but that does not mean that 
 his thought is legalistic. To say that his doc- 
 trine of justification is forensic or legalistic is 
 to confuse the form of thought with the sub- 
 stance. It is to make oneself the slave of the 
 dictionary. To infer in addition that one must 
 have regeneration as a transaction separate 
 from justification is to make oneself the slave 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 97 
 
 of logic. To make oneself the slave of the dic- 
 tionary and of logic is a sure road to confusion 
 and error. 
 
 FREEDOM FROM THE BONDAGE OF SIN 
 
 Paul’s doctrine of justification then is not 
 legalistic. What he means by justification is 
 a moral and spiritual transaction in which one 
 is made right in relation with God and thus 
 becomes a new creature in Christ Jesus. The 
 love of God comes into one’s heart and the 
 love of sin dies. It is a transaction in which 
 one is freed from the bondage of sin as well 
 as its punishment. The power of sin in one’s 
 life is broken and he realizes a spiritual free- 
 dom before impossible. 
 
 In Paul’s teaching condemnation and justi- 
 fication are opposites. It is condemnation that 
 necessitates justification. This he shows in 
 Rom. 1: 17—-3:20. He shows there that con- 
 demnation on account of sin has come on all 
 men, Jew and Gentile, and necessitates their 
 justification by the grace of God. Justifica- 
 tion of the sinner comes on the basis of 
 Christ's atoning work and on condition of 
 faith, as shown in Rom. 3: 21-28. But just 
 what does justification involve? Protestant 
 
98 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 
 
 theology has usually answered that justifica- 
 tion means freedom from condemnation and 
 has interpreted this to mean freedom from 
 guilt or liability to punishment. Justification 
 then frees one from the punishment of sin. To 
 free one from the bondage of sin something 
 else was necessary. But Paul means more 
 than freedom from punishment by justifica- 
 tion. The blessedness of justification is the 
 blessedness of freedom from condemnation. 
 “There is therefore now no condemnation to 
 them that are in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 8: 1). 
 Then he immediately adds in verse 2: “For 
 the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus 
 made me free from the law of sin and of 
 death.” He is thinking here of two opposing 
 forces as contending for the mastery in human 
 life. One is sin and death; the other is the 
 Spirit of life in Christ Jesus. In chapter 7, he 
 describes in terms of his own experience what 
 the “law (reign or rule) of sin and death” 
 means. It means bondage, helplessness, des- 
 pair. He tries under the law to deliver himself 
 from that bondage. It is a state in which one 
 is ‘carnal, sold under sin” (vs. 14). One 
 can desire the good, but can not do it (vs. 15). 
 He is helpless under the power of evil. 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 99 
 
 Finally, he cries in despair: “Wretched man 
 that I am! who shall deliver me out of the 
 body of this death P”’ (vs. 24). Then he says: 
 “T thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord’ 
 (vs. 25). He now finds deliverance in that 
 the law (rule) of the Spirit of life in Christ 
 Jesus sets him free from the law (rule) of sin 
 and of death. Justification then means free- 
 dom from the bondage of sin and death. It 
 means the incoming of a new life that sets one 
 free from the bondage of sin. 
 
 THE REQUIREMENTS OF THE LAW 
 
 At the end of chapter 3 Paul, after having 
 set forth that justification comes by faith in 
 Jesus as the propitiation for our sins, asks: 
 “Do we then make the law of none effect 
 through faith P’’ He answers his own question 
 by saying: “God forbid: nay, we establish 
 the law.” In chapter 8, he shows how the law 
 is established. He says: ‘“What the law could 
 not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, 
 God, sending his own Son in the likeness of 
 sinful flesh and for sin, condemned sin in the 
 flesh: that the ordinance of the law might be 
 fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, 
 but after the Spirit (vss. 3, 4). 
 
100 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 
 
 Now let us notice something of what Paul 
 says here. He speaks of “what the law could 
 not do.” What is that? It could not break 
 the power of sin in human life, could not set 
 man free from its bondage, could not enable 
 one to get victory over sin and live a righteous 
 life. That failure of the law is graphically de- 
 scribed in chapter 7. The reason it failed was 
 because of the weakness of man. The law 
 could not break the power of sin, in that it was 
 weak through the flesh. The failure was in 
 man, not the law. The law itself was holy, 
 righteous and good (7: 12). But man is 
 weak and can not meet its requirements. Hence 
 it fails to justify, to break the power of sin. 
 But God secured the desired end in another 
 way. He sent his own Son in the likeness of 
 sinful flesh; that is, in human nature, but free 
 from sin. He sent him as an offering for sin, 
 and thereby condemned sin in the flesh; that 
 is, broke its power. And the purpose of it all 
 is that the ordinance (righteous requirement) 
 of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk 
 not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. God 
 was working toward the end of delivering us 
 from the condemnation and bondage of sin 
 and setting us free to live a righteous life. He 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 101 
 
 gives us a new moral dynamic, a new life that 
 enables us to do the thing that the law requires. 
 
 Justification then is freedom from condem- 
 nation—freedom from the bondage of sin, free- 
 dom to do what the law requires, power to live 
 a righteous life. Salvation is not escape from 
 punishment, not a fire insurance policy for the 
 next life; it is being made a new creature, given 
 a new moral dynamic, made to love God and 
 hate sin. 
 
 THE PLACE OF THE RESURRECTION 
 
 But what is the bearing of the resurrection 
 of Jesus on all this? It has a very definite 
 bearing on it. If the atonement of Jesus were 
 simply the bearing of so much suffering for 
 us by him, if it were simply the payment of a 
 debt to be measured in quantitative terms—- 
 that and nothing more—so that God could let 
 us off from our suffering, and if salvation 
 meant nothing but the escape from the punish- 
 ment of our sins; if salvation were that kind 
 of a transaction based on that kind of an 
 atonement, then a dead Christ might save as 
 well as a living Christ. In that case, his death 
 only would have been necessary to our salva- 
 tion, not his resurrection. But salvation is not 
 
102 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 
 
 that kind of a transaction. It is moral and 
 spiritual renovation: it is a new creation. It 
 is itself a being crucified with Christ and a 
 resurrection from the dead. And it takes a 
 living Saviour to raise the spiritually dead. 
 That is too great a task for a dead Jew. 
 
 THE MEANING OF FAITH 
 
 We are brought around again then to the 
 point that Christian faith is not simply looking 
 back to a Christ who lived and died at a certain 
 point in human history. Christian faith is not 
 simply the acceptance of facts, however well 
 attested, not even the facts of the death and 
 resurrection of Jesus, the foundation facts of 
 the gospel. Nor is it simply the belief of a 
 doctrine, however true or important the doc- 
 trine may be, not even the doctrine that Jesus 
 is the Son of God, nor the doctrine of his 
 atoning death, nor of his resurrection from the 
 dead. It is more than the acceptance of facts 
 or the belief of doctrines; it is trust in a Person. 
 It is a bond of union between persons. It 
 unites the trusting sinner to the living Saviour. 
 And since it unites him to the living Saviour it 
 works a revolution in his moral nature: it 
 brings spiritual regeneration. It makes him a 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 103 
 
 new creature. One can not have faith in Jesus 
 as Saviour and ever be the same man again. 
 
 UNION WITH CHRIST 
 
 This will help us to understand why Paul 
 and John lay such stress on the believer’s 
 union with Christ. We are not saved by an 
 absent, far-away Christ. Hecomestous. He 
 dwells within us. We are in him and he is in 
 us. We must eat his flesh and drink his blood 
 (John 6: 53ff). He is the head; we are the 
 members of his body (Romans 12: 3ff, 1 Cor. 
 12: 12ff). One would almost think that John 
 and Paul were pantheists as they talk about 
 the intimate, vital union between the living 
 Saviour and the believer. But the union that 
 they believe in is something more vital and even 
 more intimate than a pantheistic union. It is 
 not the cold, dead unity of impersonal “‘sub- 
 stance,” in which the believer loses his per- 
 sonal identity and perhaps the Infinite never 
 had personal identity to lose. It is rather 
 the close and intimate fellowship of a gracious 
 Redeemer who has so loved the sinner as to 
 bear his woe in death and who now shares the 
 glories of his triumphant life with the trusting 
 sinner. It is a union analagous to the closest 
 
104 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 
 
 and most blessed fellowships of this life, such 
 as that of husband and wife (Eph. 5:22ff), 
 but also something more glorious than that. 
 It is a union in which the living Christ works 
 creatively by his Spirit in the believer to re- 
 produce in the believer his own moral and spir- 
 itual image. God works in us by the mighty 
 energy of his power that raised Jesus from the 
 dead (Eph. 1: 19-21). The only power that 
 could recreate a sinner dead in trespasses and 
 sins is the power of God that made the worlds 
 and that raised Jesus from the dead. Itis 
 a union in which the creative Christ who con- 
 quered death in the resurrection awakens in us 
 all the potencies of our moral and spiritual na- 
 tures and brings them to realization. It is not 
 a union, however, in which we are passive. We 
 are not dead things. We are persons. As 
 God works in us therefore we should work 
 out in our lives to full expression and realiza- 
 tion what God works in us to accomplish. His 
 purpose is realized, his work is completed, only 
 as we work out what he works in. His crea- 
 tive activity does not do away with the neces- 
 sity for activity on our part. Rather his crea- 
 tive activity is consummated in our moral and 
 spiritual activity. Some things we do not fully 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 105 
 
 possess until we express them. Character is 
 crystallized in expression. An inactive faith 
 therefore is not faith at all. God works crea- 
 tively in us, but he works in accordance with 
 moral and spiritual laws. He works only as 
 our moral and spiritual natures are aroused 
 and express themselves in moral and spiritual 
 activity. 
 
 We should work out our salvation because it 
 is God that works in us both to will and to do 
 (Phil. 2: 12, 13). God works in us to awaken 
 aspiration, longing, yearning; and then he 
 works to bring our aspiration to realization in 
 deed. And since God’s work is not finished 
 until the deed is done we must cooperate if 
 his purpose is to be realized. We do not co- 
 operate with him, however, as with an equal; 
 we cooperate with him by yielding to his al- 
 mighty power, by trusting his sovereign grace 
 and by following his divine leading. 
 
 Salvation then is not something handed 
 down in a ready-made package, complete once 
 for all. Salvation is not something that 
 Christ gives us apart from himself. He gives 
 us salvation in giving us himself. He keeps us 
 saved by continuing to give us himself. Be- 
 cause he lives we shall live also (John 14: 19). 
 
106 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 
 
 He saves to the uttermost all that come unto 
 God through him, seeing he ever liveth to make 
 intercession for them (Heb. 7: 25). The liv- 
 ing Christ is our Advocate with the Father (1 
 John 2: 1). He is the assurance of our con- 
 tinued standing with a holy God. Christ 
 Jesus, alive forevermore, is our salvation now 
 and eternally. 
 
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE RESUR- 
 RECTION OF JESUS FOR THE 
 FUTURE LIFE 
 

 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE RESURREC- 
 TION OF JESUS FOR THE FUTURE 
 LIFE 
 
 HE question of life beyond death is one 
 
 of perennial interest to mankind. If a 
 man die, shall he live againP This question 
 has engaged the earnest thought of mankind 
 as far back as we have any record of the 
 thoughts of men. 
 
 Before the World War one heard much talk 
 to the effect that religion ought to concern it- 
 self with this life, not with the next. One does 
 not hear so much of that now. There is per- 
 haps more being said about immortality and 
 the future life than ever before. Since the 
 War there is a revival of interest in spiritual- 
 ism and all kinds of movements that deal with 
 the future life. On the other hand, there are 
 those to-day who seem to fear that belief in 
 personal immortality is dying out among cer- 
 tain classes of educated people. The writer 
 has no fears on that point. Men will no more 
 
 { 109 ] 
 
110 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 
 
 cease to believe in personal immortality than 
 they will cease to take air into their lungs or 
 food for their bodies, no more than plant life 
 will cease to drink in the life-giving proper- 
 ties of fresh air, sunshine and soil. Man is 
 made for immortality and his soul turns to- 
 ward life beyond death as naturally as the sun- 
 flower turns toward the sun. 
 
 ARGUMENTS FOR IMMORTALITY 
 
 Yet man’s instinctive longing for life beyond 
 death, his natural belief.in such a life, seeks 
 rational vindication. Hence there have been 
 various arguments for immortality, just as 
 there have been various arguments for the ex- 
 istence of God. These arguments in each case 
 have not been the source of the belief; they 
 have rather been the vindication of beliefs that 
 men already held. Men did not come to be- 
 lieve in God and immortality because they had 
 reasoned themselves into believing in these 
 ideas; they rather believed in God and immor- 
 tality and then sought to justify their belief 
 to themselves and others. These arguments 
 are the form that their thoughts took as they 
 undertook to justify their belief in God and 
 immortality. 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 111 
 
 But arguments have never satisfied the mind 
 with reference to immortality. Such argu- 
 ments are not worthless; far from it. The be- 
 lief in life beyond death is a rational belief 
 and can be given rational vindication. But 
 these arguments have never been entirely con- 
 vincing. They leave a margin for doubt. They 
 cannot do much more than enable us to say, 
 “Perhaps we shall live beyond death.” This 
 was about the best Socrates could do. He had 
 a rather definite hope of life beyond the grave, 
 but not certainty. 
 
 Besides, these arguments at the best only 
 give us a doctrine, an idea of immortality. But 
 ideas alone do not satisfy the religious life of 
 man. 
 
 TWO ORDERS OF FACT 
 
 But is there anything more substantial than 
 the idea or doctrine of immortality that we can 
 attain? The New Testament does give us 
 something more substantial. It comes out of 
 the resurrection of Jesus. There are two phases 
 of it. 
 
 One is the resurrection of Jesus as a fact of 
 history. We have set forth in Chapter I some- 
 thing of the evidence for the resurrection of 
 Jesus. As we there saw, that evidence is not 
 
112 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 
 
 simply the testimony of the documents that we 
 possess in our New Testament; it is the total 
 fact of Christianity. Christianity is founded 
 on the resurrection of Jesus and is the evidence 
 for his resurrection. The very existence, vital- 
 ity and persistence of the Christian movement 
 is evidence that Jesus rose from the dead. A 
 living Christ and a living Christianity are in- 
 separable. A vital Christianity could no more 
 exist and persist in the world apart from a liv- 
 ing Christ than sunshine could exist apart from 
 the sun. 
 
 But it is not necessary here to repeat the 
 arguments for the resurrection of Jesus. These 
 arguments have been given. Assuming now 
 that the resurrection of Jesus is accepted as a 
 fact on the basis of the evidence we have, it 
 follows then that belief in life beyond the grave 
 comes down out of the realm of speculation 
 into the realm of fact. If Jesus rose from the 
 dead, then death is not the end of human ex- 
 istence, but the future life is a fact. 
 
 But it may be said that even if one accepts 
 the resurrection of Jesus as a fact, this only 
 gives one an idea or doctrine of immortality. 
 This is readily granted. It was stated above 
 that two things were necessary to make the 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 113 
 
 future life more than an idea for us. In addi- 
 tion to the resurrection of Jesus as a fact of 
 history there must be communion with the liv- 
 ing Christ as a matter of vital experience. Be- 
 lief in a fact, even the resurrection of Jesus, is 
 only an idea, a doctrine, if it stops with that. 
 But the Christ who rose from the dead is ac- 
 cessible to faith. Wecan have fellowship with 
 him, and this fellowship with him makes life 
 beyond death more than an idea: it then be- 
 comes an assured reality. One who believes 
 in Jesus as the living Saviour and Lord has the 
 experience of a life that transcends the limits 
 of the natural. It rises above the realm of the 
 visible and tangible world. It is spiritual in 
 its nature. This is what the Gospel of John 
 presents to us as “eternal life.’ It is eternal, 
 not simply as a matter of endless duration, 
 but in its spiritual and supernatural quality. 
 One who experiences this eternal life has the 
 assurance in his heart that this life is imper- 
 ishable in its nature. He might not be able to 
 put his reasons for believing in the imperish- 
 able nature of this life in the form of a syllo- 
 gism nor of a logical deduction of any kind; 
 nevertheless he has an assurance that speaks 
 peace to his soul and quiets his fears. 
 
114 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 
 
 This assurance with reference to the future 
 life finds expression in the New Testament in 
 many ways. In the sixth chapter of John, Je- 
 sus says four times, with reference to the man 
 that believes on him, that he will raise that one 
 in the last day (verses 39, 40, 44, 54). He 
 says in John 8: 51: “If a man keep my word, 
 he shall never see death.”’ In John 11: 26, he 
 said to the sorrowing Martha, ‘““Whosoever liv- 
 eth and believeth on me shall never die.” 
 
 Here we have two orders of fact that take 
 the belief in immortality out of the realm of 
 speculation and bring it into the realm of fact 
 and experience. Belief in immortality for the 
 Christian is more than a speculation. It is a 
 living conviction growing out of his commun- 
 ion with the living Saviour. 
 
 We still hear something every now and then 
 to the effect that belief in immortality is not 
 essential to religion. Some go even so far as 
 to say that religion without belief in immortal- 
 ity is nobler and more unselfish than a religion 
 that has to depend on the idea'of the future 
 life to support itself. We are even told that 
 to appeal to the future life for the vindication 
 of God’s ways with man, or as a means of get- 
 ting strength for the tasks and burdens of this 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 115 
 
 life, is unworthy or even degrading. One 
 should do right, we are told, for the sake of 
 doing right, even without reference to the fu- 
 ture consequences of our deeds. 
 
 But this kind of talk sounds much as if one 
 should say that the test of a flying machine is 
 that it should be able to fly without air as a 
 medium; that it should fly in a vacuum. The 
 spiritual world and the future life constitute 
 the very atmosphere in which religion lives. 
 It is nothing against a fish that it cannot live 
 out of water, nor is it against a bird that it 
 cannot fly ina vacuum. Some men would give 
 us a religion without God or a future life. Such 
 a religion would be noble, indeed! Not to dis- 
 cuss the merits of such a system, it is enough 
 to call attention to the fact that it is not re- 
 ligion. Much less is it Christianity. 
 
 It is true that some forms of religion have 
 conceived of the future life in an unworthy 
 way. Some forms of Christianity may have 
 done this. But this is no argument against 
 immortality. The Christians of the New Tes- 
 tament did not believe in the future life as a 
 means of getting some reward for service sel- 
 fishly rendered for what they expected to get 
 out of it. They believed in the future life 
 
116 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 
 
 because they experienced a life here and now 
 of a quality that they could not believe of 
 a perishable nature. This is the significance of 
 Paul’s statement when he speaks about the 
 earnest of the Spirit in our hearts (2 Cor. 1: 
 22), and of the first fruits of the Spirit (Rom. 
 8:23). The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of prom- 
 ise (Eph. 1: 13, 14); that is, his present abid- 
 ing in our hearts is God’s promise of a more 
 glorious life yet to come. We are sealed in 
 the Spirit. The Spirit in us is God’s seal by 
 which he pledges himself for our deliverance 
 in the day of redemption; that is, the day of 
 resurrection (Eph. 4: 30). 
 
 With reference to the light thrown on the 
 destiny of the Christian from our fellowship 
 with the risen Christ we gather then, in the 
 first place, that it is the guarantee of our con- 
 tinued existence after death. This fellowship 
 of the Christian with the living Saviour con- 
 firms the historical evidence for the resurrec- 
 tion of Jesus. The resurrection of Jesus is 
 the historical foundation of Christianity, and 
 the continuance and vitality of Christianity 
 constitute, on the other hand, the evidence for 
 the resurrection of Jesus. Someone may say 
 that this is reasoning in a circle. No, it is see- 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 117 
 
 ing two sides of a sphere. The one fact in- 
 volves the other. 
 
 HIGHER LIFE 
 
 The resurrection of Jesus and our commun- 
 ion with him give us assurance, not only of 
 continued life after death, but also a more 
 blessed life than we enjoy in this world. 
 
 One thing bearing on this is the fact, pre- 
 viously noticed, that Jesus was not raised back 
 to the plane of life on which he had lived be- 
 fore the crucifixion, but to a higher state of 
 existence. His body was not a body of flesh 
 and blood such as he had before death, nor 
 will ours be. His body had higher powers, 
 it seemed, and Paul says that our resurrection 
 bodies will not be bodies of flesh and blood (1 
 Cor. 15: 50). This shows that our life be- 
 yond death will be one of a higher order than 
 we now enjoy. 
 
 Paul had this hope when he said that, as 
 between continuing here to serve his brethren 
 and going on to be with the Lord, so far as he 
 himself was concerned, it would be very far 
 better to depart and be with the Lord (Phil. 
 1:23). Our life of fellowship with Christ on 
 the other side will be the continuance and 
 
118 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 
 
 fruition of our fellowship with him here. The 
 only assurance that any man can have that he 
 will go to heaven when he dies is that he shall 
 have something of heaven in this life. The 
 bond of union between the trusting soul and 
 its Lord is one that is stronger than death. That 
 union will abide the shocks of time and will 
 endure through death. The life that we live 
 now in Christ is a life that is death-transcend- 
 ing in its nature. It will, therefore, endure 
 eternally and the soul born of God will live a 
 life of fellowship with him forever. 
 
 PERSONAL RELATIONSHIP CENTRAL 
 
 This shows another thing. The blessedness 
 of salvation is primarily the blessedness of per- 
 sonal relationships. Our eternal happiness 
 will not consist so much in where we are as in 
 what we shall be and with whom we shall be. 
 Some have said that heaven would be here on 
 the earth; others have said not. As a matter 
 of fact, that is not the main question. The pri- 
 mary question is what we shall be in relation 
 to God as revealed in Christ. Even to be with 
 Christ is not primarily a matter of place and 
 space relations. It is primarily a matter of 
 spiritual relations and personal attitudes. To 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 119 
 
 be with Christ is first of all a matter of per- 
 sonal adjustment to him. If we are rightly 
 adjusted to him here and know him in our 
 hearts, we shall know him more fully on the 
 other side. There is a tie there that death can- 
 not break, but will rather strengthen. Death 
 is the gateway to a life of closer and more 
 blessed fellowship with Christ on the other 
 side. 
 
 Death for Jesus, which was even to his 
 blessed eyes a thing to be dreaded, became an 
 entrance into a higher life, a more exalted 
 state of existence. Through submission to 
 death he found exaltation and glory. So shall 
 we. He triumphed over death both for him- 
 self and for us. He battled with the monster 
 death and conquered him in order that he 
 should not be a monster for us. Because he 
 conquered death, we shall also conquer him, 
 and shall be able to say: “‘O death, where is 
 thy victory ? O death, where is thy sting?” (1 
 Gore USeb5:). 
 
 Our blessedness is to be interpreted in per- 
 sonal terms. Time and place have significance 
 only in relation to persons and personal ex- 
 periences. Our joy on the other side will be 
 the joy of full personal life in fellowship with 
 
120 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 
 
 the supreme Person of human history, Christ 
 Jesus our Lord, and all those who love and 
 serve him. Hell will be eternity without 
 Christ. Eternity without him could be noth- 
 ing but hell. Heaven will be eternity with him. 
 Eternity with him could be nothing but heaven. 
 His presence and fellowship with him would 
 turn the deepest hell into the seventh heaven, 
 and the seventh heaven would be the darkest 
 abyss of woe without him. 
 
 I was once asked by a student if I thought 
 of the description of heaven in Revelation 21 
 and 22 as figurative or literal language. My 
 answer was that I thought it was figurative. 
 The student thought this would take all the 
 reality out of salvation and make it “only a 
 figure of speech.” My reply to this was that 
 to make the language there used literal would 
 give us rather a cheap heaven. I do not think 
 I should care for a heaven that was all city. 
 I should like to get out into the country oc- 
 casionally. Ifa city of streets of literal gold, 
 and a river of literal water and a tree of literal 
 fruit is the best heaven that can be found in the 
 life beyond, one can do almost that well here. 
 Jesus offered to the woman at the well water 
 that was better than that. Surely he will have 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 121 
 
 something superior to it for us in the Great 
 Beyond’. 
 
 Yes, these wondrous symbols of John’s 
 heavenly city represent to us the blessedness 
 of that life in which God and the Lamb con- 
 Stitute its light, its temple, its glory. God and 
 the Lamb will there be the light of our souls, 
 the temple of our worship, the glory of the 
 eternal life of the redeemed. 
 
 
 
 *The book of Revelation belongs to a class of literature that 
 dealt in apocalyptic imagery never meant to be taken literally. 
 

 
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE RESUR- 
 RECTION OF JESUS FOR THE 
 COMING OF THE KING- 
 
 DOM OF GOD 
 
ey 
 A) 
 
 ‘ 
 
 { A my vA if ih 
 
 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE RESURREC- 
 TION OF JESUS FOR THE COMING 
 OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD 
 
 HY kingdom come” (Matt. 6:10). Thus 
 
 Jesus taught his disciples to pray. We 
 gather from this that the coming of the king- 
 dom of God is to be one of the chief matters of 
 thought, prayer and effort on the part of his 
 disciples. 
 
 THREE PHASES OF THE KINGDOM 
 
 We might begin this chapter by a summary 
 statement with reference to three phases of the 
 kingdom of God as set forth in the New Testa- 
 ment.’ These three phases are its initiation, 
 its progress and its consummation. 
 
 The kingdom of God was founded or initi- 
 ated by the coming of Christ into the world for 
 the salvation of sinners. The historical estab- 
 lishment of the gospel order was the founding 
 
 
 
 7On this point, see my “System of Christian Doctrine,” Part 
 Four, Chapter V. 
 
 {125 j 
 
126 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 
 
 or initiation of the kingdom of God on earth. 
 This gospel had been promised or prefigured in 
 the Old Testament order of things (Rom. 1: 
 1-3; 4: 1ff. Gal. 4: 1ff and the whole book of 
 Hebrews). The gospel fulfilled the Old Testa- 
 ment dispensation as the day fulfils the dawn, 
 or as the man fulfils the boy. That which was ~ 
 partial and incomplete came to fuller develop- 
 ment and realization (Matt. 5: 17ff; Heb. 1: 
 1). | 
 
 That the kingdom of God was initiated with 
 the coming of Jesus into the world is made 
 clear in the New Testament. John the Bap- 
 tist preached that men should repent because 
 the kingdom of heaven was at hand (Matt. 3: 
 2). John’s work was preparatory. He was 
 the voice of one crying in the wilderness to 
 make ready the way of the Lord, to make his 
 paths straight (Matt. 3: 3; Isa. 40: 1ff) ; that 
 is, John’s work was to prepare a highway over 
 which the coming Messianic King was to have 
 his triumphal entry. Matthew’s Gospel is here 
 definitely setting forth Jesus as the King prom- 
 ised in the Old Testament and John as his 
 forerunner. 
 
 Jesus also came preaching that men should 
 repent and believe the gospel, on the ground 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 127 
 
 that the time was fulfilled and the kingdom of 
 God was at hand (Mark 1: 14, 15). On an- 
 other occasion, being asked by the Pharisees 
 when the kingdom of God should come, he 
 said that the kingdom did not come with out- 
 ward demonstration or observation. No man 
 could announce the kingdom, saying: “Lo, 
 here! or there!”” But Jesus said, “The king- 
 dom of God is within you,” or “‘in your midst,”’ 
 it might be translated. Either translation in- 
 volves the idea that the kingdom was a pres- 
 ent, spiritual reality that came without observa- 
 tion or outward show. It was there and the 
 Pharisees did not know it. Besides, Jesus an- 
 nounced the conditions of entrance into the 
 kingdom of God; such as being converted and 
 becoming as a little child (Matt. 18: 1-4; Luke 
 18: 17) and being born again (John 3: 3, 5). 
 If Jesus means for men of his day to have the 
 qualities of childlikeness, humility, and con- 
 scious poverty of spirit (Matt. 5: 3), if he 
 meant that they should bear persecution for 
 righteousness’ sake, then he meant for them 
 to understand that the kingdom of God was 
 a present reality. 
 
 But there is no use to dwell longer on this 
 point. It is one on which New Testament 
 
128 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 
 
 students are agreed. It is true that there is a 
 form of radicalism that holds that Jesus started 
 with the expectation of being received by the 
 Jews as their king, but had to revise his pro- 
 gram when he saw that they would not receive 
 him and hence postponed the kingdom to a 
 future age. There is a form of premillennialism 
 that agrees with this view that Jesus postponed 
 the founding of the kingdom to a future age. 
 But either form of this view that denies that 
 Jesus taught that the kingdom was a present 
 reality in his day is so utterly out of harmony 
 with the gospel records that there is no use to 
 spend more space on the matter. 
 
 Jesus also taught that the kingdom was to 
 have indefinite advancement during the present 
 gospel age. This is made clear in the parables 
 of the leaven and of the mustard seed (Matt. 
 15181283). 
 
 It is true that there are those who say that 
 these parables do not teach the growth of the 
 reign of truth and righteousness, but rather the 
 growth and power of error and evil within pro- 
 fessedly Christian ranks. This view, however, 
 does not come from an exegesis of these pas- 
 Sages; it is a view imposed on the passages 
 
 
 
 *See Stafford, “A Study of the Kingdom.” 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 129 
 
 from the preconceived ideas of the advocate. 
 A man can see this view in these passages only 
 by reading them through his own pessimistic 
 and disordered vision. Jesus does not, in these 
 passages or anywhere else, tell us just how 
 complete will be the triumphs of the kingdom 
 during the gospel age. He does teach his dis- 
 ciples to pray that God’s kingdom shall come 
 and his will be done on earth as it is in heaven 
 (Matt. 6: 10). They are to preach the gospel 
 to the uttermost part of the earth (Acts 1: 8). 
 They are to evangelize, make disciples, of all 
 nations. But they are to do more than that. 
 They are to strive to bring all men completely 
 under the sway of God’s will and Christ’s rule. 
 They are to teach all disciples all things that 
 he has commanded them (Matt. 28: 18-20). 
 We may never completely attain this ideal any 
 more than we can completely attain the ideal 
 of godlikeness in individual character, but 
 that is no reason why we should not move in 
 the direction of the goal and strive with all our 
 might for its attainment. 
 
 Indeed, there are indications that evil will 
 not be completely eliminated from the Mes- 
 siah’s kingdom until the end. The parable of 
 the tares seems to teach that only at the end 
 
130 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 
 
 of the age will the Son of Man come and make 
 the final and complete separation between the 
 good and the bad (Matt. 13: 30, 40-43). This 
 agrees with what is said about the judgment 
 in the twenty-fifth chapter of Matthew. Only 
 when the Son of Man shall sit on the throne of 
 judgment will the final separation take place. 
 Paul teaches practically the same thing when 
 he says that death (in the resurrection) is to 
 be the last enemy that Christ is to conquer. He 
 locates this at the second coming (1 Cor. 15: 
 24-28). 
 
 There are, then, in the teaching of Jesus 
 and in the New Testament as a whole these 
 three phases of the kingdom: its initiation in 
 the coming of Jesus and the founding of the 
 gospel order, its progress during the gospel 
 age, and its consummation at the final mani- 
 festation of Christ with the ushering in of the 
 eternal kingdom of God. 
 
 THE NATURE OF THE KINGDOM 
 
 It is also made clear in the teaching of Jesus, 
 as well as in the rest of the New Testament, 
 that the kingdom of God was not to be a politi- 
 cal kingdom. It was not to be promoted by 
 military power nor carnal weapons. It was 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 131 
 
 thus fundamentally different from the Jewish 
 theocracy of the Old Testament. The quali- 
 ties of the subjects of the kingdom were spir- 
 itual qualities—purity of heart, meekness of 
 Spirit, non-resistance to evil, trustful submis- 
 sion to God and soon. The kingdom signified 
 primarily the reign of God in the hearts of 
 men. 
 
 But the kingdom was social in its nature as 
 well as spiritual. Perhaps I should say that it 
 was social because it was spiritual. To be at 
 peace with God means to be at peace with 
 men. To love God means to love one’s brother. 
 To have God’s forgiveness means to forgive 
 one’s brother. 
 
 The kingdom of God, then, is the rule of 
 God’s love and forgiving grace in the hearts 
 and lives of men; such a rule as will ideally 
 bring all human relationships and social activi- 
 ties in obedience to the will of God. 
 
 NO TEMPORAL REIGN ON EARTH 
 
 In a former chapter we saw that the resur- 
 rection signified the triumph of Jesus over sin 
 and death and gives us a Christ of universal 
 power and knowledge, a Christ who transcends 
 the limitations of time and space and is with 
 
132 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 
 
 his people everywhere as they live in spiritual 
 fellowship with him. The resurrection of Jesus 
 thus defines for us the nature of the kingdom 
 in that it determines the nature of the king. 
 As we saw in the former chapter, Jesus did 
 not rise to live again on the natural plane of 
 life on which he had lived before his death. 
 His resurrection was more than resuscitation. 
 This precludes the idea that Jesus will ever re- 
 turn to the world to establish a literal reign of 
 a thousand years, or of any other length of 
 time, here on the earth. He may reign on earth 
 after his return, but if so his reign will be a 
 different character from any thing we know 
 now on the earth. The subjects of that reign 
 will have to be introduced into it by death and 
 resurrection or by a corresponding transforma- 
 tion if still living when Jesus comes. There 
 will not be a mixed order of things in which 
 Christ in his glorified state, with saints raised 
 to the glorified state, will reign over men and 
 women being born during that age with bodies 
 of flesh and blood, subject to decay and death. 
 Such an order would be an anomaly, a spiritual 
 absurdity. If Christ reigns on the earth after 
 his return, it will be over saints in resurrection 
 bodies living in a world that has been renovated 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 133 
 
 and made new. It will be a new order of 
 things through and through, not an order 
 partly of the old and partly of the new. Death 
 and decay will be done away with at his com- 
 ing (1 Cor. 15: 24ff) and all evil shall be cast 
 out of his kingdom (Matt. 13: 40ff). 
 
 ASSURANCE OF TRIUMPH 
 
 Our assurance of the triumph of the king- 
 dom of God lies in the fact that Jesus rose 
 from the dead and lives forevermore. The kev 
 to the understanding of the book of Revelation 
 is in the first chapter in John’s vision of the 
 living Christ. This Christ appears to John in 
 his majestic strength, alive from the dead, and 
 announces to John that he is alive forevermore 
 (vs. 17, 18). One noticeable thing about this 
 Christ as he appears to John is that there pro- 
 ceeds from his mouth a sharp two-edged sword 
 (vs. 16). This signifies that the Son of God 
 goes forth to war. Doubtless the sharp two- 
 edged sword proceeding out of his mouth is 
 the word of God, the gospel of salvation. 
 Through this gospel he is to subdue the nations 
 and the kingdom of God is to come. The Son 
 of God will never cease to make war until his 
 enemies bite the dust and the rule of this earth 
 
134 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 
 
 has passed into the hands of God and of his 
 Christ\( Rev. Tis 1512-4107" 
 
 Christ’s resurrection signified his triumph 
 over sin and death. He grappled with sin and 
 death in a terrific struggle and conquered them. 
 This was true so far as his more immediate 
 and personal relations with sin and death were 
 concerned. And this more immediate and per- 
 sonal victory is the token of a universal victory 
 that is to come. Christ did not cease his war- 
 fare on sin and death when he rose from the 
 dead. That was only the first round of the 
 fight. It was just the successful issue of the 
 first campaign of a long warfare. And the liv- 
 ing Christ himself is conducting that warfare. 
 Some Christians talk as if they thought 
 Christ’s followers were orphans in the world. 
 But he said that he would not leave us orphans. 
 He said, I come to you (John 14: 18). And 
 he did come. He came in spiritual power on 
 the day of Pentecost. By the power of his 
 Spirit, using his people and his gospel, he is 
 now working for the extension of his kingdom 
 on earth. One day he will manifest himself 
 for the consummation of that kingdom. 
 
 But let us encourage ourselves with the 
 thought that the kingdom of God is to triumph. 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 135 
 
 It will triumph, both in its progress during this 
 age and in its final consummation. Wherein 
 lies our assurance of this? It lies in the fact 
 that Jesus ts alive from the dead. Evil is pow- 
 erful in the world. It has been fastening its 
 hold on the world for centuries and centuries. 
 Sometimes one is tempted to think that its 
 strong hold on human life cannot be broken. 
 If one had no assurance other than that that 
 comes from a surface view of things, this would 
 probably be a justifiable conclusion. But sur- 
 face appearances are not always, if ever, the 
 truest ones. To get at the truth with refer- 
 ence to any phase of reality or life, one often 
 ‘ has to look long and patiently until he discerns 
 what is not at first apparent. If one looks at 
 any phase of human life and activity, it is not 
 at all apparent at first that righteousness will 
 triumph over sin and evil. If one looks at 
 business, politics, public amusements, educa- 
 tion, religion itself, there is much that is dis- 
 couraging. Sin does have a mighty hold on 
 human life and activity. 
 
 And let it be said here that no man has a 
 right to be an optimist with reference to human 
 life who has not faced the concrete facts and 
 ills of life. There is too much of what some- 
 
136 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 
 
 body has called the “cheerful idiot’ type of 
 optimism—the kind of optimism that encour- 
 ages itself by disregarding the ills and suffer- 
 ings of the world, like a boy trying to keep up 
 his courage by whistling as he passes a lonely 
 cemetery on a dark night. The writer also rec- 
 ognizes the fact that many superficial formu- 
 Jas have been proposed for the woes of the 
 world. He has no desire to add another to the 
 list of these cheap formulas. Nor does he be- 
 lieve in the optimism of the well-fed and well- 
 kept. It is easy enough for the well-kept man 
 to look in superficial wisdom on the sufferings 
 of his less fortunate brothers and tell them that 
 their sufferings are not so serious after all. 
 And yet recognizing the seriousness of the 
 sin and evil of the world; recognizing, too, that 
 it is not sin in the abstract, such as the theo- 
 logian and the philosopher have often dealt 
 with, that ails the world, but sins in the con- 
 crete; recognizing that the evil of the world is — 
 radical and powerful—the author still believes 
 that God is greater than sin and that his Christ 
 is to triumph over it. He is to triumph be- 
 cause he has triumphed. He has given a 
 demonstration of his sin-conquering power. 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 137 
 
 I doubt if any man can be a pessimist and 
 really believe in the resurrection of Jesus. The 
 Christian’s optimism with reference to the 
 triumph of the kingdom of God grows out of 
 his communion with the risen Lord. One who 
 shares the life of the Christ who conquered sin 
 and death in resurrection power has in his own 
 heart the assurance of the ultimate triumph of 
 righteousness over evil, of Christ over Satan. 
 This is not to fall back on a blind mysticism. 
 The Christian’s communion with the living 
 Christ is not blind mysticism. It is mysticism; 
 that is, it is communion of the finite with the 
 Infinite, of man with God. But it is not blind, 
 because it is based on objective, historical facts 
 and also it is an intelligent committal of one- 
 self to the living Christ that brings a response 
 that lifts the whole life of the believer on to a 
 higher moral and spiritual plane. 
 
 This assurance with reference to the pro- 
 gressive and final triumph of the kingdom, 
 then, is not a matter of logical demonstration 
 mainly; nor is it exclusively a matter of Scrip- 
 ture exegesis; it is largely a matter of spiritual 
 intuition; it comes as a result of spiritual ex- 
 perience. One knows that Christ will ulti- 
 mately triumph over all evil because one now 
 
138 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 
 
 experiences the power of Christ that is sin- 
 conquering and evil-transcending in its nature. 
 It is thus a matter of religious faith, certainly 
 not a scientific demonstration. We are here 
 dealing with a realm where scientific demon- 
 Stration is out of the question. 
 
 This faith, however, does give an assurance 
 that nerves one for the most heroic endeavor in 
 promoting the kingdom of God on earth. This 
 assurance with reference to the coming of the 
 kingdom, then, is not to be taken as an en- 
 couragement to a supine and inactive waiting, 
 but as an incentive to militant activity to bring 
 in the reign of righteousness among men. 
 Faith in the living Christ and his program of 
 world conquest does not lull one to sleep but 
 stirs him to activity. 
 
 WHAT CHRISTIANS NEED 
 
 What present-day Christians need above all 
 else is a fresh inflow of spiritual power from 
 the risen Christ. We have money, organiza- 
 tion, machinery. Our greatest need as Chris- 
 tians is spiritual power. We do not have too 
 much of these other things, but we do have too 
 little of spiritual power. Perhaps it might be 
 said that we have as much of these other 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 139 
 
 things as we need unless we had more spirit- 
 ual power. Possibly we have as much material 
 wealth and ecclesiastical organization as we 
 can use to good ends unless we had more spir- 
 itual power. Money, learning, social prestige 
 —these things cannot of themselves bring in 
 the kingdom of God. It is not by military 
 might, nor by political power, nor by ecclesias- 
 tical organization, but by the power of the di- 
 vine Spirit that human hearts are killed to the 
 love of evil and brought under the sway of 
 the will of God. I believe in evangelism, mis- 
 sions, social service, peace programs, move- 
 ments for promoting international justice and 
 good will, but all these things are useless and 
 vain unless informed by a wisdom that is more 
 than human and energized by a power that is 
 above man’s. The wisdom that must guide 
 and the power that must energize in all these 
 movements must be personal in its nature and 
 source—the power of the living Christ. 
 Christians need to recognize anew the living 
 Christ, submit anew to him, preach him with 
 fresh power which he will furnish, and thus 
 set forward the kingdom of God among men. 
 

 
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