In the four Gospels it is striking to note the pains the risen Lord took to prove to His disciples that He was indeed risen from the dead. It was a tremendous thing to believe. It was against the ordinary course of things. “Death reigned” (Rom. 5:14). This describes what we know obtained in this world as the fruit of sin, apart from the grace of God.
Take the two disciples going to Emmaus. No wonder they were bewildered and sad, they trusted that the Lord was He who should have redeemed Israel. Instead of wielding the flaming sword of deliverance He had died on the cross, as men would judge, defeated. Three days had gone by since His death.
And sadness would have been their portion for ever if our Lord had remained in the grave. Nothing but His resurrection could turn their sadness into gladness and exultation and triumph. Made known to them in the breaking of bread, everything was changed. Faith, which had sunk below zero, revived. The apostles saw Him again and again. Peter saw Him. James saw Him. Five hundred brethren saw Him at one time.
The Lord might have ascended to glory immediately on His resurrection, but tarried forty days on earth, that He might prove beyond a doubt the fact of His glorious resurrection.
His resurrection was unlike anything else. The Lord raised Lazarus, brought back to life the widow’s son of Nain and the centurion’s daughter. There was a visible Agent in this case, even the Lord of life.
But in His own case there was no visible agent. No eye saw Him rise. GOD raised Him from the dead, is reiterated again and again in the Acts of the Apostles.
And if the four Gospels declare with no uncertain voice the FACT of Christ’s resurrection, the Acts of the Apostles give us the TESTIMONY of the fact. One verse covers this, “With great power gave the apostles witness of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus: and great grace was upon them all” (Acts 4:33). And if the Acts of the Apostles give us the TESTIMONY to His resurrection; the Epistles give us the TEACHING concerning it.
It lies at the very foundation of the Gospel, “If Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins” (1 Cor. 15:17).
Again righteousness is imputed to the believer, “if we believe on Him that raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead” (Rom. 4:24).
There is a general belief in the resurrection of Christ, which in reality is not faith at all. It is what we might call an intellectual belief, a belief in its historicity, just as we believe the history concerning Julius Caesar or Napoleon. It is a belief of such a shallow unthinking nature that the purport of the resurrection is not grasped. I tackled a sceptic in the train and pressed upon him the truth of the resurrection of our Lord. He had wit enough to see the point was strategic. He replied with a sort of shudder, “Well, if you can prove the resurrection of Christ I am bound to be some sort of a Christian.”
Romans 10:9, emphasises believing with the heart. “If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine HEART that God has raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.” We believe in Julius Caesar and Napoleon, but we do not need to confess with our mouths that their lives have any relation to us. Nor is there any need to urge our belief concerning them should be with the heart.
Why need we then confess Jesus as Lord with our mouth, and believe in out heart that God raised Him from the dead? The answer is simple yet profound and of deepest and eternal import to us. Why should God raise our Lord from the dead? He has not raised Paul or Peter or Lydia or Pheobe. Why raise Christ? The answer is, He “was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification” (Rom. 4:25). He did not die for himself, He died an atoning death, and His resurrection is a proof of its completeness and victory.
And it is heart belief in this, the real acceptance of Christ as our Saviour, that links us up with Christ in glory, that saves us, that brings to us the full free forgiveness of sins.
There is an interesting incident in the life of the late Dr. R.W.Dale of Birmingham, a true servant of Christ, a man of fine intellect and simple faith. One day in his study the realization that Jesus was actually alive came upon Him with a force and conviction he had never experienced before. The fact that the Lord Jesus was actually alive just as much as when He convinced the apostles that He was not a phantom or a spirit; as much alive as when He bade Thomas put his fingers into the nail prints, and thrust his hand into his side, and be not faithless, but believing; just as much alive today as when Stephen was martyred and Paul converted; an Unseen Presence but alive, who says to us, as He once said to John, “I am He that lives, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen” (Rev. 1:18). It revolutionized Dr. Dale. No wonder he preached with a new-found vigour and joy for the rest of his days.
The resurrection of the Lord Jesus is a great reality. It has lifted the black clouds of sin and judgment, and unrolled before us a cloudless sky of eternal glory, blessed be God’s name for ever, all centred in a glorious living Person, our Lord Jesus Christ.