"The Power Of His Resurrection"

Millions will this month focus their thoughts on the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. There is of course no New Testament instruction that the resurrection of Christ should be celebrated annually at Easter. Just as believers have no word from the Lord that His birth should be specially remembered at Christmas. Ecclesiastical tradition has established these and other annual celebrations, rather on the pattern of the various feasts of the Lord ordained each year for Israel under Mosaic Law. Following the guidance of our New Testament it is clear that disciples of Christ remembered Him weekly in the Lord's supper. This remarkably enshrines a wide range of truths, including His incarnation, sufferings and resurrection. Many aspects of His Person and work are weekly brought to remembrance through the simple emblems of bread and wine.

However, the fact remains that the resurrection of Christ is again this month brought prominently before the minds of many as a major truth of the Christian faith. Scripture fully confirms the vital importance of the physical resurrection of the Lord Jesus: "If Christ hath not been raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins" (1 Cor. 15:17). How remarkably God overruled to give us infallible proofs of the resurrection of His Son! The apostles themselves were so reluctant to accept the evidence. Even when ten of them had seen the Lord, Thomas refused to be convinced. Only the Lord's personal appearance to him could break down his scepticism. This very initial unbelief strengthens the apostles' witness to His resurrection: a witness further confirmed by their readiness to suffer even to death in the strength of their assurance that Jesus lives. To all this God adds the witness of the apostle Paul. Arch-enemy and persecuter of Christian disciples, blasphemer of the Son of God, denier of the resurrection, Paul was granted mercy because he did it ignorant in unbelief. How powerful was his witness to the resurrection of Christ, whose voice he heard on the Damascus road, "Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou Me?"

On the very day of Christ's resurrection Satan's lying opposition to its truth began. The soldiers guarding the tomb were bribed to circulate the lie

that while they slept the disciples of Jesus stole His body. How could such claims bear cross-examination? Even more unlikely explanations still circulate in our world today. Millions, of certain faiths, are taught that Jesus had become unconscious as a result of His sufferings on the Cross, but revived in the coolness of the eastern sepulchre. The evidence of the gospels shows the impossibility of this "swoon theory". For when the soldier pierced the Lord's side with a spear, there came out blood and water, specific confirmation that the Lord had indeed died, and when the Roman centurion certified the death of Jesus, Pilate marvelled that He was dead already. There could have been no mistake. It's as though God anticipated all the arguments which would be brought against the resurrection of His Son, and included detail in the written Word to refute them.

We live in an increasingly sceptical and materialistic world. Yet the truth of Christ's resurrection is still powerfully confirmed through the effect of the gospel, the power of God unto salvation. Through faith in the Name of Jesus, whom men slew, but whom God raised from the dead, sinners are brought to assurance of forgiveness and peace with God. Their lives are transformed from selfishness and sin to godliness and joyful witness. From experience they sing:

"He lives, He lives, Christ Jesus lives today;

He walks with me and talks with me along life's narrow way.

He lives, He lives, salvation to impart;

You ask me how I know He lives: He lives within my heart."

The apostle Paul prayed for the Ephesians that they might know what is the exceeding greatness of God's power to usward who believe, according to that working of the strength of His might which He wrought in Christ when He raised Him from the dead (Eph. 1:19, 20). While in Phil. 3:10, 11 Paul expressed his own longing as a mature man of God: "That I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, becoming conformed unto His death; if by any means I may attain unto the resurrection from the dead." Profound desires of heart! ~ay the Lord the Spirit help us also to appreciate the need for the power of Christ's resurrection in our daily experience! We too must learn to share in the sufferings Christ knew as witness-bearer to truth; we too must see ourselves as having died with Christ to self, to the flesh, to the world. Then by the power of His resurrection we shall know the daily "out-resurrection from among dead ones." as Phil. 1:11 is literally translated. We'll experience the living spiritual power of fellowship with God and activity for Him in a world alienated from the life of God.

As God's Spirit bears witness with our spirit to the truth of our Lord's resurrection from the dead, let us live out the power of His resurrection in a needy world - throughout the years or until He comes.

unknown | Apr 1983
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