Sermon Bible Commentary
Romans 6:4
Easter Even.
I. We know what an impression is made by the sight of a dead body, especially if it is that of one who has been near and dear to us. And every one who has felt this lesson has been for a time, for the moment it may be, or hour, or day, if not longer, a different man. The world has lost its power either to distress or please him, and appears in its true colours; and he sees what sin is before God. Yes; the one great truth of all truths is to know what sin is before God. Now this is the wisdom of the grave, yet of itself it is but a cold and lifeless wisdom; but combined with the death and burial of Christ, and the contemplation of it, this wisdom is quickened by love: love is able to overcome the power of death, not by avoiding it, but by wrestling with it.
II. There was an old heathen philosophy that taught deadness to the world: the thorough laying aside it required of all human feeling and passions; but what it inculcated partook of that awful and dead calm which nature itself derives from the grave of man; it had nothing of that peace which the Christian learns by the tomb of Christ, wherein there is release from sin by dying with His death, and in those fruits of righteousness wherein God still works, while He gives rest. Thus Christ, being dead, yet speaketh, while by His Spirit He quickeneth our mortal bodies. The world invites us to live to it; philosophy bids us to be dead to the world; but Christianity adds, in order that we may live to God, we are not only to be dead with Christ, but to learn of Him and live with Him, if we would find His rest for the soul.
III. Though the Christian be dead to the world, and so really unharmed by it, yet the world will not be dead towards him. Though unwilling, it bears testimony; and from a kind of uneasiness and fear which lies deep within it is urged to deeds of ill-will and enmity, and this is a trial to the love and faith of good but over-conscious disciples, because it seems to dishonour their Lord. But our blessed Saviour seems from the sepulchre to say: "Stand still, and see the salvation of God."
Isaac Williams, The Epistles and Gospels,vol. i., p. 386.
There are three characteristics of the risen life of our Lord which especially challenge attention.
I. Of these the first is its reality. The resurrection of Jesus Christ was a real resurrection of a dead body. Men have thought to effect a compromise between their own unbelief or half belief and the language of the apostles, by saying that Christ rose in the hearts of His disciples that their idea of the spirit and character and work of their Master was too bright, too glorious a thing to be buried in His grave, and that when the first agony of grief was passed the Crucified One presented Himself again vividly to their loving imaginations in even more than His ancient beauty. But, supposing a process of imagination such as this to have taken place in the case of one or two or three minds, is it reasonable to suppose that it can have taken place simultaneously in a great many minds? The nearer men came to the risen Jesus the more satisfied they were that He had risen indeed. The first lesson which the risen Christ teaches the Christian is reality, genuineness.
II. A second characteristic of Christ's risen life it lasts. Jesus did not rise that, like Lazarus, He might die again. So, too, should it be with the Christian. His, too, should be a resurrection once for all.
III. A last note of Christ's risen life. Much of it, most of it, was hidden from the eyes of men. They saw quite enough to be satisfied of its reality, but of the eleven recorded appearances five took place on a single day, and there is, accordingly, no record of any appearance on thirty-three days out of the forty which preceded the Ascension. And who can fail to see here a lesson and a law for the true Christian life? Of every such life much, and the most important side, must be hidden from the eyes of men. Alas for those who know so little of the true source of our moral force as to see in secret communion with God only the indulgence of unpractical sentiment, as to fail to connect these precious hours of silence with the beauty and strength of many of the noblest and most productive lives that have been seen in Christendom.
H. P. Liddon, Penny Pulpit,No. 429.
I. The death and burial of our Lord were but the fulfilment of His purpose when He took our flesh in the womb of the Virgin. He was in that grave before He appeared in the world. He appeared in this world that He might descend into the grave again. Every hour that He dwelt here He was giving up His body and soul, confessing that there was no life of their own in them. The glory of the Father had gone with Him through every hour of His earthly pilgrimage, raising up His body and soul, and enabling them to fulfil the work which had been given Him to do. The glory of the Father went with Him into the grave, and it brought Him back in that human soul and body, unhurt by death, unweakened by His conflict with the powers of darkness, to show forth the might of His heavenly life and to be the means through which it should be bestowed upon those for whom He died.
II. Christ's baptism was a burial: it was giving up His soul and body to death and the grave; it was "declaring life is not in them, but in Thee." Our baptism is a burial; it is a giving up of our body and soul, and declaring life is not in them, but in Him. As Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we have His glory with us to raise us from our grave, to enable us to think what of ourselves we cannot think, to do what of ourselves we cannot do. This life is given to us. It is not dependent upon the weakness of our bodies or of our souls. It is assured to us by a promise which cannot be broken. It is stored up for us in One who cannot die.
F. D. Maurice, Christmas Day and Other Sermons,p. 236.
Consider the New Life of the Believer.
I. First, in this present life, our souls begin to be drawn up to ascending desires to nearer communion, to loftier enjoyments, to a more heavenly-mindedness. Afterwards at the resurrection, by the same process, our bodies will be raised up. When He appears in the heavens, by a necessary, irresistible, attractive force, our bodies will be raised from the grave, and we shall be "for ever with the Lord." So that the Divine life in a man's soul does not take place till there is first a death and a burial and a resurrection within him; and all that is the result of a certain union with the Lord Jesus Christ; so that Christ's death and Christ's burial and Christ's resurrection are, to that man, not only facts done for him, but things done in him, and things actually taking place at this moment, real, felt, producing direct visible results. And when we trace the secret inworkings, in a Christian's soul, of such strange, unprecedented things as these, surely to such deep and wondrous mysteries we can only justly apply the Apostle's words, and say, "It is newness of life."
II. But as the formation of it is new, so it is in its own constitution. God's way of making a new thing is not man's way. God uses up the old materials, but by His using and moulding them makes them new. What is the new element thrown in to make a new man? Love simply love. The man receives what he feels to be an inestimable gift, and his heart goes forth after the Giver that Giver who bought that gift for him by the purchase of His own blood.
III. Once more, the Christian life is new by reason of that ceaseless variety and never-ending progression, that constant newness which it has in it. He who has set himself to be a Christian has to do with the infinities of God. He has a field in which he can expatiate for ever, and yet never retreat one pace. He is always enlarging his sphere, and with augmented capabilities taking in extended services; he experiences the charm of a sanctified novelty; and every hour he finds a literalness in the expression in this world, as he will find it for ever and ever, "newness of life."
J. Vaughan, Sermons,1865, No. 491.
Freshness of Being.
In everything which is really of God there is a singular freshness; it is always like that tree of life, which bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month; there is a continual novelty. And yet some people speak of the sameness of a religious life!
I. What is newness? It is not the creation of new matter. Creations in that sense are things of the far past. It is better than creation. The old goes to make the new. The old passions, the old bias, the old elements of the natural man, go to make the strength, the elevation, of the new creation, the same, yet not the same. Take an instance. Self is the ruling principle of every man whom the grace of God has not changed. Self is his god. Now, how is it in the Christian? He has union with Christ; therefore in him self and Christ are one. By a blessed reaction his God is now himself his new self, his real self; his life is the life of God in his soul; his happiness is God's glory; therefore still he studies self, but self is Christ.
II. Let us trace where the newness lies. First, there is set in the believer a new motive, a new spring welling up. "I am forgiven God loves me. How shall I repay Him?" A new current flows in the man's life-blood, he feels the springs of his immortality, he carries in him his own eternity. And he goes forth, that man, into the old world; its scenes are just the same, but a new sunshine lies upon everything it is the medium of his new-born peace, it is a smile of God. Christ reveals Himself to him with ever-increasing clearness. And all the while he carries a happy conviction that it is inexhaustible, that his progress is to be perpetuated for ever and ever; and by faith he shall be learning more, feeling more, enjoying more, doing more, glorifying more that for ever and ever he shall walk in newness of life.
J. Vaughan, Sermons,2nd series, p. 141.
References: Romans 6:4. E. Blencowe, Plain Sermons to a Country Congregation,vol. ii., p. 253; Preacher's Monthly,vol. ix., p. 1; Sermons on the Catechism,p. 219; J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons,7th series, p. 9; H. P. Liddon, Easter Sermons,vol. ii., p. 19.