Romans 6:9

Romans 6:9

Christ Risen, Dieth no More.

I. The resurrection brings joy to the human soul because it asserts that which is by no means written legibly for all men on the face of nature and of life the truth that the spiritual is higher than the material; the truth that, in this universe, spirit counts for something more than matter. There are, no doubt, abstract arguments which might go to show that this is the case; but the resurrection is a palpable fact which means this, if it means anything at all, that the ordinary laws of animal existence are visibly, upon sufficient occasion, set aside in obedience to a higher spiritual force. It was, we all of us know, no natural force, like that of growth, which raised Jesus Christ our Lord from His grave. "Christ being raised from the dead." The resurrection is not merely an article of the Creed; it is a fact in the history of mankind. That our Lord Jesus Christ was "begotten of the Father before all worlds" is also an article of the Christian faith; but then it has nothing to do with human history, and so it cannot be shown to have taken place, like any event, say, in the life of Julius Cæsar, by the reported testimony of eye-witnesses. It belongs to another sphere. It is believed simply on account of the proved trustworthiness of Him who has taught us this truth on His own authority about His eternal person. But that Christ rose from the dead is a fact which depends on the same sort of testimony as any event in the life of Cæsar, with this difference, that no one ever thought it worth his while, so far as I know, to risk his life in order to maintain that Cæsar defeated Vercingetorix or Pompey. The resurrection of Christ breaks the iron wall of uniformity which goes so far to shut out God. It tells us that matter is not the governing principle of the universe. It assures us that matter is controlled by mind, that there is a Being, that there is a will, to which matter can offer no effective resistance, that He is not bound by the laws of the universe, that He in fact controls them.

II. Christ's risen life is to us a fact of undying significance. The resurrection was not an isolated miracle, done and then over, leaving things much as they had been before. The risen Christ is not, like Lazarus, marked off from every other man as one who had visited the realms of death, but knowing that he must ere many years pass be a tenant of the grave. "Christ, being risen from the dead, dieth no more." His risen body is made up of flesh, bone, and all things pertaining to the perfection of man's nature; but then it has superadded qualities. It is so spiritual that it can pass through closed doors without collision or disturbance. It is beyond the reach of those causes which, slowly or swiftly, bring down our bodies to the dust. Throned in the heavens, now, as during the forty days on earth, it is endowed with the beauty, with the glory, of an eternal youth. Being raised from the dead, it dies no more. The perpetuity of the life of the risen Jesus is the guarantee of the perpetuity of His Church. Alone, among all forms of society which bind men together, the Church of Christ is insured against complete dissolution. When our Lord was born the civilised world was almost entirely comprised within the Roman empire, a vast social power which may well have appeared, as it did appear to the men of that age, destined to last for ever. Since then the Roman empire has as completely disappeared from the earth as if it had never been. And other kingdoms and dynasties have risen up and have in turn gone their way. Nor is there any warrant or probability that any one of the states or forms of civil government which exist at the present time will always last. And there are men who tell us that the kingdom of Christ is or will be no exception to the rule that it too has seen its best days and is passing. We Christians know that they are wrong, that whatever else may happen one thing is impossible the complete effacement of the Church of Jesus Christ. And what is our reason for this confidence? It is because we know that Christ's Church, although having likeness to other societies of men in her outward form and mien, is unlike them inwardly and really. She strikes her roots far and deep into the invisible; she draws strength from sources which cannot be tested by our political or social experience. Like her Master, she has meat to eat that men know not of. "God is in the midst of her, and therefore shall she not be removed; God shall help her, and that right early."

III. Christ, risen from death, dying no more, is the model of our new life in grace. I do not mean that absolute sinlessness is attainable by any Christian here. But at least faithfulness in our intentions, avoidance of known sources of danger, escape from presumptuous sins, innocence, as the Psalmist puts it, of the great offence these things are possible, and indeed are necessary. Those lives which are made up of alternating recovery and relapse recovery, perhaps, during Lent, followed by relapse after Easter, and even lives lived, as it were, with one foot in the grave, without anything like a strong vitality, with their feeble prayers, with their half-indulged inclinations, with their weaknesses which may be physical, but which a really regenerate will should at once away with men risen from the dead, yet without any seeming promise of endurance in life what would St. Paul say to these? "Christ," he would say, "being risen from the dead, dieth no more." Just as He left His tomb once for all, so should the soul, once risen, be dead indeed unto sin. There must be no hovering about the sepulchre, no treasuring the grave-clothes, no secret hankering after the scent and atmosphere of the guilty past. Cling to the risen Saviour. Cling to Him by entreaties which twine themselves round His sacred person. Cling to Him by sacraments, the revealed points of contact with His strengthening manhood. Cling to Him by obedience and by works of mercy, through which, He tells us Himself, we abide in His love. And then, not in your own strength but in His, "likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord."

H. P. Liddon, Easter Sermons,vol. i., p. 208.

Reference: Romans 6:9. C. W. Furse, Sermons at Richmond,p. 42.