Word of Salvation – Vol.33 No.16 – April 1988

 

From Death To Life

 

Sermon by Rev. M. P. Geluk on Lord’s Day 17

Reading: Romans 6:1-14

Singing: Ps.H.321:1,2; Ps.H.321:3,4; BoW.S.9 &14;
Ps.H.375; BoW.H.402; Ps.H.286:1,4

 

We want to proclaim from the Scriptures the resurrection of Jesus Christ.  As we do this, then we must not be satisfied to merely affirm the fact of the resurrection, for as Christians we surely do not deny that.  There is much more to the doctrine of the resurrection than just the plain fact that Jesus arose.  Question 45 of the Heidelberg Catechism asks:
“How does Christ’s resurrection benefit us?”
That’s a good question to ask.  How would you answer it?  You probably have no difficulty in accepting the fact of Jesus’ resurrection.  The New Testament gives ample evidence about Christ literally and physically rising from the dead.  But it also speaks about the implications of Christ’s resurrection that concern those who accept it.  These implications affect us both now and in the future.  Yes, how does Christ’s resurrection benefit you?

Lord’s Day 17 is quite brief on the doctrine of the resurrection, yet it manages in those few words to say a great deal.  Three things actually:
– First, through His resurrection Christ makes us share in the righteousness He has won for us by His death.
– Second, through His resurrection Christ has raised us to a new life right now.
– And third, His resurrection is a pledge that all Christians will receive new bodies in the life to come.

In just those three points the Catechism manages to capture all the biblical implications of the resurrection doctrine.

The first one, where Christ through His resurrection makes us share in the righteousness He won for us by His death, has to do with our standing before God.

That’s justification.

The second one, where Christ has raised us to a new life, has to do with our living before God.

That’s sanctification.

And the third one, where Christ guarantees us new bodies for the future, has to do with our life in the new world to come.

That’s glorification.

What we want to do now is to address ourselves to these three points so that we can plainly see how we benefit from Christ’s resurrection.  That is, how does the Christian’s justification, sanctification and glorification relate to Christ’s resurrection?  Or to say it differently, how does your standing before God, your living the Christian life, and your future life, connect to Christ’s rising from the dead?

We cannot very well think about all these things, of course, if the fact of Christ’s resurrection is not accepted.  Now I have never seriously doubted the fact of Christ’s resurrection and neither have most of you.  But both of us have probably come across people who openly question the literal, physical resurrection of Christ.  It would seem that the real difficulty such people have with Christ’s resurrection is its miraculous nature.  And it is true, the resurrection is a miracle.  It normally does not occur.  I have never seen a corpse come to life and you have not either.  So how do such people, who doubt very strongly if Christ’s resurrection ever occurred, explain what happened?  Well, they say that the resurrection does not refer to Christ Himself so much but to the faith of the church.  Christ Himself is dead but His teaching and influence still live on in His followers.  For example, Islam knows that Mohammed is dead for a long time and yet you can say that in a sense he still lives on amongst Muslims.

But what then of all those post-resurrection appearances of Christ?  His appearances to the women, such as Mary, Joanna and the others?  And to the disciples – especially Thomas?  And to that group of more than five hundred?  Well, the modern-day doubters of Jesus’ physical resurrection suggest that perhaps all these people claiming to have seen Him were hallucinating.  They thought they had seen Jesus but they did not really.  Even if it really was Jesus they had seen, then perhaps Jesus never really died.  Perhaps it was just a coma, or maybe it was really Simon of Cyrene, the one they forced to carry Jesus’ cross, who was crucified and died.

So you can see that the simple Biblical message about Jesus rising from the dead is for some people not so simple at all.  Dead people just do not come to life again.  And if you cannot accept miracles, if you cannot believe in God who, when He wants to, can do supernatural things, then the physical resurrection of Christ will always remain a stumbling block.

But most of you, if not all, accept the fact of Christ’s resurrection.  On the basis of the New Testament evidence, you believe it to be true.  So how then does the resurrection benefit you?  How does it affect your standing before God, the way you live now, and your life to come?

Let me come at you with another question that kind of covers the others I have asked.  On what does your faith rest when you say that you believe Christ is real for you today?  A similar question was put to someone in a recent television documentary about Christ’s resurrection.  The person concerned gave an answer that was typical of our time.  He said that Christ was real for him because he experienced many wonderful feelings.  Christ made him feel good.

I guess we all know how difficult it is to describe feelings.  We know what we are trying to say, but to someone else it can sound very vague.  I know how I feel about my wife and children, but most likely you would not get a precise description if I were to try to tell you.  So I do not blame the man on television when he sounded vague in trying to say how real Christ was to him.  But all the same, I found myself wishing for a better answer than just saying that Christ made him feel good.  Because, you see, there are Christian believers, who as they hear these words, do not experience right now a happy, bubbly feeling.  They are going through a difficult time.  Some are elderly and they are waiting to be admitted to hospital because repairs have to be made to their ageing bodies.  Others have just heard that they might lose their job.

The point is that the reality of Christ’s resurrection and what comes out of it, is not dependent on how you feel.  God gave His written Word so that we can read and hear about the fact Christ’s of resurrection, and the blessings that flow from it.  These blessings of which the Bible speaks will make us feel good, and not those feelings in themselves.  Think back to the early days of the New Testament church when Christians faced the wild animals in the arenas.  Christ was real for them, not because they felt so good.  They did not, for they were being torn to pieces.  They rejoiced because they knew from the Bible that Christ was alive and with them.  His resurrection had brought them right into the presence of God, and guaranteed a future existence that even death by wild beasts could not undo.

Remember that we are trying to answer the question how Christ’s resurrection benefits us.  Let us just remind ourselves of God’s promise when man sinned and fell away from God.  God said that He would send Christ who would crush the head of Satan, whilst Satan would be allowed to strike at Christ’s heel.  This was the beginning of a conflict between God and Satan that will last till the end of time.  Now the way to feel good about the resurrection is to see it as Christ’s victory over Satan.  That victory enables you, a sinner, to stand before God with the righteousness of Christ about you.  That victory has raised you into a new life.  It has also given you a firm hope for the future.

You must not try to make yourself feel good by telling yourself that you ought to feel happy because Christ has risen.  This might work sometimes but it will not work all the time, least of all when there is little in your circumstances to feel good about.  No, look at history and how Christ is constantly at war with Satan in order to secure your salvation.  I am telling you, you will feel beside yourself when you, in faith, can see Christ the king fighting for you.  When you see how Satan hurled his worst weapon at Christ, which is death, but was defeated when Christ arose, then your emotions will run deep and you will open your heart to God to thank and praise Him.  You will tell yourself to serve and obey Him so that His will and purpose are done in you and through you, because He sent His Son to conquer death for you.

God may send you trials, life may be difficult indeed for you, but see this great conflict between God and Satan as a back-drop behind your existence.  You are fighting your own battles but it is all part of a much greater battle between God and Satan that will rage on until Christ’s coming again.  And in all this you must see the victory over evil and death in Christ’s resurrection.  God has not forgotten you.  He knows that through Christ you have been made to stand righteous in His presence, raised to a new life, and to live again on the new earth.  He knows all that and is in fact, working out and fulfilling His wonderful plan of salvation so that you and all whom He has chosen to eternal life, will forever be made safe.  So safe that Satan can no longer do the slightest harm to you.  He will simply be banished into a bottomless pit for ever.  Now all these things of which the Bible speaks make us feel good.

Christians then must all the time look to Christ and His resurrection.  We will find the reality of our faith, not in our feelings, but with Christ and His victory over death.  When we do that then we will be able to rejoice in all circumstances, even in the difficult ones.

Christians must also look at life in all its variety.  They too will see the ugly side of things, the heart-breaks, the grief, the pain, the loneliness, the hurts.  There will be times these very things will touch the Christian.  He will observe the struggle throughout history, see himself in the middle of it, yet he will not be undone, for he sees Christ’s victory in the resurrection.  And that must be the basis on which our faith rests.  It is a superficial thing to put on a breezy attitude and pretend that everything is just great.  Certainly, there are days when you feel great and you don’t mind telling everybody.  But keep your balance, for life can be deep and complex.  Christ’s resurrection enables you to face whatever is around the next corner.

Many people dare not think what may be around the corner.  They like to think that life will always be pleasant to them.  They shudder when they see the infirmities of old age.  They hope that after a long and happy life they will die with their boots on.  Nice and clean.  Please Lord, no long-term illness, no senility and no nursing home.  But the Lord has never guaranteed us an easy life.  What He has promised is a safe arrival, not necessarily in mint condition, it may well be in a battered and bruised condition.  But God’s children in Christ will arrive, and what is more, they will be raised imperishable and immortal.  Like Christ they will have new, glorified bodies.  Christ’s resurrection is the pledge of that.  So how then should a Christian look at himself?

Romans 6 says that because of Christ’s resurrection, we are alive with Him.  We are united with Him in His resurrection.  We live with Him.

How true is that of you and me?  It would not take much to find a few shortcomings in us.  A few plain old sins, like losing one’s temper, a bit of lust and a touch of greed.  Some of us are pretty hard to live with.  How alive with Christ are we then?  Is there perhaps a fair bit of the old sinful self left in us?

But because of the resurrection of Christ is has to be said to all of God’s people that there is no old self in any of them.  Romans 6:6,7 says, “For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be rendered powerless, that we should no longer be slaves to sin because anyone who has died has been freed from sin.”

The old, sinful self has died with Christ.  Christ with His death killed that old self.  It is no longer there to rule and control us.  Verse 8 goes on to say, “Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him.”  So we do not live by the dictates of the old self.  We live with Christ!  We were raised to a new life with the risen Lord.  In this new life He rules us through His Word and Spirit.  The risen Lord says we have to believe that!  He also says, “Count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus.” (vs.11).

So Christians on the one hand must believe that they are alive with Christ.  They must believe they are new people.  They are not of the old self that was ruled by sin and subject to death.  No, they are of the new and sin and death are not the masters anymore.  Even if they see their old sins come back, then they know that these sins are not permitted to stay.  Because Christians are made new in Christ, they will want to fight those sins.  And that is the other thing Christians do, they count themselves dead to sin.  When something is dead you can’t get it to do anything anymore.  You can prod it and poke it, but there is no reaction.  It’s dead.  It’s the same with sin.  When it come s along in all its subtle ways, then count yourself dead to it.  Don’t give sin a chance.  When it does get to us and we do react to its prodding and urging, then we have not played dead to it strongly enough.  You may say that you find that very difficult.  You are right, it is very difficult.  But you do not only try to play dead to sin, you also believe that you are alive with Christ.  So faith in Christ and saying ‘no’ to sin, that is the way to do it.  That is the way to see yourself.

Think too of God’s Spirit who has come to live in you.  You are not on your own.  The risen Christ also lives in you.  And through His written Word, God reminds you of all these things.  And He teaches you all you need to know, with the risen Christ in control of your life.  That’s why you must not wait to let things just happen.  No, you daily feed on God’s Word.  It is your teacher, rebuker, instructor and trainer.

It trains you in the righteousness you have in Christ before God.  It reminds you of the new life you have in Christ.  And it offers you hope and comfort by promising you a place on the new heaven and earth.  Yes, through His Word and Spirit, the risen Christ has come to stay with you, to keep on opening up God’s riches as regards.  your justification, sanctification and glorification.  Remember Christian, who you are!  You have been raised from death to life.  So stop living as though you are dead, live in the riches of Christ and His resurrection.

AMEN.