'I delivered unto you first of all that which I
also received, how that Christ died for our sins
according to the Scriptures; 4. And that He was
buried, and that He rose again the third day
according to the Scriptures.'--1 COR. xv. 3, 4.
Christmas day is probably not the true anniversary of the Nativity,
but Easter is certainly that of the Resurrection. The season is
appropriate. In the climate of Palestine the first fruits of the
harvest were ready at the Passover for presentation in the Temple. It
was an agricultural as well as a historical festival; and the
connection between that aspect of the feast and the Resurrection of
our Lord is in the Apostle's mind when he says, in a subsequent part
of this chapter, that Christ is 'risen from the dead and become the
first fruits of them that slept.'
In our colder climate the season is no less appropriate. The 'life
re-orient out of dust' which shows itself to-day in every bursting
leaf-bud and springing flower is Nature's parable of the spring that
awaits man after the winter of death. No doubt, apart from the
Resurrection of Jesus, the yearly miracle kindles sad thoughts in
mourning hearts, and suggests bitter contrasts to those who sorrow,
having no hope, but the grave in the garden has turned every blossom
into a smiling prophet of the Resurrection.
And so the season, illuminated by the event, teaches us lessons of
hope that 'we shall not all die.' Let us turn, then, to the thoughts
naturally suggested by the day, and the great fact which it brings to
each mind, and confirmed thereafter by the miracle that is being
wrought round about us.
I. First, then, in my text, I would have you note the facts of Paul's
gospel.
'First of all ... I delivered' these things. And the 'first' not only
points to the order of time in the proclamation, but to the order of
importance as well. For these initial facts are the fundamental
facts, on which all that may follow thereafter is certainly built.
Now the first thing that strikes me here is that, whatever else the
system unfolded in the New Testament is, it is to begin with a simple
record of historical fact. It becomes a philosophy, it becomes a
religious system; it is a revelation of God; it is an unveiling of
man; it is a body of ethical precepts. It is morals and philosophy
and religion all in one; but it is first of all a story of something
that took place in the world.
If that be so, there is a lesson for men whose work it is to preach
it. Let them never forget that their business is to insist upon the
truth of these great, supernatural, all-important, and fundamental
facts, the death and the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. They must
evolve all the deep meanings that lie in them; and the deeper they
dig for their meanings the better. They must open out the endless
treasures of consolation and enforce the omnipotent motives of action
which are wrapped up in the facts; but howsoever far they may carry
their evolving and their application of them, they will neither be
faithful to their Lord nor true stewards of their message unless,
clear above all other aspects of their work, and underlying all other
forms of their ministry, there be the unfaltering
proclamation--'first of all,' midst of all, last of all--'how that
Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures,' and 'that He
was raised again according to the Scriptures.'
Note, too, how this fundamental and original character of the gospel
which Paul preached, as a record of facts, makes short work of a
great deal that calls itself 'liberal Christianity' in these days. We
are told that it is quite possible to be a very good Christian man,
and reject the supernatural, and turn away with incredulity from the
story of the Resurrection. It may be so, but I confess that it
puzzles me to understand how, if the fundamental character of
Christian teaching be the proclamation of certain facts, a man who
does not believe those facts has the right to call himself a
Christian.
Note, further, how there is an element of explanation involved in the
proclamation of the facts which turns them into a gospel. Mark how
'that _Christ_ died,' not _Jesus_. It is a great truth, that the man,
our Brother, Jesus, passed through the common lot, but that is not
what Paul says here, though he often says it. What he says is that
'_Christ_ died.' Christ is the name of an office, into which is
condensed a whole system of truth, declaring that it is He who is the
Apex, the Seal, and ultimate Word of all divine revelation. It was
the _Christ_ who died; unless it was so, the death of Jesus is no
gospel.
'He died for our sins.' Now, if the Apostle had only said 'He died
for us,' that might conceivably have meant that, in a multitude of
different ways of example, appeal to our pity and compassion and the
like, His death was of use to mankind. But when he says 'He died
_for our sins_,' I take leave to think that that expression has
no meaning, unless it means that He died as the expiation and
sacrifice for men's sins. I ask you, in what intelligible sense could
Christ 'die for our sins' unless He died as bearing their punishment
and as bearing it for us? And then, finally, 'He died and rose ...
according to the Scriptures,' and so fulfilled the divine purposes
revealed from of old.
To the fact that a man was crucified outside the gates of Jerusalem,
'and rose again the third day,' which is the narrative, there are
added these three things--the dignity of the Person, the purpose of
His death, the fulfilment of the divine intention manifested from of
old. And these three things, as I said, turn the narrative into a
Gospel.
So, brethren, let us remember that, without all three of them, the
death of Jesus Christ is nothing to us, any more than the death of
thousands of sweet and saintly men in the past has been, who may have
seen a little more of the supreme goodness and greatness than their
fellows, and tried in vain to make purblind eyes participate in their
vision. Do you think that these twelve fishermen would ever have
shaken the world if they had gone out with the story of the Cross,
unless they had carried along with it the commentary which is
included in the words which I have emphasised? And do you suppose
that the type of Christianity which slurs over the explanation, and
so does not know what to do with the facts, will ever do much in the
world, or will ever touch men? Let us liberalise our Christianity by
all means, but do not let us evaporate it; and evaporate it we surely
shall if we falter in saying with Paul, 'I declare, first of all,
that which received,' how that the death and resurrection were the
death and resurrection of the Christ, 'for our sins, according to the
Scriptures.' These are the facts which make Paul's gospel.
II. Now I ask you to look, in the second place, at what establishes
the facts.
We have here, in this chapter, a statement very much older than our
existing written gospels. This epistle is one of the four letters of
Paul which nobody that I know of--with some quite insignificant
exceptions in modern times--has ever ventured to dispute. It is
admittedly the writing of the Apostle, written before the gospels,
and in all probability within five-and-twenty years of the date of
the Crucifixion. And what do we find alleged by it as the state of
things at its date? That the belief in the Resurrection of Jesus
Christ was the subject of universal Christian teaching, and was
accepted by all the Christian communities. Its evidence to that fact
is undeniable; because there was in the early Christian Church a very
formidable and large body of bitter antagonists of Paul's, who would
have been only too glad to have convicted him, if they could, of any
misrepresentation of the usual notions, or divergence from the usual
type of teaching. So we may take it as undeniable that the
representation of this chapter is historically true; and that within
five-and-twenty years of the death of Jesus Christ every Christian
community and every Christian teacher believed in and proclaimed the
fact of the Resurrection.
But if that be so, we necessarily are carried a great deal nearer the
Cross than five-and-twenty years; and, in fact, there is not, between
the moment when Paul penned these words and the day of Pentecost, a
single chink in the history where you can insert such a tremendous
innovation as the full-fledged belief in a resurrection coming in as
something new.
I do not need to dwell at all upon this other thought, that, unless
the belief that Jesus Christ had risen from the dead originated at
the time of His death, there would never have been a Church at all.
Why was it that they did not tumble to pieces? Take the nave out of
the wheel and what becomes of the spokes? A dead Christ could never
have been the basis of a living Church. If He had not risen from the
dead, the story of His disciples would have been the same as that
which Gamaliel told the Sanhedrim was the story of all former
pseudo-Messiahs such as that man Theudas. 'He was slain, and as many
as followed him were dispersed and came to naught.' Of course! The
existence of the Church demands, as a pre-requisite, the initial
belief in the Resurrection. I think, then, that the
contemporaneousness of the evidence is sufficiently established.
What about its good faith? I suppose that nobody, nowadays, doubts
the veracity of these witnesses. Anybody that knows an honest man
when he sees him, anybody that has the least ear for the tone of
sincerity and the accent of conviction, must say that they may have
been fanatics, they may have been mistaken, but one thing is clear as
sunlight, they were not false witnesses for God.
What, then, about their competency? Their simplicity, their
ignorance, their slowness to believe, their stupor of surprise when
the fact first dawned upon them, which they tell not with any idea of
manufacturing evidence in their own favour, but simply as a piece of
history, all tend to make us certain that there was no play of a
morbid imagination, no hysterical turning of a wish into a fact, on
the part of these men. The sort of things which they say that they
saw and experienced are such as to make any such supposition
altogether absurd. There are long conversations, appearances
appealing to more than one sense, appearances followed by
withdrawals, sometimes in the morning, sometimes in the evening,
sometimes at a distance, as on the mountain, sometimes close by, as
in the chamber, to single souls and to multitudes. Fancy five hundred
people all at once smitten with the same mistake, imagining that they
saw what they did not see! Miracles may be difficult to believe, they
are not half so difficult to believe as absurdities. And this modern
explanation of the faith in the Resurrection I venture respectfully
to designate as absurd.
But there is one other point to which I would like to turn for a
moment; and that is that little clause in my text that 'He was
buried.' Why does Paul introduce that amongst his facts? Possibly in
order to affirm the reality of Christ's death; but I think for
another reason. If it be true that Jesus Christ was laid in that
sepulchre, a stone's throw outside the city gate, do you not see what
a difficulty that fact puts in the way of disbelief or denial of His
Resurrection? If the grave--and it was not a grave, remember, like
ours, but a cave, with a stone at the door of it, that anybody could
roll away for entrance--if the grave was there, why, in the name of
common-sense, did not the rulers put an end to the pestilent heresy
by saying, 'Let us go and see if the body is there'?
Modern deniers of the Resurrection may fairly be asked to front this
thought--If Jesus Christ's body was in the sepulchre, how was it
possible for belief in the Resurrection to have been originated, or
maintained? If His body was not in the grave, what had become of it?
If His friends stole it away then they were deceivers of the worst
type in preaching a resurrection; and we have already seen that that
hypothesis is ridiculous. If His enemies took it away, for which they
had no motive, why did they not produce it and say, 'There is an
answer to your nonsense. There is the dead man. Let us hear no more
of this absurdity of His having risen from the dead'?
'He died ... according to the Scriptures, and He was buried.' And the
angels' word carries the only explanation of the fact which it
proclaims, 'He is not here--He is risen.'
I take leave to say that the Resurrection of Jesus Christ is
established by evidence which nobody would ever have thought of
doubting unless for the theory that miracles were impossible. The
reason for disbelief is not the deficiency of the evidence, but the
bias of the judge.
III. And now I have no time to do more than touch the last thought. I
have tried to show what establishes the facts. Let me remind you, in
a sentence or two, what the facts establish.
I by no means desire to suspend the whole of the evidence for
Christianity on the testimony of the eyewitnesses to the
Resurrection. There are a great many other ways of establishing the
truth of the Gospel besides that, upon which I do not need to dwell
now. But, taking this one specific ground which my text suggests,
what do the facts thus established prove?
Well, the first point to which I would refer, and on which I should
like to enlarge, if I had time, is the bearing of Christ's
Resurrection on the acceptance of the miraculous. We hear a great
deal about the impossibility of miracle and the like. It upsets the
certainty and fixedness of the order of things, and so forth, and so
forth. Jesus Christ has risen from the dead; and that opens a door
wide enough to admit all the rest of the Gospel miracles. It is of no
use paring down the supernatural in Christianity, in order to meet
the prejudices of a quasi-scientific scepticism, unless you are
prepared to go the whole length, and give up the Resurrection. There
is the turning point. The question is, Do you believe that Jesus
Christ rose from the dead, or do you not? If your objections to the
supernatural are valid, then Christ is not risen from the dead; and
you must face the consequences of that. If He is risen from the dead,
then you must cease all your talk about the impossibility of miracle,
and be willing to accept a supernatural revelation as God's way of
making Himself known to man.
But, further, let me remind you of the bearing of the Resurrection
upon Christ's work and claims. If He be lying in some forgotten
grave, and if all that fair thought of His having burst the bands of
death is a blunder, then there was nothing in His death that had the
least bearing upon men's sin, and it is no more to me than the deaths
of thousands in the past. But if He is risen from the dead, then the
Resurrection casts back a light upon the Cross, and we understand
that His death is the life of the world, and that 'by His stripes we
are healed.'
But, further, remember what He said about Himself when He was in the
world--how He claimed to be the Son of God; how He demanded absolute
obedience, implicit trust, supreme love, how He identified faith in
Himself with faith in God--and consider the Resurrection as bearing
on the reception or rejection of these tremendous claims. It seems to
me that we are brought sharp up to this alternative--Jesus Christ
rose from the dead, and was declared by the Resurrection to be the
Son of God with power; or Jesus Christ has _not_ risen from the
dead--and what then? Then He was either deceiver or deceived, and in
either case has no right to my reverence and my love. We may be
thankful that men are illogical, and that many who reject the
Resurrection retain reverence, genuine and deep, for Jesus Christ.
But whether they have any right to do so is another matter. I confess
for myself that, if I did not believe that Jesus Christ had risen
from the dead, I should find it very hard to accept, as an example of
conduct, or as religious teacher, a man who had made such great
claims as He did, and had asked from me what He asked. It seems to me
that He is either a great deal more, or a great deal less, than a
beautiful saintly soul. If He rose from the dead He is much more; if
He did not, I am afraid to say how much less He is.
And, finally, the bearing of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ upon
our own hopes of the future may be suggested. It teaches us that life
has nothing to do with organisation, but persists apart from the
body. It teaches us that a man may pass from death and be unaltered in
the substance of his being; and it teaches us that the earthly
house of our tabernacle may be fashioned like unto the glorious house
in which He dwells now at the right hand of God. There is no other
absolute proof of immortality than the Resurrection of Jesus Christ.
If we accept with all our hearts and minds Paul's Gospel in its
fundamental facts, we need not fear to die, because He has died, and
by dying has been the death of death. We need not doubt that we shall
live again, because He was dead and is alive for ever more. This
Samson has carried away the gates on His strong shoulders, and death
is no more a dungeon but a passage. If we rest ourselves upon Him,
then we can take up, for ourselves and for all that are dear to us
and have gone before us, the triumphant song, 'O Death, where is thy
sting?' 'Thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our
Lord Jesus Christ.'