The word rendered 'Prince' means an originator, and hence a leader and
hence a lord. Whether Peter had yet reached a conception of the
divinity of Jesus or not, he had clearly reached a much higher one of
Him than he had attained before His death. In some sense he was
beginning to recognise that His relation to 'life' was loftier and more
mysterious than that of other men. Was it His death only that thus
elevated the disciples' thoughts of Jesus? Strange that if He died and
there an end, such a result should have followed. One would have
expected His death to have shattered their faith in Him, but somehow it
strengthened their faith. Why did they not all continue to lament, as
did the two of them on the road to Emmaus: 'We trusted that this had
been He who should have redeemed Israel'--but now we trust no more, and
our dreams are buried in His grave? Why did they not go back to Galilee
and their nets? What raised their spirits, their courage, and increased
their understanding of Him, and their faith in Him? How came His death
to be the occasion of consolidating, not of shattering, their
fellowship? How came Peter to be so sure that a man who had died was
the 'Prince of Life'? The answer, the only one psychologically
possible, is in what Peter here proclaims to unwilling ears, 'Whom God
raised from the dead.'
The fact of the Resurrection sets the fact of the Death in another
light. Meditating on these twin facts, the Death and Resurrection of
Jesus, we hear Himself speaking as He did to John in Patmos: 'I am the
Living One who became dead, and lo, I am alive for evermore!'
If we try to listen with the ears of these first hearers of Peter's
words, we shall better appreciate his daring paradox. Think of the
tremendous audacity of the claim which they make, that Jesus should be
the 'Prince of Life,' and of the strange contradiction to it which the
fact that they 'killed' Him seems to give. How could death have power
over the Prince of Life? That sounds as if, indeed, the 'sun were
turned into darkness,' or as if fire became ice. That brief clause 'ye
killed the Prince of Life' must have seemed sheer absurdity to the
hearers whose hands were still red with the blood of Jesus.
But there is another paradox here. It was strange that death should be
able to invade that Life, but it is no less strange that men should be
able to inflict it. But we must not forget that Jesus died, not because
men slew Him, but because He willed to die. The whole of the narratives
of the Crucifixion in the Gospels avoid using the word 'death.' Such
expressions as He 'gave up the ghost,' or the like, are used, implying
what is elsewhere distinctly asserted, that His death was His offering
of Himself, the result of His own volition, not of exhaustion or of
torture. Thus, even in dying, He showed Himself the Lord of Life and
the Master of Death. Men indeed fastened Jesus to the Cross, but He
died, not because He was so fastened, but because He willed to 'make
His soul an offering for sin.' Bound as it were to a rock in the midst
of the ocean, He, of His own will, and at His own time, bowed His head,
and let the waves of the sea of death roll over it.
III. The triumphant divine paradox of life given and death conquered
through a death.
Jesus is 'Prince' in the sense of being source of life to mankind, just
because He died. Hie death is the death of Death. His apparent defeat
is His real victory.
By His death He takes away our sins.
By His death He abolishes death.
The physical fact remains, but all else which makes the 'sting of
death' to men is gone. It is no more a solitude, for He has died, and
thereby He becomes a companion in that hour to every lover of His. Its
darkness changes into light to those who, by 'following Him,' have,
even there, 'the light of life.' This Samson carried away the gates of
the prison on His own strong shoulders when He came forth from it. It
is His to say, 'O death! I will be thy plague.'
By His death He diffuses life.
'The Spirit was not given' till Jesus was 'glorified,' which
glorification is John's profound synonym for His crucifixion. When the
alabaster box of His pure body was broken, the whole house of humanity
was filled with the odour of the ointment.
So the great paradox becomes a blessed truth, that man's deepest sin
works out God's highest act of Love and Pardon.