'If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those
things which are above, where Christ sitteth on
the right hand of God. Set your affection on
things above, not on things on the earth.'--COL.
iii. 1, 2.
There are three aspects in which the New Testament treats the
Resurrection, and these three seem to have successively come into the
consciousness of the Church. First, as is natural, it was considered
mainly in its bearing on the person and work of our Lord. We may point
for illustration to the way in which the Resurrection is treated in the
earliest of the apostolic discourses, as recorded in the Acts of the
Apostles. Then it came, with further reflection and experience, to be
discerned that it had a bearing on the hope of the immortality of man.
And last of all, as the Christian life deepened, it came to be discerned
that the Resurrection was the pattern of the life of the Christian
disciples. It was regarded first as a witness, then as a prophecy, then
as a symbol. Three fragments of Scripture express these three phases:
for the first, 'Declared to be the Son of God with power by the
Resurrection from the dead'; for the second, 'Now is Christ risen from
the dead, and become the first-fruits of them that slept'; for the
third, 'God hath raised us up together with Him, and made us sit
together in the heavenly places.' I have considered incidentally the two
former aspects in the course of previous sermons; I wish to turn at
present to that final third one.
One more observation I must make by way of introduction, and that is,
that the way in which the Apostle here glides from 'being risen with
Christ' to where 'Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God,'
confirms what I have pointed out in former discourses, that the
Ascension of Jesus Christ is always considered in Scripture as being
nothing more than the necessary outcome and issue of the process which
began in the Resurrection. They are not separate facts, but they are two
ends of one process. And so with these thoughts, that Resurrection
develops into Ascension, and that in both Jesus Christ is the pattern
for His followers, let us turn to the words before us.