11. Resurrected Not Raised
CHAPTER 11
Resurrected, Not Raised
“Since, then, you have been raised with Christ” (Colossians 3:1).
There is a great difference between risen and resurrected. One may rise from one level to another; but when one is resurrected he is brought from nothingness into existence, from death to life, and the transition is simply infinite. A true Christian is not raised but resurrected.
The great objection to all the teachings of mere natural religion and human ethics is that they teach us to rise to higher planes. The glory of the gospel is that it does not teach us to rise, but shows our inability to do anything good of ourselves, and lays us at once in the grave in utter helplessness and nothingness, and then raises us up into new life, born entirely from above and sustained alone from heavenly sources.
The Christian life is not self-improving, but it is wholly supernatural and Divine. Now the resurrection cannot come until there has been the death. This is presupposed, and just as real as the death has been will be the measure of the resurrection life and power. Do not fear, therefore, to die and to die to all that should be left behind, and to die to self and really cease to be. We lose nothing by letting go, and we cannot enter in till we come out. If we be dead with Him, we shall also live with Him.
But the passage, Colossians 3:1, expresses the fact the believer has already died and risen, and should take the attitude of those for whom this is an accomplished fact. He does not call upon them here to die again with Christ and rise with Him anew, as those who have done it are expected to live on a corresponding plane. He tells them later in the passage, “For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God” (Colossians 3:3).
In the sixth chapter of Romans this thought is much more fully worked out. “All of us who were baptized into Jesus Christ,” the apostle says, “were baptized into his death. We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life” (Romans 6:3b-4). To emphasize more forcibly the finality of this fact he says, “For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him. The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives for God.” Therefore, and in like manner, the apostle bids us to “count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus.… offer yourselves to God, as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer the parts of your body to him as instruments of righteousness” (Romans 6:9-11, 13).
Now much of the teaching of the day would bid us yield ourselves unto God to be crucified and to die afresh or more fully, but the apostle says nothing of the kind here. On the contrary we are to yield ourselves unto God as those who have already died and are alive from the dead, recognizing the cross as behind us; and for this very reason presenting ourselves to God to be used to His service and glory.
Have you never seen a bird soaring in midheaven with its mighty pinions spread upon the bosom of the air and floating in the clear sky without a fluttering feather or apparently the movement of a muscle? It is poised in midair; floating in the sky, far above the earth; it does not need to rise; it has risen and is benefiting from its high altitude. Very different is the movement of the little lark that springs from the ground and, beating its wings in successive efforts mounts up to the same aerial heights to sing its morning song, and then returns again to earth. One is the attitude of rising and the other is the attitude of risen.
How can we reckon ourselves dead when we find so many evidences that we are still alive, and how can we reckon ourselves risen when we find so many things that pull us back again to a lower plane? It is the failure to reckon and abide that drags one back. It is the recognizing of the old life as still alive that makes it real and keeps us from overcoming it. This is the principle which underlies the whole gospel system, that we receive according to the reckoning of our faith. The magic wand of faith will lay all the ghosts that can rise in the cemetery of the soul; and the spirit of doubt will bring them up from the grave to haunt us as long as we continue to question. The only way we can ever die is by surrendering ourselves to Christ and reckoning ourselves dead with Him.
It is a portentous fact that spiritualism claims the power to rehabilitate in the forms of flesh and blood the spirits of the dead. It is not an uncommon thing for a deceased father to appear to his child, and even speak to her in the old familiar tone, and tell of things that nobody could know but he, until the credulous mind is compelled to believe it is the same person, and that the buried father is truly alive. But it is not true. It is a lie. He is as dead as when he was laid in the tomb; his body is still there corrupting in the ground, and his spirit is in the eternal world although he seems to be alive. What does it mean?
It is one of the devil’s lies. Satan has impersonated that father. He has supernatural power to paint upon the air the forms of those that have passed away and to speak from those lips until they seem to be real. This is one of the mysteries and yet realities of the present day, and no wise or well-informed man will attempt to dispute it. But the explanation is this—it is simply a creation of Satan before our senses to deceive us.
What is the remedy? Refuse to recognize it. Reckon it dead. Tell it to its face it is not the father but one of the devil’s brood, and it will immediately disappear. There is one thing Satan cannot stand and that is to be ignored and slighted. He lives on attention and dies of neglect. So if we will refuse to recognize the manifestation of spiritualism, we will always find that it will disappear and have no power to continue its movements. It is wholly dependent on the consent of the will.
Now here is a fine illustration of the principle of the gospel. One surrenders himself to Christ to be crucified with Him, and to have all the old life pass out, and henceforth to live as one born from heaven and animated by Him alone. Suddenly some of his old traits of evil reappear—old though—evil tendencies assert themselves and say loudly, “We are not dead.” Now if he recognizes these things, fears them and obeys them, they will control him and drag him back into the former state. But if he refuses to recognize them, and says, “These are Satan’s lies, I am dead indeed unto sin; these do not belong unto me, but are the children of the devil, I therefore repudiate them and rise above them,” God will detach him from them and make them utterly dead. They were no part of him, but simply temptations which Satan tried to throw over him, and to weave around him that which seemed part of himself.
This is the true remedy for all the workings of temptation and sin. It is an awful fact that when one counts himself wicked he will become wicked. Let that pure girl be but made to believe that she is degraded and lost to virtue, and she will have no heart to be pure. She will recklessly sink to all depths of sin. Let the child of God but begin to doubt his acceptance and expect to look upon his Father’s face with a frown, and he will have no heart to be holy, he will sink into disobedience, discouragement and sin.
There is a strange story written by a gifted mind, describing a man who was two men alternately. When he believed himself to be a noble character, he was noble true, and lived accordingly; but when the other ideal took possession of him and made him feel degraded, he went down accordingly. “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.” Our reckonings often reflect themselves in our realities; therefore, God has made this principle of faith to be the mainspring of personal righteousness and holiness, and the subtle, yet sublime, power that can lead men out of themselves into the very life of God.
Beloved, shall we let the Master teach us not so much to rise as to remember we are risen—that we have been raised with Christ from the dead, resurrected from the grave of our nothingness and worse than nothingness, and that we are sitting with Him in heavenly places, recognized by the Father and permitted to reckon ourselves as being “even as He”?
Our attitude will influence our aim. People live according to their standing. The highborn child of nobility carries in his bearing and his mien the consciousness of his noble descent, and so those who have their title to be on high—and consciousness of their high and heavenly rank—walk as children of the kingdom. The remainder of this chapter is devoted to working out this most practical idea because to be risen with Christ is to live accordingly.
The argument against lying is that one must put off the old man and put on the new man. The believer has ceased to be a pauper and has become a prince. Therefore we are to put off the rags of the beggar and wear the epaulette of the prince. We have put on the new man therefore let us put on kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, long- suffering and over all that charity, which is a perfect girdle that binds all the garments together. We are to put on Christ Himself, the best of all our robes. This resurrection life is intensely practical. The apostle brings it into touch with the closest relationships of life, with the family circle, with masters and servants, and with all the secular obligations of life. It is to affect our whole conduct and leads us to walk wherever He calls.
This draws attention to the practical power there is in being raised up together with Christ. It has power, in the first place, to confirm our hope and assurance of salvation because the resurrection of Jesus was the finishing work and a guarantee to men and angels that the ransom price was paid and the work of atonement complete.
When Jesus came forth triumphant from the tomb, it was evident to the universe that the purpose for which He went there was fulfilled, the work He undertook was satisfactorily done, and the Father was satisfied with His finished atonement. Therefore, faith can rest upon His resurrection, as an everlasting foundation, and say: “Who is he that condemns? Christ Jesus, who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us” (Romans 8:34).
The resurrection of Christ is the power that sanctifies. It enables us to count our own life, our former self, annihilated, so that we are no longer the same person in the eyes of God, and may with confidence repudiate self, and refuse either to obey or fear our former evil nature. Indeed, it is the risen Christ Himself who comes to dwell within, and becomes the power of this new life and victorious obedience.
It is not merely the fact of the resurrection, but the fellowship of the Risen One that brings victory and power. One has learned the meaning of the sublime paradox, “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.” This is the only true and lasting sanctification, the indwelling life of Christ, the Risen One, in the believing and obedient soul.
There is power in the resurrection to heal us. He that came forth from the tomb on that Easter morning was the physical Christ, and that body of His is the Head of our bodies, and the foundation of physical strength, as well as spiritual life. If we will receive and trust Him, He will do as much for our bodies as for our spirits, and we shall find a new supernatural strength as the power of the future resurrection touches our physical bodies.
Christ’s resurrection also energizes faith and encourages the believer to claim answers to prayer, and ask difficult or impossible things from God. What can be too difficult or impossible after the open grave and the stone rolled away? God is trying to teach us… “his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is like the working of his mighty strength, which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms” (Ephesians 1:19-20). This is the measure that God is able and willing to do in the name of Jesus under a Christian dispensation. Christ’s resurrection is a pledge of all we can ask for, and if we fully believed in the power of that resurrection we would take much more than we have ever done.
The resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ is the power for true service. The testimony of His resurrection is always peculiarly used by the Holy Spirit as the power of God unto the salvation of men. It was the chief theme of the ministry of the early apostles. They were always preaching of Jesus and the resurrection. It gives a peculiar brightness and attractiveness to Christian life and Christian work. Many Christians look as gloomy as if they were going to their own funeral. We heard not long ago of a little girl who met some gloomy-looking people on the road and she said, “Mother, those are Christians, aren’t they?” And when the mother asked her why she thought so she said, “They look so unhappy.”
This is the type of Christianity that comes from the cloister and the cross. This is not the Easter type, and certainly it is not the higher type. The religion of Jesus should be as bright as the blossoms of the spring, the songs of the warbling birds and the springing pulses of reviving nature. Our Lord met the women on that bright morning with the cheering message, “All hail,” and so He would meet each one that believes on the morning of his new Christian life and bid him go forth with the joy of the Lord as his strength.
This joy springs from the resurrection and is maintained in the heavenlies by the ascended Lord. This is the message that a sad and sinful world needs today. Its motto must not be the “Ecce homo” of the judgment hall, but the glad “All hail!” of the Easter dawn. The more of the indwelling Christ and the resurrection life there is in Christian work, the more will be its power to attract, sanctify and save the world.
Christ’s resurrection enables us to meet the hardest places in life and endure its bitterest trials. Philippians says that the power of His resurrection is to bring us into the fellowship of His sufferings, and make us conformable unto His death. We go into the resurrection life that we may be strong enough to suffer with Him and for Him.
Now, let there be no misunderstanding here. This does not mean personal suffering through sickness or struggles of the spiritual life. These sufferings ought to belong to the earlier period of our experiences. Christ had no conflicts about His sanctification and no physical disease to contend with during His life. So, in bearing these the believer is not bearing the sufferings of Christ. His sufferings are for others, and the power of His resurrection will bring us to share His high and holy sorrows for His suffering church and a dying world. It is a fact that the harder the place and the lower the sphere of toil and suffering, the more the elevation of His grace and glory is needed to meet it. From the heights we must reach the depths.
The epistles, which lift us into heavenly places, bring us back in every instance to the most commonplace duties, the most ordinary relationships and the most severe trials. These letters to the Ephesians and the Colossians, which speak about the highest altitudes of faith and power, speak also more than any others of the temptations common to men, and the duties of husbands and wives, and the need of truthfulness, sobriety, honesty and righteousness and all the most unromantic, practical experiences of human life.
There is a very remarkable passage in Isaiah which seems to be parallel with the thought in Philippians. It tells us of those that mount up with wings as eagles; but immediately afterward we find the same persons coming down to the ordinary walks of life, to “run and not grow weary,… walk and not faint.” It would seem as if the mounting up was just intended to fit them for the running and walking, and that the higher experiences of grace and glory were just designed to enable them to tread the lower level of toil and trial. It is in keeping with this that the apostle speaks of glorying in tribulation. “Glory” expresses the highest attitude of the soul, and “tribulation” the deepest degree of suffering.
It teaches that when we come to the deepest and lowest place we must meet it in the highest and most heavenly spirit. This is coming down from the Mount of Transfiguration to meet the demoniac in the plain below and cast out the power of Satan from a suffering world. Yes, these are the sufferings of Christ. The power of His resurrection is designed to prepare us, enable us and help us to rise into all the heights of His glorious life, that like Him we may go forth to reflect it in blessing upon the lives of others, and find even sweeter joy in the ministrations of holy love than we have in the ecstasies of the Divine communion.
Resurrected with my risen Saviour,
Seated with Him at His own right hand;
This the glorious message Easter brings me.
This the place in which by faith I stand.
Men would bid you rise to higher levels.
But they leave you on the human plane.
We must have a heavenly resurrection;
We must die with Christ and rise again.
Once there lived another man within me,
Child of earth and slave of Satan he;
But I nailed him to the cross of Jesus,
And that man is nothing now to me.
Now another man is living in me,
And I count His blessed life as mine;
I have died with Him to all my own life;
I have risen to all His life Divine.
Oh, it is so sweet to die with Jesus!
And by death be free from self and sin.
Oh, it is so sweet to live with Jesus!
As He lives the death-born life within.