The Everlasting Righteousness-Bonar2 (continued)
1. The security of this risen life. It is not mere life out of nothingness, as in the case of the first Adam, but life out of death. And it is this life which Scripture presents to us as higher, fuller, and more secure. The soil out of which the tree of immortality springs is not the common soil of earth; it is the mold of the graveyard, the dust of the tomb. This far securer life, this life that no death can touch, comes to us from the risen life of Him who died and rose again. The faith that knits us to Him makes us partakers of His resurrection-life; nay, does it so fully that His resurrection becomes ours: we are risen with Him, and with Him have put on a divine immortality.
2. The power of the risen life. It was as the risen One that He spoke, "All power is given unto me." It was as possessor of this power the He went forth from the sepulcher; a power like that by which He overcame death; "the power of an endless life." This corn of wheat had fallen into the ground and died; and though sown in weakness, it was raised in power. It was with this power of the risen life that He ascended on high, leading captivity captive. It is this power of the risen life that He now wields upon the throne.
It is in this power of the risen life that He comes again in His glory; Redeemer, king, Judge of all. It is this power of the risen life that He puts forth in His Church,-that He exercises in the begetting us again to a lively hope, and in sustaining each begotten one in a world of hostility and death, amid fightings without and fears within. It is to the power of this risen life that we betake ourselves in the day of weakness and conflict; so that, strong in the Lord, and in the power of His might, we are made more than conquerors.
3. The love of the risen life. Resurrection was a new and higher stage of being; and with the perfection of life, there came the perfection of the love.