Risen With Christ
RISEN WITH CHRIST
ROMANS 8:9-11
How much do you know of Christ’s resurrection power?
Notice how vital the resurrection is in Paul’s teaching. To believe in the historic fact of the resurrection is essential for a Christian faith. The name Christian cannot properly be given to anyone who denies the deep truth of that event. To be sure it is, as these verses show, a mystical experience, part of living “in Christ.” But that experience loses all meaning if Christ is not truly risen. It is the apprehension of the fact, the realization that he did indeed conquer death, which makes possible the basic affirmation: “My Lord and my God!”
Thomas was the last of the apostles’ band to see the risen Christ, and he was not one to risk life on a false report, mistake, hallucination or fabrication. Remembering the census documents of the eastern provinces, where identification is often made by reference to permanent scars, he said: “Unless I put my finger into the print of the nails, and my hand into the spear wound in his side, I will not believe.” Such were Christ’s identifying scars, and such demonstration Christ offered the doubter. “My Lord,” cried the broken man, “and my God!” “Blessed,” said Christ, “are those who have not seen and yet believe.”
“Hath he marks to lead me to him?” asks Stephen of Saba in the hymn he built round Thomas’ experience. He has, indeed, his marks, marks on all history, marks on countless transformed lives, and he still calls for Thomas’ affirmation. Reason is not set aside in making it. Once it is made, life can never be the same again. Such commitment involves all of life, penetrates the whole person.
In Greece at Easter, the cry goes up: “Christ is risen,” and for forty days no other greeting of welcome or farewell is used, only the one triumphant proclamation. In this way, Greek Christians signify that no activity of life, no movement of the mind, no plan of work, no project of pleasure, in fact, no pain, no joy, no sorrow, no speech, no thought, lies outside the scope of an all-embracing faith. And unless Christ has risen there is no Christianity, all hope is cut at its root, the foundation of all goodness is sapped. The indwelling Spirit is that of the One who raised Jesus from the dead (8:11), and so immortality is also assured.