p. 1 | A RISEN CHRIST

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Apr 8, 1903

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 29, No. 14.

A RISEN CHRIST.

EIGHTEEN hundred and seventy-two years ago! From a great city under the sunny skies of the Orient winds a procession, half military, half mob. The central figure in that procession was the “Criminal,” a poor, young Man, tho of royal blood, the purest and noblest in character that ever walked the earth. Taunted, reviled, mocked, spit upon, smitten, thorn-crowned, bearing His own heavy instrument of death. He wends His weary way. But the suffering, the exhaustion are too much for His physical frame, and He sinks wearily underneath the load. A strong countryman is pressed into service, and the sad procession passes on to a hill, bearing resemblance to a skull, on the mountain-side, near the city.

ARRIVING here, the unresisting Victim is nailed to the cross, the cross is set in the earth, and amid wonders and convulsions in heaven and earth the young Man dies in the glorious triumph of the principle of eternal righteousness. As the day wears to its close a wealthy gentleman of the “Criminal’s” own nation comes forward, and with another wealthy friend begs the governor for the young Man’s body. They buy a linen cloth and a hundred pounds of aloes, myrrh, and other aromatic substances wrap the body in these, and lay it in a rock-hewn tomb belonging to the rich man. The grave is closed by a great stone, officially sealed with the government seal, and the incident seems to them forever closed. It is, in fact, only just begun.

WEEPING friends who had hoped for much from the young Man mourn His fate. His enemies—enemies solely because His life condemned them—rejoiced. The night passes, the Sabbath day wanes to its close, the night of First Day is well nigh gone, the morning is about to break, when, cleaving the blue ether, a mighty messenger of God lights the gloom with his glory, smites the strong Roman guard simply by the holiness of his presence, and by the authority of the Most High calls to the young Man sleeping in the tomb, “Son of God, Thy Father calls Thee.” And He who died a victim to hellish hate, to Jewish blindness, to Roman ignorance, comes forth the mighty Conqueror over the mightiest foes of the ages—Sin and Death,—a conqueror for you and for me.

THAT was the meaning of the resurrection of Jesus Christ on that far-away Orient morning. He died because of sin—our sin. He “gave Himself for our sins, that He might deliver us.” He “gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from all iniquity.” It was sin, your sin, my sin, that placed the Man of Calvary upon the cross; that drove the pitiless nails through the hands that were never stretched forth save in blessed ministrations; that pierced the often wearied feet which tread no path save only that He might help to make the road easier and safer for wayworn pilgrims in the future. It was your sin and my sin that thrust the Roman spear into that great heart of love which ever beat in sympathy with suffering humanity, which embraced all souls in its longing love and desire to redeem, and which broke at last under its insufferable burden of the woes and sins of the world. He died for the world, to save the world from sin. He died for you—whoever you are—to save you from sin. He died for me, praise God, to save me from sin. Can we not all say it, and by believing make the fact a living truth in the life?

“Behold Him all ye that pass by,— The bleeding Prince of life and peace! Come, sinners, see your Saviour die, And say, Was ever grief like His? Come, feel with me His blood applied— My Lord, my Love is crucified.”

BUT tho bearing our sins on the cross and

down into the tomb, He was sinless. No spot stained His garment of character. The enemy applied all his hellish arts and devices to turn Him aside, but found no hooks of lustful longing in His heart on which to hang the subtle temptations. Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Elijah, and all the rest in some ways failed to reach the standard, but Jesus Christ, by the power of faith and the reception of the indwelling Word, conquered the sin, and demonstrated the power of God to live righteously in the enemy’s land, the mortal flesh. How in character that Great Life towers and towers above all the centuries, above all the traditions and myths of the ages! Yet all its secret lies in the one word “righteousness,” or you may translate it “love,” or “faith,” or “obedience,”—all are the same. “Without controversy great is the mystery of godliness; He who was manifested in the flesh, Justified in the Spirit, Seen of angels, Preached among the nations, Believed on in the world, Received up into glory.”

“God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself.”

His resurrection was the demonstration of His righteousness. He could not “be holden” of the grave, for “in the way of righteousness is life, and in the pathway thereof there is no death.” Acts 2:24; Prov. 12:28. He “was born of the seed of David,” “born of a woman,” “according to the flesh,” for our sakes, that He might die in our behalf; but He was “declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead.” Gal. 4:4; Rom. 1:1–4. He demonstrated His right to live forever. And when the anxious women looked into the empty tomb on that First Day morning they saw only the negative evidence that righteousness could not stay buried.

THEN came to them the message, and to God’s people the message, and to sinners and the world through God’s people the message:—

“Why seek ye the living among the dead?” “He is not here; for He is risen, even as He said. . . . And go quickly, and tell His disciples, He is risen from the dead; and lo, He goeth before you into Galilee; there shall ye see Him.”

THIS message is present truth to-day. Men are still seeking for Jesus Christ “among the dead”—among dead doctrines and traditions of men, among dead tombs and mausoleums which devoutly superstitious hands have erected over that supposed tomb of Joseph, and where armed guards of Islamism keep the peace between warring factions of pilgrims professedly Christian, but who have their faces set backward to find Christ in the grave. Among dead, cold places and resolutions of men are earnest souls searching for Christ; among nicely formulated theories of Gospel work, as cold as the fern leaves painted by the frost on the window pane; among great institutions, piles of stone and brick, are men searching for Him who died, but now lives forever. Not there, not in any one or all of these places will He be found save in some faithful soul doing the Master’s work, giving the Master’s living message.

Do you wish to find Him, dear heart? Count the sin, “the old man” crucified and buried with Him forever, and open your heart to let the living Christ in, with His fulness of life and righteousness, and so live the life of the Son of God by faith. Gal. 2:20. And then do His work. He goes before, ever on before, out into the Galilee of the nations, among the great multitudes of the unsaved, among the poor and needy of earth, wherever a helping hand or a helping heart is needed, there Christ is inviting His children to co-operation, a living, helpful Christ, a blessed, constant Companion, a mighty, effectual Saviour from sin and death.