CHRIST IS RISEN | AdventAI

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Mar 26, 1902

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 28, No. 13.

“CHRIST IS RISEN.”

Some Questions and Answers.

IN song and sermon this blessed truth will be often repeated on this so-called “Easter Sunday.” By solo, duet, quartets single and double, full choirs, and occasionally whole congregations, will be proclaimed, “Christ is risen.” Cathedrals, churches, and chapels, altar, choir, and nave, will be embellished with flowers in honor of the event.

“Are you not glad?”

Surely we are glad that Christ and His resurrection are preached, and that there is left at least one day in the year when the masses will hear it proclaimed.

“But the resurrection of Christ was only on one day of the year, and why should more than one day be set apart for that purpose? Is not one day sufficient?”

But we have not said that even one day should be set apart for this purpose. Where in His Word do we find a record that God set apart any day? The mere act of rising from the dead was not spread over a whole day; it took only a minute or so of time. Why should a day be set apart to commemorate the event?

“But was not the resurrection of Christ a great event? Was it not vital to Christianity? If so, why not set apart a day to celebrate so great a miracle?”

Yes, the resurrection was a great and vital event to Christianity; but the setting apart of a day to celebrate in honor of that event is not the thing that God wants done. Consider these reasons:—

1. Surely the All-wise God knew what was best for His cause and children. Whenever He thought an event needed a day, He has given it. Creative power demanded the Sabbath, and God gave it forever. The passover demanded a day till “Christ our Passover” was slain for us, and God gave it. The atonement demanded a day, and it was set apart. If our Lord’s birth, crucifixion, resurrection, or ascension needed a day, would not Infinite Wisdom have given it? Could He not justly say, as to Israel of old when they multiplied of their own will observances, “When ye come to appear before Me, who hath required this at your hand?” Isa. 1:12.

2. The setting apart of a day which God has not required, which is in no particular sense fitting to the event, brings honor to the day rather than to the event designed to be commemorated. It becomes a fashion, a form, to be followed, rather than a part of true worship. This has always been the case in all works of supererogation.

3. It is bound to hide from partaker and beholder any memorial which God has Himself given by which the event is to be kept in remembrance. And He has given us an ordinance, pregnant in meaning and instruction, by which Christ’s resurrection is to be kept before His people and the world. Here are three basic facts of the Gospel: “For I delivered unto you first of all, . . . how that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures; and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures.” 1 Cor. 15:3, 4. In commemoration of Christ’s death, He has given us the Lord’s supper “till He come.” 1 Cor. 11:23–26. Including this and the resurrection, He has given us baptism, with all its glorious, uplifting, constant meaning. Thus we read:—

“What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound? God forbid. How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein? Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into His death? Therefore we are buried with Him by baptism into death; that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. For if we have been planted together in the likeness of His death, we shall be also in the likeness of His resurrection: knowing this, that our old man is crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin.” Rom. 6:1–6.

Baptism is immersion. The burial represents death to sin; the bringing forth from the watery, symbolic grave, a new life. It is not the mere act of baptism, by which the believer puts on Christ (Gal. 3:27), or is married to Christ (Rom. 7:4) before the world, that is the memorial of Christ’s resurrection, an evidence to the world that “Christ is risen indeed.” If it were only the dead form, this, too, were but a hollow mockery. No; it is the life for which baptism stands.

Christ Jesus rose from the dead simply and solely because He was righteous; “it was not possible that He should be holden of it.” Acts 2:24. Death is “the wages of sin.” Rom. 6:23. “Sin, when it is full-grown, bringeth forth death.” James 1:15, R.V. But Jesus Christ had no sin, except that which He voluntarily bore for others, and for which He voluntarily laid down His life. “In Him was no sin.” He gave up all for others, and received God’s life in all its fullness. The resurrection of Jesus was, therefore, proof that He was God’s Son. He was “declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead.” Rom. 1:4.

And, therefore, in brief, when a man is willing to yield his carnal heart to crucifixion, to renounce the world, to place his life upon the cross of Christ, to count it crucified with Christ, and to accept in the place of all this the blessed life of Jesus Christ, that man from his baptism is a living memorial of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. As expressed by the apostle Paul, who passed through this experience: “I am crucified with Christ; nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me.” Gal. 2:20.

This is the witness of the resurrection of Jesus Christ which God has demanded in all the past and is demanding of the church to-day. He wants living memorials, men and women living above vice, above bad, degrading habits, above dishonesty, scheming, and self-serving, above cold, formal selfishness and hypocrisy, above politics in religion, in short, above sin,—living a new existence by “the power of an endless life,” by “the power of His resurrection.” Heb. 7:16; Phil. 3:10. Such lives are needed now to prove that Christianity is more than a dead form, and Christ’s resurrection more than a tradition. The “Easter” celebration hides from the minds and hearts of men this great and mighty truth of the new life, connecting each and every soul of a truly baptized church with the Source of life.

Reader, whoever you are, Christian brother or sister, by whatever name called, let the human forms go, but receive Christ and His life, and so every hour, every day of every year, say to all that “Christ is risen indeed.” God has not set apart days to commemorate His resurrection power, but reborn men and women; are you one of them?