REFORMED WITNESS
Volume II, April 1994, Number 4
Risen Indeed
By Herman Hoeksema
From the book When I Survey...
Book published by the Reformed Free Publishing AssociationThe Lord is risen indeed, and hath appeared unto Simon. -- Luke 24:34.
"But now is Christ risen from the dead!" Thus the apostle Paul writes in 1 Cor. 15:20. And the context in which this triumphant declaration occurs shows clearly that the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead is considered to be the very heart of the gospel, the indispensable basis of all preaching, the cornerstone of the Christian faith. For a moment the apostle had considered the situation of the apostles and their preaching, and of the believers and their faith, in case the Lord had not risen from the dead. And he had stated quite radically that then all preaching would be vain, and the Christian faith would be vain also. And this is self-evident. If Christ is not raised, then there is no power in the cross, then the blood of Jesus is no different from any other blood that was ever shed, and it does not cleanse from all sin; then there is no justification, and no forgiveness of sin, we are still in our sins. If Christ is not raised, then He was swallowed up of death, He does not live, He is not the quickening Spirit, nor is He the Son of God come in the flesh. If the resurrection of Jesus Christ is not a fact, then the Incarnation is not true, the Son of God did not die on the cross, the exaltation of the Lord at the right hand of God is a figment of the imagination, and in vain do we look for His coming again in glory to establish His kingdom for ever. If Christ is not raised, then all the experience of believers is an illusion, for then He does not live in them by His Spirit and grace, regeneration is an invention, faith is a mere opinion, the love of Christ is auto-suggestion, and the joy of hope is the product of an overheated imagination. But now is Christ risen from the dead! Preaching is very real though it may be foolishness to the natural man. And the faith of the Church is not vain. The resurrection of our Lord is the way out of darkness into light, out of death into the glory of eternal life!
The basic truth of the gospel is strongly and abundantly attested as a fact, and it is to this testimony by faithful witnesses of the fact of the resurrection that I would like to call your attention in this chapter. Not as if it were my purpose in any way to apologize for the Christian faith in the risen Lord, or to render the fact of the resurrection of Jesus Christ rationally credible. This is neither possible nor necessary. There is no more unreasonable act than to deny the credibility of the resurrection. For as the apostle Paul puts the question to King Agrippa, so we would present it to all that have ever attempted to overthrow the truth of the resurrection of our Lord: "Why should it be a thing incredible with you, that God should raise the dead?" If God is the Lord, He certainly must be the Lord of life and death, and He is able to quicken the dead. And if it pleased Him to reveal Himself in all the glory of His divine wisdom and power and grace, there certainly is no more efficient medium through which this revelation of the living God could be made to us than the resurrection of the Son of God in the flesh. To deny, therefore, the credibility of the resurrection of Christ, is to deny the very existence of God. And, therefore, it cannot possibly be my purpose to demonstrate the credibility of the resurrection of the Lord. Not with the possibility, but with the fact of the resurrection I am now concerned. And facts must be attested. There must be witnesses for them, these witnesses must be faithful, and they must be able to produce proper evidence. And one can hardly refer to a historic fact that is better attested, by more faithful witnesses, and by more indubitable evidence than the fact of the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. In order, however, that we may be able to appreciate properly these witnesses of the resurrection of Christ, and the evidence they present in their testimony, we must first of all have a clear conception of the fact that is supported by their testimony. Jesus Christ, the Son of God come in the flesh, Who died on the cross, and Who was buried in the sepulchre in the garden of Joseph of Arimathea, is raised from the dead. What does this mean? It means, to be sure, that in the same human nature, in the same body in which He died, He was quickened into new life. The resurrection of Christ was a resurrection of the body. It was real. We do not agree with those who would idealize the resurrection of the Lord, as if it meant that He was glorified merely in a spiritual sense, or that He arose in the minds of the apostles, and through the preaching of the gospel continues to live in the consciousness of the Church. On the contrary, in the very body in which He suffered death on the accursed tree, He arose from the grave and the reality of the bodily resurrection of the Saviour was revealed to faithful witnesses. However, this is not all. The resurrection of Christ was not like that of the young man of Nain, or of Lazarus, the former of whom had been recalled to life by the Lord from the bier that was to bear his body to the grave, while the latter had been raised after he had been in the grave four days. Had the resurrection of the Lord been no more, the testimony concerning it would have been rather simple. For these men were called back into their earthly life. In their case the jaws of death were forced to give up their victims, in order that they might return, in their mortal, corruptible bodies, to their former earthly existence. They arose from the grave on the earthly side. Lazarus returned to his home in Bethany, to his sisters, Mary and Martha, to his friends and acquaintances that had bemoaned his death. They met him as before. They talked with him, and ate and drank with him. And all could witness that he had been dead and lived again. But that is not true of the resurrection of Jesus Christ our Lord. He arose, to be sure, but not in order to return to us. He went on. He went through the grave. He issued forth from the grave on its immortal, heavenly side. In His case the resurrection meant complete victory over death. Death was swallowed up by Him. Mortality had been swallowed up of life. This corruptible had put on incorruption, this mortal had put on immortality, and the natural had been replaced by the spiritual. In the image of the first Adam, the image of the earthly, the Lord had died and had been buried; but with the image of the heavenly He arose. The result was that the risen Lord in His glorified resurrection body no more belonged to our earthly sphere of life and existence. The former fellowship had been broken forever. Not again could He walk about with His disciples in the same manner as before His resurrection. They can no longer come to Him: He must come to them. If there are to be witnesses of the resurrection, it can only be through the revelation of the risen Lord Himself. And we must expect that the witnesses of this revelation will speak, not only of the real bodily resurrection of the Saviour, but also of its otherness and marvel. Now, who are these witnesses that become the media of the revelation of the risen Lord, and whose testimony was preserved infallibly for us in the Holy Writ? There is, first of all, the testimony of the women, who, early in the morning of that wonderful first day of the week, had taken their spices and made their way to the garden of Joseph, to see the sepulchre and to complete the embalming of the body of their Master. Witnesses they had been of the burial, but they had not seen, evidently, that Joseph and Nicodemus, within the tomb, had quite finished the preparation of Jesus' body, and with the spices had wound it in linen clothes according to the Jews' manner of burying. And so they made their way to the sepulchre to perform their last service of love to their Lord Whom they loved. On the way they face the serious problem of the stone that had been rolled before the entrance of the tomb, and which was too heavy for them to remove. But as they approach, and view the grave from a distance, they notice to their amazement that the stone is already rolled away. The grave is open! It must have been at this moment that, characteristically, Mary Magdalene at once jumped to the conclusion that they had stolen the body of her Lord, and without taking time to investigate further and to view the grave, returned in haste to report to the apostles. The other women, however, continued, saw a vision of angels, who preached to them the first resurrection gospel, and viewed "the place where the Lord lay." When Mary Magdalene returned to the grave the women had already departed. And we know how Mary was the first recipient of the revelation of the risen Lord, Whom she recognized in His calling her by name. Yet, also the other women, as they returned from the sepulchre, were favored by an appearance of the resurrected Christ, and they worshipped Him. But on that same day several more became witnesses of the resurrection. Upon the report of Mary, Peter and John hasten to the garden of Joseph, inspect the vacated grave, and become witnesses of the wonder of the linen clothes, and to the place where the Lord had lain. It probably was soon after that Peter, who was so sorely in need of a special token of his Lord's favor, could report to the rest of the apostles that he had seen the Lord, and that He was risen indeed! Lu. 24:34; I Cor. 15:5. Then in the afternoon of that first day of the week, the risen Christ joined the company of two disciples on the way to Emmaus, as they were busily discussing the things that had taken place in Jerusalem, and the several reports concerning His being seen which by that time were being circulated in the city. And He expounded to them from all the Scriptures, that the Christ must suffer thus, and enter into His glory! And as their hearts were still burning within them, He became known to them in the breaking of the bread. In the evening of the same day, finally, He suddenly appeared in the midst of a congregation of the disciples, the apostles without Thomas, and others, and convincing them of His identity, instructed; them in the things concerning the kingdom of God. Once more He appeared in the midst of the apostles, a week later, now for the special purpose of convincing the profoundly sorrowing and hopeless Thomas that He had risen indeed! He Went before them to Galilee, as He had announced before His death. And there He appeared, not only through the marvellous draught of fishes to seven of the apostles at the Sea of Galilee, but also to more than five hundred brethren at once. Paul makes mention of an appearance to James, the brother of the Lord. And, having returned to Judea, the eleven apostles went with Him to the Mount of Olives, whence He was taken up from them into heaven. "Last of all", the apostle informs us in I Cor. 15:8 "he was seen of me also, as one born out of due time." Hundreds of witnesses, therefore, could testify in those days, that the Lord had risen indeed! What is the value of their testimony, even when we consider them from a human viewpoint? The forces of unbelief have united and often sharpened their wits, to prove that the testimony of these numerous witnesses deserves no credibility, but their attempts in this direction could only serve to expose their own folly. How foolish was the story of the watchmen that fled in consternation from the grave they had been guarding, and were bribed by the hard-hearted leaders of the Jews to spread the report, that the disciples had stolen the body of Jesus while they slept! But equally foolish are all the efforts of unbelief to undermine and expose as false the testimony of the witnesses of the resurrection of Christ. Some were not ashamed to maintain that these witnesses were the inventors of deliberate falsehoods, a statement which bears the stamp of absurdity on its very face. Others have tried to explain that the disciples were subject to hallucinations. So strongly did they expect that the Lord would rise from the dead, that the expectation became the father to the conviction that the Lord had risen, and they sincerely but mistakenly believed that they had seen the risen Christ. But all these explanations to deny the truthfulness of the testimony of the witnesses of the resurrection simply show to what lengths of folly unbelief will go to gainsay the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. Were all these witnesses subject to the same hallucinations? Did the women as they went to the grave on that early morning of the first day expect that Jesus had risen from the dead? Did any of the disciples? We know better. They did not even remotely think of it. Never had they understood the word of Jesus concerning His suffering, death, and resurrection on the third day. Was Thomas likely to be subject to hallucinations, who said that he would not believe unless he should touch the very scars of Jesus' suffering and death? Is it probable or even possible that the disciples were dreaming when they drew the net to shore containing the one hundred and fifty-three fishes, which they had caught at the word of the risen Lord? Or did the apostle Paul, perhaps, expect to become a witness of the risen Christ on the way to Damascus? If ever there were true and faithful witnesses, that recorded just exactly what they saw and heard, and whose testimony is reliable, they are the men and women who reported that the Lord is risen indeed! And let us not forget that most, if not all of these witnesses sealed their testimony with their own blood. Trusting in the risen Christ they gladly suffered martyrdom for His sake! What then is their testimony, and what is the evidence they are able to produce to sustain it? They all witness with one accord that Christ is really risen from the dead, and that He never returned to this world in and through His resurrection, but went on to glory and immortality. This truth was clearly revealed to them on and after the third day. And what is their evidence? Or let us rather ask: how was this truth of the resurrection revealed to these faithful witnesses? There was, on that first day of the week, first of all, the testimony of the open and empty grave. Let us recall that the next day after the burial of Jesus, the chief priests and Pharisees had appealed to the Roman governor that the sepulchre might be made sure until the third day, "lest his disciples come by night, and steal him away, and say unto the people, He is risen from the dead: so the last error shall be worse than the first." Matt. 27:64. This request had been granted by Pilate. The sepulchre had been sealed. The stone had been secured to the main body of the grave by a steel chain, bearing the Roman seal, and, besides, a watch of Roman soldiers had been stationed at the sepulchre to guard it until the third day. Thus the enemy had themselves furnished evidence beforehand that their own invention was a lie, and that the body of the Lord could never have been removed from the tomb by human hands. Yet, when the women came to the grave in the morning of the first day of the week, they found the tomb open and empty! That open grave, that had been so securely sealed, and so strongly guarded, was the first medium through which the light of the revelation of the risen Lord broke through the darkness of their gloom and sorrow. Secondly, there was the appearance of angels, that explained to them the empty grave, invited them to inspect it, and proclaimed to them the glad tidings that Christ had risen from the dead. An angel had come down from heaven on that early morning, accompanied by the sign of an earthquake, and he had rolled the stone away from the sepulchre. This was done, not indeed that the way out of the grave might be opened for the living Lord, for of this the risen Christ had no need, and He had risen probably much earlier on the third day, which had begun at six o'clock the previous evening; but in order that the grave might be opened and preserved for inspection for the witnesses of the resurrection. And it was by the mouth of this heavenly messenger that the gospel of the risen Lord was first preached to the astonished and perplexed women: "Fear not ye: for I know that ye seek Jesus, which was crucified. He is not here: for he is risen, as he said. Come, see the place where the Lord lay." Matt. 28:5,6. Thirdly, these witnesses reported the marvel of "the place where the Lord lay." The women had seen this place in the tomb and had been amazed. And after they had reported it to the disciples, two of them, Peter and John, proceeded to the tomb, not merely to verify for themselves that it was empty, but more especially to see the "place where the Lord lay". Now what was so wonderful and remarkable about this place? It was the sign of the linen clothes. To these special attention is called. We read that, when John came to the sepulchre "and stooping down, and looking in, he saw the linen clothes lying." And again, when Peter, who followed John, arrived, and had gone in the sepulchre, he also saw the linen clothes lie. And he noticed particularly that the napkin that had been about Jesus' head was not lying with the rest of the clothes, but lying wrapped together by itself. And finally, we read, that John also went into the tomb, saw the same thing, and believed. John 20:4-8. Now, why should special attention be called to the "place where the Lord lay"? And why should the linen clothes attract so much attention? And what was there about these linen clothes that caused John to belive that the Lord had risen from the dead? There can be only one answer: these linen clothes that had been wrapped about the body of Jesus at the burial, limb for limb, lay there in the tomb exactly in the shape of the body that had been wrapped in them, but that was now parted, and for the same reason the napkin that had been twisted around Jesus' head lay in a place by itself! They had not been disturbed, though the body of the Lord was in them no more. And thus they clearly marked the place where the Lord had lain, and were a silent and most astounding testimony of the wonder of the resurrection of the Saviour! And finally, as the culmination and seal upon all this testimony there were the appearances of the Lord Himself. And also these appearances were, on the one hand, very real; yet, on the other hand, they were very strange and marvellous. Appearances they were, not in the sense that Jesus for a time assumed a body, but in the sense that He showed Himself in the spiritual resurrection body to the disciples. And they established beyond a shadow of doubt that the Lord had risen indeed. For they were very real. The Lord was plainly visible to them, and that too, as the same Jesus that had been crucified, for the prints of the nails in His hands and feet were plainly seen. They were with Him for a while, and He spoke to them, and instructed them in the things of the kingdom of God. He became known to them in the familiar breaking of the bread, or in the equally unmistakable wonder of the draught of fishes at the Sea of Galilee. He even ate before them. And yet, though the risen Lord was very real to them, there was something very strange about Him. He was quite different from the Jesus of Nazareth with whom they had walked for three years. He was with them no more, even though occasionally He appeared within the sphere of their perception. Suddenly He would stand in their midst, though the doors were closed, and just as suddenly He would disappear again. So different was He, that in their faith they marvelled, that in their assurance they questioned, that in their wonder and amazement they some time doubted still. For so we read: "And none of the disciples durst ask him, Who art thou? knowing that it was the Lord." John 21:12. And again: "And when they saw him, they worshipped him, but some doubted." And through it all they received the revelation of the risen Lord. He had risen indeed: and He had risen, not to return to them, but in glory and immortality: death had no more dominion over Him! But now is Christ risen from the dead! That cornerstone of the gospel is firmly laid through the revelation of the risen Lord Himself as attested by many and faithful witnesses! And the truth of this gospel is corroborated by the experience of the Church, of believers of every age! He lives! Raised He was by the Father, and His resurrection is God's own answer to Christ's "It is finished". Just ask the thousands upon thousands that found no peace in their own righteousness, that were troubled because of their sins, and that were ingrafted by faith into Jesus Christ, crucified and raised. They found peach with God through Him! Why? Because the Christ, Who was delivered for our transgressions and raised for our justification, entered their heart, and they by grace heard God's Word of righteousness through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. He lives! Just ask the countless throng of believers, who in themselves are dead in trespasses and sins, but who have died and have been raised with Christ, who have been delivered from the bondage of sin, and now have become servants of righteousness. How? Through the power of the living Lord! He is risen, and is become the firstfruits of them that slept! Christ is the first-begotten of the dead! He went through the grave into the glory of eternal life as the Head of the Church! The resurrection is begun! And it cannot possibly stop until all that belong to Him, and believe on His name, and look for the city that has foundations, have followed Him in that glorious resurrection. O, death! where is thy sting? O, grave! where is thy victory? Thanks be to God, who giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ!
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