RESURRECTION HOPE

RESURRECTION GIVES US THE LIVING  -  HOPE  

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to his abundant mercy hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.”  1 Pet. 1:3

In what sense has the resurrection given us a living hope? Hope deals with unseen things which cannot be proved by the senses, not being demonstrable to the senses. Let me name two such. The resurrection of Jesus is a new interpretation of personality, such as the world had never had before, such as the world has never had, apart from the resurrection, and the works which our Lord Himself did work. Do not be foolish enough to try to get rid of the last two chapters in John's gospel. They are absolutely necessary to the interpretation of the gospel. Do not try to get rid of the post-resurrection stories. You need them. Think of them as a whole.

        What do you see? Jesus the same, and yet different. Human personality is revealed as superior to physical death. He died, but is alive. By that sign and token our heart is sure that the last word has not been said about personality when over the sacred dust we repeat the words, dust to dust, earth to earth, ashes to ashes. We are referring then to the transient abode of personality, but not to personality.

        We know, moreover, that personality means continuity of essential individuality. It was the same Jesus they had known before Whom they knew after.

        Shall we know our loved ones in heaven? Surely, absolutely yes. There is no question about it. That is what these post-resurrection stories show. He was the same, the same Jesus. Yes, but there is more in this new interpretation of personality. I see in the risen Jesus change, and enlargement of capacity and potentiality, even within the realm of that of which, for lack of a better term, I speak as the material. In the resurrection the body of Jesus was raised; it was such a body that He was able to  light a fire on the shore and prepare breakfast for tired fishermen  who had been out all night, such a body that He was able to sit down with them in the upper room and eat broiled fish, yet so  different a body that He was there in their midst without the  shooting of a bolt or the opening of a door, so different that for a  long way along the road to Emmaus He could walk with two of  them who knew Him well without allowing them to discover Him.  So much the same that when He so chose, they saw and knew that it was the Lord.

        Are these stories speculations? No, they are revelations; your philosophy cannot explain them, no human  philosophy can; but God has given us this one picture of  personality beyond the grave for the cheer and courage of our  souls. The grave does not end everything. Beyond it we continue  the same, yet with a personality so changed, enlarged, and  beautified, that as they read the story men are inclined to doubt. I do not wonder. Do not treat these stories as though they were in  any sense small. Some man says: Do you really think that someone came into that room without anyone opening the door?  Do you really believe that? I reply: Would not you like to be able to do it? I think you would. I think you often sigh within the confines of this material body. I know there have been moments when I would have given anything, not to be out of the body, but to be suddenly present where I could not come by traveling. That is only a rough and almost brutal suggestion. We have no definite, detailed revelation; but here are great whispers, wonderful whispers, giving us gleams of personality beyond the tomb. I think Jesus tarried those forty days with bereaved souls in order that  straining, tear-bedewed eyes might know that the life on the other side is the same, only ennobled, glorified, beautified.

        The resurrection is also for us the pledge of our redemption.  The death of Jesus was vicarious. He died for others. The resurrection of Jesus was vicarious. He rose for others. Men die  in Him and live in Him. This is the great value for time with its variations, for earth with its limitations. We are born again unto this living hope.

        The text, then, takes us across the line, and suggests to us  the things that lie beyond. "An inheritance." That means a place and possession in the heavens, interpreted, as I have said, by the risen One, and guaranteed by the ascension of that risen One.  Let us pause before we call in question the accuracy of the declaration that this Man ascended as Man, and that this Man, as Man, sat down at the right hand of God. If you deny me that, then I am not sure about myself and the future. While that remains to me as a truth in the power of which I live day by day I have hope indeed. At the right hand of God, the mystic phrase suggests a definite location, is Jesus of Nazareth even now, not limited in His Deity by His location, but located in His humanity, while by the Spirit His Deity is with us everywhere. In that ascension of the Son of Man I have man's guarantee of place  and possession in the life that lies beyond this: where He is we  shall be also.

        That inheritance is reserved by the power of God.  Reserved, what does the word mean? Withheld! That does not sound quite so pleasing. It means something else. Secured! The infant in the eye of the law to the age of twenty-one does not enter into his inheritance and heritage, but it is reserved for  him. Withheld from him in the days of infancy, it is secured to  him at the period of his manhood. So the ultimate in our life in Jesus Christ is withheld from us for the present; but it is secured to us; it is reserved for us. "Beloved, now are we children of God, and it is not yet made manifest 

what we shall be. We know that if He shall be manifested, we shall be like Him; for we shall see Him as He is."

        The experience is reserved for those who are kept. The picture here is that of the power of God on sentry duty, the power of God watching over us and guarding us, keeping us for the inheritance which is withheld from us, but secured to us in Jesus Christ. Kept by the power of God through faith, that is through faith operating in that power, trusting it, and obeying it.

        The apostle employs language full of poetry as he gives us the characteristics of the inheritance, "incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away." There is something of the poetry lost in the translation. As he wrote it, there is a beauty and dignity which we miss in the translation. Our inheritance is unwithering, unsullied, unfading! Unwithering, that speaks of its deathlessness, nothing is in it of the element of destruction; it cannot die; that is eternal life. Unsullied, that speaks of its sinlessness, nothing is in it that prevents the perpetual development of the Divine life; it is perfect in purity. Unfading, nothing is in it that dims the glory or tarnishes the beauty; it is fadeless.

        Lift your eyes, A larger and more stupendous life lies beyond!

        For today amid the strife we have a living hope. An inheritance is reserved for us in the undying ages and limitless spaces of eternity. To these things He begat us when His abundant mercy was enabled to flow forth through the resurrection of His Son.