RESURRECTION IS THE CENTER OF THE CENTER

RESURRECTION IS THE CENTER OF THE CENTER

“I determined not to know anything among you, save Jesus Christ, and Him crucified," 1 Cor. 2:2

The importance of the RESURRECTION may be gathered from the position its proclamation occupied in the preaching of the apostles. It was the first article in the creed they professed and proclaimed. When the apostles were surrounded with the high priests, and the whole senate, and the council of the children of Israel, Peter as the spokesman of the rest, in declaring the facts for which they stood, and of which they claimed to be witnesses, put the RESURRECTION in the forefront, (Acts 5:10) and this in spite of the fact that he knew it must run counter to the prejudices of that assem­bly, seeing that the high priest was himself a Sadducee, and therefore one who denied the resurrection of the body.

The words of Paul in writing his first letter to the Cor­inthians, “I determined not to know anything among you, save Jesus Christ, and Him crucified," (1 Cor. 2:2) have almost perpetually been used as serving to define the whole subject of his preaching. A reasonable and careful examination of the context will prove that this is a misinterpretation. “Jesus Christ and Him crucified” is not the whole burden of preaching, neither is it the final nor central fact thereof. It would be far more correct to say that the keynote of apostolic teaching was expressed by the same apostle when he wrote, “It is Christ Jesus that died, yea, rather, that was raised from the dead." (Rom. 8:34) This is not to minimize the value of the preaching of Christ crucified, but if Christ crucified be all, then there is no value in preaching Christ crucified. It was His resurrection from among the dead that demonstrated the infinite value of the mystery of His death. When the apostle declared to the Christians in Corinth that he was determined not to know anything among them, save Jesus Christ and Him crucified, the reason lay in the fact of their carnality. All kinds of disorders had crept into the church, and the tone of the life of the members was carnal and not spiritual. It was necessary to hold their thinking in the realm of the Cross, for they had not learned this first lesson, and could not therefore be led into the deeper and fuller truth.

In his letter to the Romans Paul distinctly places the resurrection before the mind as the anchorage for faith unto salvation. “If thou shalt confess with thy mouth Jesus as Lord, and shalt believe in thy heart that God raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved." (Rom. 10:9) And writing in the epistle to the Corinthians he makes a simple statement that at once reveals the true place of the resurrection in preach­ing and in faith. "If Christ hath not been raised, then is our preaching vain, your faith also is vain. Yea, and we are found false witnesses of God; because we witnessed of God that He raised up Christ: Whom He raised not up, if so be that the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, neither hath Christ been raised: and if Christ hath not been raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins." (1 Cor. 15:14-17)

While the preaching and teaching of the apostles were constantly occupied with the fact of the Cross, as to its place and value in the economy of redemption, they never failed to direct attention to the resurrection as the central verity, demonstrating to man's intelligence, and communi­cating to his life, the value of the Cross.

The resurrection gave meaning to all that had preceded it. By it the Cross was proved to be more than a tragic death, and the life of Jesus infinitely more than an exam­ple. Upon the fact of the historic resurrection stands or falls the whole fabric of Christianity. Unless Jesus of Nazareth actually came back from the grave, then indeed have we followed “cunningly devised fables" (2 Pet. 1:16) and have been hopelessly deceived. This has been recognized by the very enemies of Christianity. It was Strauss who said that “the resurrection is the center of the center."

In contemplating the resurrection as the anchorage of faith, first let the historic fact be taken for granted and con­sidered as an anchorage; and secondly, let a question be instituted as to whether faith has actually the anchorage of the resurrection.