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The Verifying of God and the Vindication of Christ
by
T. Austin-Sparks
READING: 1 Corinthians 15:1-4.
"He hath been raised on the third day according to the scriptures."
While it would be possible for us to cite some, and perhaps many
fragments of the Scriptures which have a direct bearing upon what is
said here, that "He hath been raised again the third day," the
Apostle did not mean any particular Scriptures when he said this. He
did not intend that those who read what he said should go and look
up some Scriptures (which of course would then have been in the Old
Testament, because there was no New Testament) bearing upon the
resurrection of the Lord Jesus, but what he did mean was that the
whole of the Scriptures bear upon this thing, that all the
Scriptures relate to this great fact which he was stating. "Christ
died for our sins according to the scriptures; and that He was
buried; and that He hath been raised on the third day according to
the scriptures"; that is, that all the Scriptures bear upon these
things. And we shall remember that in Luke 24 the Lord Jesus, after
His resurrection, to certain who journeyed to Emmaus opened the
Scriptures, it says in Moses, in the Psalms and in the Prophets, the
things concerning Himself, and the things concerning Himself there
are specified as the sufferings of Christ, that He should be
delivered into the hands of wicked men and they would crucify Him,
and He should rise again the third day: so that Moses, which covers
the whole of the first section of the Bible, the Psalms the second,
and the Prophets the third, had to do with the sufferings, the death
and the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and it was in that
comprehensive sense that the Apostle wrote these words: "He hath
been raised on the third day according to the Scriptures." In a
moment we shall come back for the specific value of that to
ourselves.
God
Verifying Himself
"According to the Scriptures." Now this phrase clearly represents
God's verifying of Himself. The Scriptures are the words of God. God hath spoken in all the Scriptures. We are told in the beginning
of the letter to the Hebrews that: "God (who) at sundry times and in
divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the
prophets...." So that the Scriptures are the utterance, the sayings,
the words of God, and when it says here that something has been
"according to the Scriptures" that happening is the verifying of
God, and God Who brought about that event, God Who caused it to be,
is by it verifying Himself. So that this phrase "according to the
Scriptures" represents the verifying of Himself on the part of God:
the acts which establish the words.
The Vindication
of the Lord Jesus
And then, again, this particular clause represents the vindication
of the Lord Jesus: "He hath been raised on the third day." That is
the vindication of Christ. Which means that Christ is vindicated in
resurrection. That is the point, central, pivotal, the supreme point
of everything; the vindication of the Lord Jesus. If He had been
crucified, slain, murdered, executed, and been buried and that had
been the end, well, what would you have had to vindicate Him? But
when God stepped in and raised Him from the dead on the third day
Christ was vindicated up to the hilt.
Now very swiftly and briefly I want to gather up these three things
in a word or two of practical application to ourselves, because
there are here some very serious and momentous implications for the
people of God; and we will begin at the end with number three.
Christ's vindication by resurrection from the dead. The thing which
is of so great importance to us, beloved, is this, that while the
resurrection of the Lord Jesus is undoubtedly an historical fact,
something which did take place at a certain time in the history of
this world, that is not an adequate basis of the vindication of the
Lord Jesus. In other words, Christ's vindication is not merely a
historical fact, but it is a revealed and experienced truth.
"He appeared" is the word here, and the Apostle tells us elsewhere
that He appeared not unto all the people but unto witnesses whom God
had before chosen; so that the vindication of the Lord Jesus was
brought about by the Risen Christ, as risen becoming revealed,
personally, to certain people. They came into what we mean by the
revelation of Jesus Christ, which is infinitely more than the story
of the historic Jesus. And then not only was He revealed to them but
He became in them the Living One in the power of His risen life, and
that is the vindication of the Lord Jesus. It requires living
witnesses in whom Christ has been revealed and is their life to
vindicate the Lord Jesus.
Concerning Lazarus, on hearing of the news of his sickness, the Lord
Jesus said: "This sickness is not unto death but for the glory of
God, that the Son of God might be glorified thereby." And He was not
mistaken when Lazarus died, it was not a contradiction of His
utterance: "This sickness is not unto death." He meant this sickness
is not a sickness unto death but a sickness unto resurrection, but
the object in view was this, that the Son of God might be glorified.
That is the vindication of the Lord Jesus, and the Lord Jesus is
vindicated when He as the Resurrection and the Life has an object in
which He can manifest the power of resurrection. So you and I are
called to be witnesses to the resurrection, not in the manner of
declaring historical facts, or believing that there was a time when
God really did raise the Lord Jesus from the dead so many years ago,
but as now being personally in the experience and knowledge of
Christ as living, and as the Conqueror of death. And if there is one
thing revealed as pre-eminent throughout all the Scriptures, it is
God's desire to vindicate His Son.
Then we have a strong basis of hope and confidence when we go into
death, not merely physical but the various forms in which death
works and abounds - death in our work for the Lord, death in our
spiritual experience in deep trial, in great suffering, in various
ways - if we are really related to the Lord, God's whole object is
to vindicate His Son in the display of the truth that He raised Him
from the dead, and make that truth a reality in us. The vindication
of the Lord Jesus is God's dearest heart purpose. And so unto
witnesses chosen aforetime He makes real the fact of not only Christ
now living, but that Christ living now represents God's triumph over
death. Then believers are those who have the Divine verification on
their side. "According to the Scriptures." It is a great thing to
have the verification of God on our side. Perhaps you do not quite
grasp what is meant by that. I mean this, that we who believe, we
who are in Christ, we who stand with God, stand in line with God's
determination to verify Himself, seeing God has spoken, God has said
things, God has made promises, God has given certain assurances, God
has declared He will do this and that, the Scriptures contain it -
we, standing by faith with God, in Christ, He is going to verify
Himself in all those Scriptures, and the verifying of Himself
relates to us. You see that is what is said here.
"Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures." That means
that God verified Himself on our behalf when Christ died for our
sins, for all the way through God had been pointing by the
Scriptures to that sin-remitting death, that sin-atoning death of
the Lord Jesus, that by that Lamb of God the sin of the world would
be taken away: God had pointed all along to that, all the way
through the Scriptures, and the thing has taken place and Christ has
died for our sins according to the Scriptures. We stand by faith on
His side, and God in verifying Himself makes good the Scriptures for
us. And what is true in dying for our sins according to the
Scriptures, is true in this: "...has been raised the third day
according to the Scriptures." That is for us also. We come into the
good of that because the Scriptures include us in that. "He died for
our sins and rose again for our
justification." He rose that we might know life that is victorious
over death, that we might know Him as the One Who has conquered
death for us, know Him as our life, indestructible and
incorruptible. God is not going to say a thing, and eternity reveal
He failed to fulfil it. All the promises of God are in Christ, yea,
and in Him, Amen. That is, verily, verily, God fulfils His Word in
Christ for us and God verifies His Word in Christ, every promise is
established in Christ for us.
There is another side. God is going to verify Himself, every word
God has ever said is going to be verified, but for multitudes who do
not believe, all that is going to be against them. Their unbelief
cannot hinder God from verifying Himself, but the full impact of it
will be against them for condemnation. To those who believe the full
force of God's eternal faithfulness to His Word is for them, on
their side. It is a great thing to recognise that all the Scriptures
have to be fulfilled and in their fulfilment God verifies Himself,
and that for believers.
One final word in connection with the rest of this passage which we
read. There is a challenge here, to living faith. Why did Paul write
this fifteenth chapter? Well, for several reasons which we will not
stay to mention, but undoubtedly the words with which he opens this
section, this new section relative to resurrection, were meant to
bring these Corinthians, shall I say, up to scratch, to confront
them with the necessity for taking seriously the things that they
knew. "Now I made known unto you brethren..." "I make known"; the
force of those words if you can get behind the English is this -
"Now I want you to recognise what it is that I have said. I want you
to recognise that which you received, the meaning of it, I am
bringing it to you with emphasis and with challenge and with fuller
explanation." He is calling upon them to take serious account of the
gospel which he preached unto them. And you notice a little clause
he puts in, a kind of proviso about the whole thing which introduces
an element of very serious possibility. He says: "unless" - oh, what
a big word that unless is - "except (or unless) ye believed in
vain." More literally "Unless from the beginning your faith has been
unreal." That is what it means. So he is calling them to reality, he
is calling them to a serious recognition of what they had received
as the gospel.
There is a good deal in this letter about the possibilities of
unreality. There is a chapter which takes them back to Israel in the
wilderness and reminds them that all Israel came out of Egypt,
passed through the Red Sea, were baptized into Moses in the cloud
and in the sea, they all partook of the bread from heaven, of the
spiritual water from the Rock, but that generation perished in the
wilderness, that generation never went through to God's end, it died
in the wilderness. And Paul is afraid that there should be
unreality: "Lest from the beginning your faith has been unreal." It
is a challenge to a living faith, and in this connection
specifically with which we are at the moment occupied, a challenge
to a living faith that God raised the Lord Jesus from the dead on
the third day to be to us the Resurrection and the Life in spiritual
experience, to make good all His Word concerning the Lord Jesus in
our experience. A living faith in that. A faith which appropriates
that, which takes hold of that. A faith which believes in Christ's
triumph over death and which makes good, so far as our faith can
make anything good, makes good for us the promise, the word of God,
"According to the Scriptures." A living faith in what God has done
for us. You and I, beloved, need more of that living faith. We want
to escape entirely from unreality and a living faith is not a
historical faith: a living faith is a faith which comes out of
history of what happened in a certain eastern country so many
centuries ago and makes good all the spiritual value of that now in
our own experience. That is a living faith, and when we focus upon
"God raised Him from the dead," "He hath been raised on the third
day according to the Scriptures," faith does not just say: "Yes, I
believe in the resurrection of Jesus from the dead," faith makes
that a personal possession with a personal value for our present
experiment.
The Holy Spirit from the beginning of our history as a child of God
is vindicating the Lord Jesus. It is impossible for any soul to be
saved without the miracle of resurrection being wrought in them by
God the Holy Ghost. We are dead, according to God's Word, in our
trespasses and sins, and no amount of preaching can ever raise a
soul from the dead; it needs the quickening act of the Holy Ghost,
and we have to come and believe God is able to do that and make that
good for our salvation, before we can become a saved child of God.
What is true of salvation is true all the way along right to the
end, that we have by faith to appropriate all the value of God
having raised Christ from the dead to be our life. "He that hath the
Son hath life."
That has all been a crowding into a little space of a great deal.
The Lord open it up to our hearts.
First published in "A Witness and A Testimony" magazine, May-Jun 1933, Vol. 11-3.
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