[1.] Interest yourselves in the acts of your common person. Keason thus— If we are united to Christ, then we shall share in all his pur- chased benefits : ' I am crucified with Christ,' Gal. ii. 20 ; and I am risen with Christ. You are instated by virtue of your union in all Christ's acts : Christ was raised, therefore I shall rise ; Christ was taken to glory, therefore I shall be so. Urge it to God — 0 Lord, did I not rise out of the dust in Christ ? Lord, didst thou not take me out of the devil's power when thou tookest Christ out of the grave ?
[2.] You must reason from this privilege against present distress — Is it the evil of sin ? Piom. vi. 2, ' How shall we that are dead to sin live any longer therein ? ' Am not I dead to sin in Christ, and alive to this grace in Christ ? Then reason from your privileges ; I am above this cross, for Christ is, and shall I sink under it ? I am in this glory already, as united to Christ, who is there, and shall I despair of it ? Is not my head there, and will the head be severed from the rest of the members in the mystical body ?
3. As a pattern of Providence: for God meant to copy out all his dispensations to his people in the life of Christ. There is not a providence happeneth to the church or to believers but there is something therein conformable to the life of Christ. For look, as all dispensations typed out Christ, as the children of Israel's going out of Egypt did, for which see that of H(jsea, ' I called my Son out of Egypt,' Hosea xi. 1, which is cited. Mat. ii. 15, 'Out of Egypt I called my Son ; ' and as Jonas, being three days and three nights in the whale's belly, did ; so Christ is the type of all providences after
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him. There is no misery but some pcassage of Christ's life is parallel to it. Out of all these considerations you may fetch a great deal of comfort. Eeason then against all the depths of misery into which you may be cast ; I shall get free, for Christ got free ; I see the suc- cess in the story of Christ's life. Is it the depth of inward misery ? Ps. xviii. 5, ' The sorrows of hell compassed me about, and the snares of death compassed me.' So they did Christ, yet he got free of them, as the apostle saith, Heb. xii. 2, ' Looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God.' Is it outward misery ? None could have more distress upon him than Christ, yet he was taken from distress and judgment. Is it death ? Christ died and rose again. Either God will preserve you from the evil, or he will order it so that it shall not hold you. Christ could not be holden of death when it seized upon him. Is it reproaches ? It may be you are buried in the scorn of the world, and crowded under disrespects and abasures — so was Christ before you.
We now come to the second considerable circumstance in the text, and that is the life of Christ : ' Who shall declare his generation ? ' As Christ saith, ' I am the resurrection and the life,' that is, the cause of both ; for Christ did not only rise, and not only live, but he was the resurrection and the life. He rose as a resurrection, and he liveth as a life. And therefore all our spiritual rising and living is from his rising and living. But having spoken of his resurrection, it will be necessary to inquire into his life.
Doct. That Christ, being risen, liveth a numberless term of years, even for ever, with God in glory.
Who shall declare his generation f That is so long that it cannot be reckoned. Those that have the best skill in numbers cannot rise high enough to reach his age. By what sum will you express eternity ? Thousands of thousand thousands can scarce be admitted to be a shadow of it : Heb. vii. 3, ' Having neither beginning of days, nor end of life;' which is to prove, not that Christ as God should live for ever, but Christ as Mediator, as God-man, under which notion he is considered here.
1, Because at his resurrection he was cleared from sin, and so was no more liable to death. The apostle saith, Kom. v. 12, that ' death entered by sin.' It did so upon Christ as well as upon us when he took our guilt: 1 Peter iv. 1, ' He that hath suffered in the flesh hath ceased from sin,' being cleared at his resurrection. When he ceased from suffering he ceased from sin. Therefore the apostle saith, 1 Tim. iii. 16, He was 'justified in the Spirit,' and manifested to the world in the flesh ; that is, they saw him, but because of his miser- able appearance, they could judge nothing but that he was a sinner ; but when his Godhead came to be discovered at his resurrection, then he was justified in the Spirit. Therefore now he is no more liable to death. Christ was not justified, neither by God nor men, till that time. Now he is raised, he is exempt from it, as the apostle urgeth, Rom. vi, 9, ' Christ, being raised from the dead, dieth no more ; death hath no more dominion over him,' Death can lord it no more