Since therefore Jesus — the man Jesus — was raised from the grave, the faith in the Resurrection grounded in the life of fellowship with God has received its final seal and assurance. The res\ir- rection of those who are His is guaranteed — ' For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also that are fallen asleep in Jesus will God bring with him' (1 Th 4"). The empty grave therefore, as Harnack admits with some inconse- quence, is 'the birthplace of the indestructible belief that death is vanquished, that there is a life eternal' {What is Christ in nit tj ?^, p. 165).
St. Paul puts this evidential significance of the Resurrection first negatively : ' If Christ be not risen, then they also which have fallen asleep in Christ have perished (dTriiXoi'To)' (1 Co 15'*). They have ' perished ' not in the sense of suffering annihi- lation or extinction of conscious existence, but of undergoing deprivation of continued existence, in any sense in which it is worth having — deprivation of ' life ' through separation from God, the Sheol state of existence. (For St. Paul's use of dirdWutrSai. and aiTiiXeia as the antithesis of o-iifeo-^ai and <ru>Tjipia see Kennedy, St. Paul's Conception of the Last Thin/js, p. 119 ft.) ' But now hath Christ been raised and liecome the first fruits (d-irapx^) of them that are asleep' {v.""). This is the more positive statement of it. As the first ripe sheaf is the earnest and guarantee of the coming harvest, so the resurrection of Christ is the pledge and guaran- tee of the resurrection of those who are His (cf. Col 1", Rev P, 7rpur6roKos in tCiv veKpCiv, ' the first born from the dead '). So St. Peter speaks of Christians being ' born anew to a life of hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, born to an unscathed, inviolate, unfading inheritance' (1 P !"■ [Moflatt]).
The resurrection of Christ is not only the assur- ance or pledge of the full ijersonal immortality of believers ; it is also the revelation of the nature of this immortal life. It ' has brought life and immortality to light ' (2 Ti 1'") ; it has displayed it to our view. He has risen in possession of a body like ours, only glorified and made free from the law of sin and death, a body ' spiritual ' in the sense of being the perfect instrument of the pur- poses of spirit. In this glorified embodied state of the Risen Christ we have a look at the nature of the future state of believers. At present we are pent up in a body which is but an imperfect medium of our will or spirit. It is 'a body of death ' (Ro 7"), full of weakness and corruption, limiting our powers of service. But ' this body that belongs to our low estate' shall be transformed 'till it resembles the body of his Glory ' (Ph 3=' [Moft'att]). For ' if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwelleth in you, he that raised up Christ Jesus from the dead shall quicken also your mortal liodies through his Spirit that dwelleth in you' (Ro 8"). (On the connexion between the resurrec- tion of Christ and the resurrection of believers, whereby the former is not only the pledge or guarantee but the ground of the latter, and the moral significance of the doctrine, see, further, below, IV. ii.)
ii. Essential or constitutive significance. — The heart of the apostolic representation is not reached until it is perceived that the Resurrection
is not simjily an external seal or evidential ap- pendage added to guarantee certain truths about Christ and His work, but an essential or constitu- tive element in the work itself, an integral part of His redemptive revelation. Such a view as that of Herrmann already referred to, which lays the chief stress on the impression produced by Christ's life, making the Resurrection at most a deduction of faith witliout vital relation to redemption, fails to do justice to the inner meaning of the fact. This more inner vital significance of the Resurrec- tion for apostolic thought and life as the neces- sary sequel of the Incarnation and Crucifixion, and essential to the completion of the work of re- demption, may be presented under the following heads :
1. What it meant for Christ Himself. — The Resurrection was essential to Christian faith, be- cause of what it meant for Christ Himself. As the transition from a state of hunuliatiou to a state of exaltation, the entrance in His risen manhood on a new life of exalted power and sovereignty, whereby He became Lord over all, the Resurrection formed a new beginning in the life of Christ Him- self. This is the central significance of the Re- surrection insisted on by St. Peter in his sermons recorded in Acts : ' God hath made him both Lord (Ki'ipioi") and Christ, this Jesus whom ye crucified' (036j . I Him hath God exalted at his right hand to be a Prince and a Saviour' (5") ; 'therefore being by the right hand of God exalted ... he hath poured forth this' (2^), and the healing of the lame man is pointed to as further evidence of His exalted sovereignty (4'°). Ki5pios, the LXX name for Jahweh and the characteristic apostolic title for the Exalted Jesus, defines Him as One who is sovereign in the spheres both of grace and of nature. Lord not only over the Chvtrch but over all creation. This too is the connotation or significance of the phrase 'at the right hand of God' — a phrase borrowed from Ps 110' and oftener used in the NT than any other words of the OT. It defines Christ's exaltation as a sharing in the universal sovereignty and almighty power of God. So in 1 P Z-'' the statement that ' angels and authorities and powers ' are ' made subject unto him ' is the affirmation of His personal participation in the universal sove- reignty of God, whose servants the angels and authorities and powers are.