It is "_the_ Christ," let us observe, in whom God "wrought raising Him from the dead": the Christ of Jewish hope (ver. 12), the centre and sum of the Divine counsel for the world (ver. 10),[68] the Christ whom in that moment never to be forgotten the humbled Saul recognized in the crucified Nazarene.
The demonstration of the power of Christianity Paul had found in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The power which raised Him from the dead is the working energy of our faith. Let us see what this mysterious power wrought in the Redeemer Himself; and then we will consider how it bears upon us. There are two steps indicated in Christ's exaltation: He was raised _from the death of the cross to new life amongst men_; and again from the world of men He was raised _to the throne of God in heaven_. In the enthronement of Jesus Christ at the Father's right hand, verses 22, 23 further distinguish two separate acts: there was conferred on Him _a universal Lordship_; and He was made specifically _Head of the Church_, being given to her for her Lord and Life, He who contains the fulness of the Godhead. Such is the line of thought marked out for us.
I. _God raised the Christ from the dead._
This assertion is the corner-stone of St Paul's life and doctrine, and of the existence of Christendom. Did the event really take place? There were Christians at Corinth who affirmed, "There is no resurrection of the dead." And there are followers of Jesus now who with deep sadness confess, like the author of _Obermann once more_:
"Now He is dead! Far hence He lies In the lorn Syrian town; And on His grave, with shining eyes, The Syrian stars look down."
If we are driven to this surrender, compelled to think that it was an apparition, a creation of their own passionate longing and heated fancy that the disciples saw and conversed with during those forty days, an apparition sprung from his fevered remorse that arrested Saul on the Damascus road--if we no longer believe in Jesus and the resurrection, it is in vain that we still call ourselves Christians. The foundation of the Christian creed is struck away from under our feet. Its spell is broken; its energy is gone.
Individual men may and do continue to believe in Christ, with no faith in the supernatural, men who are sceptics in regard to His resurrection and miracles. They believe in Himself, they say, not in His legendary wonders; in His character and teaching, in His beneficent influence--in the _spiritual_ Christ, whom no physical marvel can exalt above His intrinsic greatness. And such trust in Him, where it is sincere, He accepts for all that it is worth, from the believer's heart. But this is not the faith that saved Paul, and built the Church. It is not the faith which will save the world. It is the faith of compromise and transition, the faith of those whose conscience and heart cling to Christ while their reason gives its verdict against Him. Such belief may hold good for the individuals who profess it; but it must die with them. No skill of reasoning or grace of sentiment will for long conceal its inconsistency. The plain, blunt sense of mankind will decide again, as it has done already, that Jesus Christ was either a blasphemer, or He was the Son of the eternal God; either He rose from the dead in very truth, or His religion is a fable. Christianity is not bound up with the infallibility of the Church, whether in Pope or Councils, nor with the inerrancy of the letter of Scripture: it stands or falls with the reality of the facts of the gospel, with the risen life of Christ and His presence in the Spirit amongst men.
The fact of Christ's resurrection is one upon which modern science has nothing new to say. The law of death is not a recent discovery. Men were as well aware of its universality in the first century as they are in the nineteenth, and as little disposed as we are ourselves to believe in the return of the dead to bodily life. The stark reality of death makes us all sceptics. Nothing is clearer from the narratives than the utter surprise of the friends of Jesus at His reappearance, and their complete unpreparedness for the event. They were not eager, but "_slow_ of heart to believe." Their very love to the Master, as in the case of Thomas, made them fearful of self-deception. It is a shallow and an unjust criticism that dismisses the disciples as interested witnesses and predisposed to faith in the resurrection of their dead Master. Should we be thus credulous in the case of our best-beloved dead? The instinctive feeling that meets any thought of the kind, after the fact of death is once certain, is rather that of deprecation and aversion, such as Martha expressed when Jesus went to call her brother from his grave. In all the long record of human imposture and illusion, no resurrection story has ever found general credence outside of the Biblical revelation. No system of faith except our own has ever been built on the allegation that a dead man rose from the grave.