It is as transforming as when morning awakens the sleeping earth and hill and dale, river and sea, shine forth in their beauty.
It is as startling as when Lazarus himself, obeying the voice of his Lord, rose from the dead and came forth.
Behold the ill.u.s.tration of it.
Here is a man who grovelled in the lowest animalism.
He was a husband and father. What a husband! and what a father!
She who was his wife fled oftentimes at the very sound of his footsteps, shivering with the same fear, as though he who had solemnly sworn to love and protect her, were a mad brute intent on gratifying his own fierce l.u.s.t, and ready with unchecked sensualism to trample her in the mire of his b.e.s.t.i.a.lity. A father, whose very name made the cheeks of the children grow white and their pulses almost to cease with terror. A drunkard, who drowned in his cup, not only wife and children and home and all outward decency, but every characteristic of truth and honesty and manhood of his own soul. A man, who through self-indulgence and the incessant yielding to unspeakable desires, had become little better than a human sewer, through whom the slime and indescribable filth of fallen and degraded humanity found its unhindered course. A human being, who had become a lazar spot, a walking pest, whose inmost thought rotted and putrified his own mind; and whose words without license were a poison and contagion to every one whose ears caught their unwelcome sound.
Mark the change in that man!
The wife now watches at the door with a gladsome smile to greet his return. The children, who once in their rags trembled with fear, now clean and wholesomely clad, and gay with laughter, gather at his knee, the moment he enters his home. He is himself well dressed. He holds his head erect, his eyes, no longer bloodshot, meet your gaze with frank and open glance. His tones are soft and modulated, his speech gentle. The Bible, the one book he always hated, is his constant study. His mouth once filled with cursings that might well have chilled the blood to hear, now give utterance to the voice of prayer and earnest thanksgiving. The church he never entered and always avoided has become the centre around which the best activities of his life are continuously moving. He who was once shunned, despised and feared, is now honored and respected of all.
The man has been transformed.
Those who saw him in former days and see him now might in all reason ask, "Is this he, or some other man?"
It is both he and yet another man. The same person, but possessing another character.
What is the secret of it all?
Let the answer be graven on every heart. He has received a new life, a new, a pure, a holy and spiritual life. He has received that life from above, from the second Adam, the Lord in heaven. He is now a twice-begotten man.
And herein is the glorious, distinctive feature of Christianity in so far as it touches a human soul.
To that soul it brings the good news that a new generation is possible; the good news that any human being may start over. The good news that, no matter how much you may be handicapped by your original genesis; no matter what the terrific law of heredity may have transmitted to you, you may be generated again. In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, you may have a genealogy that shall carry your name above the proudest of earth; a genealogy by the side of which the bluest blood of most ancient kings shall be as the palest and poorest of plebeian stuff. This Gospel of Christianity brings the good news that you may receive from the throne of G.o.d life from G.o.d, as directly as did Adam when G.o.d breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and man became a living soul. In an instant you may be recreated morally and spiritually, and have in you all the a.s.sets which, when fully capitalized by the grace of G.o.d, shall insure your sonship with G.o.d here, making you master over every disturbing and disquieting pa.s.sion, and guaranteeing to you an eternal entrance into the endless inheritance of G.o.d, wherein you shall be, indeed, the heir of G.o.d and joint heir with our Lord Jesus Christ. In short, you may have the bequeathed ability to glorify G.o.d and enjoy him forever.
This is the life which our Lord Jesus Christ has brought to light.
The Gospel is the good news of this life of which the life giver himself has said, "I came that ye might have life, and that ye might have it more abundantly." That is to say: "I came that ye might have this spiritual life and have it without limit here."
And this Gospel of the new life brought to light by and through the death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ is one of the elemental facts and forces which definitely answers the question-- "What is Christianity?"
But Christianity is something more than the abolition of death as a penalty and the bringing in of a new and spiritual life.
Christianity is through its Gospel--the good news that--
Third--Immortality has been brought to light.
The word here translated "immortality" is "incorruption"; but it signifies in final terms the fact of immortality; for, as mortality is identified with corruption and is its consequent, so immortality, which is the opposite of mortality, is the consequence of incorruption and is inseparable from it.
This word "immortality" is greatly misunderstood, and almost always misapplied.
It is continually applied to the soul. It is a common thing to hear or read the expression, "immortal soul."
The truth is, that phrase cannot be found in Holy Scripture. The terms are misleading--their conjunction is false. Applied to the soul, the word "immortal" is a misnomer. Throughout Scripture the original word and idea relate to the body--never otherwise. The word "mortal" is never used of the soul; you never read in Scripture the expression, "mortal soul." You will find the words "mortal body." A mortal body has for its opposite an "immortal body." A mortal body is subject to corruption and death. An immortal body is incorruptible and not subject to death--an immortal body can never die.
The mortal body is the scandal of the race and the open label of sin. A mortal body puts us in the category of condemned criminals awaiting execution. The scandal is not only moral, but organic. To be filled with disease, with pestilence, with fever, and then die and the body turned back to its component parts--this is a scandal in construction; as much a scandal as when a house not properly built falls down; a dead body, whether of man or dog, is the most shameful blot on the face of the earth, and with the gaping mouth of the graveyard, justifies the estimate and the declaration of the living G.o.d, that death is an "_enemy_," not a welcome thing like birth and life--_but an enemy_. Such a scandal is it, indeed, that when our Lord Jesus Christ came to the grave of Lazarus, he was himself moved with indignation; for the words, "groaning within himself," miss the true force. The Greek verb used signifies that he was inwardly filled with indignation and a sense of outrage at the sight of the grave and the announcement that the body of Lazarus was already corrupt. Whatever groaning came from his lips and whatever tears fell from his eyes as he wept--these were his protests against death and the grave; for he recognized this dead body not only as due to the penalty of sin, but as the work of him "who had the power of death, that is, the devil." (Hebrews 2:14.)
Even though the Christian as to soul and spirit be delivered from death; even though he does not go down to Hades, but at death is safely housed and at home with G.o.d in heaven--yet the fact that this body, which was not only the dwelling place of his soul, but the temple and shrine of the Holy Spirit, should become a banquet for worms, a thing of repulsive decay, a residuum of forgotten dust, is a scandal, even to the Christian, and gives emphasis to the shame of death.
The Son of G.o.d came into the world to remove this scandal.
He died and rose again, not only that he might have power and authority to give a new and spiritual life to men, a character befitting them for the high things of G.o.d, he died and rose again that he might have power and authority to give an immortal body to all who would receive from him this new and spiritual life.
He brought this immortality to light when he rose from the dead.
He brought it to light by rising from the dead in the body in which he had died.
If our Lord Jesus Christ did not rise from the dead in the body in which he died, then immortality in the New Testament sense of the word has never been brought to light.
But he did so rise.
He made that clear on the first Sunday night after his resurrection.
The disciples were gathered together in the room.
The supper table was spread.
No one cared to eat.
The story had been going all day that Jesus had risen.
The women said so. They persisted that they had seen and talked with him.
Two men claimed, also, to have seen him, walked, talked and broken bread with him, that very afternoon.
The disciples did not believe it.
They were afraid to believe it lest it should prove to be untrue.
Then, suddenly, he stood in the midst.
They thought it was his ghost.
This was a proof to them that he had not risen; for a ghost is a disembodied thing.
He was a ghost--he was disembodied--therefore he had not risen.
So they felt--each one of them.
They did not say it--but they thought it.
He knew their thoughts.
He asks them why these thoughts arise in their hearts. He upbraids them for their unbelief.
He tells them plainly, a ghost does not have flesh and bones.