- Overcomer Literature Trust
- Swindon
- Wiltshire
CHRIST IS RISEN.
By J C Metcalfe
Readings: John 18 v33-37 and 1 Corinthians 15 v12-20
Possibly the most moving part of Handel's Messiah is when the choir sings the magnificent Hallelujah Chorus with its themes, “King of Kings and Lord of Lords” and “He shall reign forever and ever”. As we turn to the fifteenth chapter of 1 Corinthians, we find in verse 25 this said of the crucified and risen Saviour, "for He must reign until He has put all His enemies under His feet”. Great issues rest on the fact that our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ is indeed enthroned as King of Kings and Lord of Lords.
In the Gospels we find that it was against Him as King that the Jewish priests rebelled. We read, "when Pilate heard this, he brought Jesus out and sat down on the judge’s seat at a place known as the Stone Pavement (which in Aramaic is Gabbatha). It was the day of Preparation of the Passover, it was about noon. “Here is your king,” Pilate said to the Jews. But they shouted, “Take Him away! Take Him away! Crucify Him!” “Shall I crucify your king?” Pilate asked. “We have no king but Caesar,” the chief priests answered" (John 19 v13-15). Further on in the same chapter it says, "Pilate had a notice prepared and fastened to the cross. It read: Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews. Many of the Jews read this sign, for the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city, and the sign was written in Aramaic, Latin and Greek. The chief priests of the Jews protested to Pilate, “Do not write ‘The King of the Jews,’ but that this man claimed to be king of the Jews.” Pilate answered, “What I have written, I have written" (v19-22). Pilate was right, the Jewish nation had rejected their king, but the words still stand "He must reign".
In the first centuries of Christianity there were brave martyrs who would not burn incense to the Roman emperor, which would have given him not only imperial but also divine honour. These men and women endured torture and a cruel death rather than deny their king who loved them and gave Himself for them. We will look briefly at one passage that tells of how this came about.
When Paul arrived in the city of Thessalonica, the protesting mob dragged the believers before the city officials shouting, "They are all defying Caesar’s decrees, saying that there is another king, one called Jesus” (Acts 17 v7).
He must reign in our own lives. Jesus is my King and yours, and we must know the reality and experience of this verse, "if you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved" (Romans 10 v9).
Bishop Moule wrote of this, "it is not just repeating a creed, it is the witness of the whole being to Jesus Christ, their own life and Lord. And so this leads to the path of the Saviour those who are justified". In other words, the Christian is one to whom the risen Saviour is King. He is no constitutional monarchy, He is absolute Lord over those He has brought from death to life. This works out practically in John 21 verses 15 to 22, when the risen Saviour spoke with two of His disciples He made it clear that He was to rule their lives. He commissioned Peter to "take care of My sheep". But of John He said, "if I want him to remain alive until I return, what is that to you? You must follow Me" (v22). The King exercises His right to direct His subjects according to His will. This can be summed up with these verses, "for none of us lives for ourselves alone, and none of us dies for ourselves alone. If we live, we live for the Lord; and if we die, we die for the Lord. So, whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord. For this very reason, Christ died and returned to life so that He might be the Lord of both the dead and the living" (Romans 14 v7-9). You and I are called to live as His subjects day by day and the King has the right to rule our life, and He alone.
There is a wonderful day coming, which is perhaps nearer than we dream, when the Lord Jesus is going to be shown to the whole universe as King of Kings. This is the great consummation of all our hopes, we read, "therefore God exalted Him to the highest place and gave Him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father" (Philippians 2 v9-11). For He must reign until He has put all enemies under His feet; He anchors us by love, but He will oppose those who persist in opposing Him by power. His coming as King is more certain than tomorrow's new dawn. This reminds me of Francis Ridley Havergal's hymn:
O the joy to see you reigning,
You, my own beloved Lord.
Every tongue your name confessing,
worship, honour, glory, blessing
brought to You with glad accord;
You, my Master and my Friend,
vindicated and enthroned;
unto earth’s remotest end
glorified, adored and owned.
I don't know about you but all I can do is echo the last prayer of the Bible, "Come, Lord Jesus" (Revelation 22 v20).
What a difference there is in the way people greet each other, our greetings can mean much or nothing. They can be the expression of deep feeling or simply common habit. In this connection, I am very fond of this passage from the book of Ruth, "Boaz arrived from Bethlehem and greeted the harvesters, 'The LORD be with you!' 'The LORD bless you!' they answered" (Ruth 2 v4). These times were dark and there was a national turning away from God, yet there is in this story a gracious fear of God.
We are told that when early Christians met each other, the greeting they often exchanged was "Christ is risen", and it is also used today in various countries around the world. Christianity was outlawed, and these men and women were under the constant shadow of betrayal and the threat of constant death. Their eyes were fixed on the eternal life that is promised in Christ and they encouraged each other by the reminder that the resurrection of Christ was their passport to glory. They understood what Paul meant in the passage that reads, "if only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied" (1 Corinthians 15 v19). But their immediate response from their hearts would have been the next verses, "but Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a Man. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive" (1 Corinthians 15 v20-22). The good news which you and I have to offer to our fear motivated world is this, “Christ lives”.
In the first verses of 1 Corinthians 15, Paul wrote joyfully, "for I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures" (v3). We must remind ourselves that resurrection implies death, Lazarus for instance could not have been brought back from the grave had he not died, so the Lord Jesus says, "I am He that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen, and have the keys of hell and of death." (Revelation 1 v18). So, why did the Son of God have to face death?
We will look at three things which deal simply and clearly with His death on the cross. Firstly, "but God demonstrates His own love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since we have now been justified by His blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through Him! For if, while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to Him through the death of His Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through His life" (Romans 5 v8-10). The facts that these verses bring to light are that we are sinners and enemies of a Holy God and therefore we face His anger, but in His wonderful love He gave His only Son so that we may now be accepted by the One we have rebelled against and we can enter into a full salvation because He lives, by His Spirit.
Secondly, Peter says the same things, "for Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive in the Spirit” (1 Peter 3 v18). Again the Lord Jesus is shown dying as our substitute, the Just for the unjust, with the objective of bringing sinners back to Himself by His love, for sin had separated us from God. Forgiveness is ours because our sin was laid upon the Saviour on the cross, then death is followed by resurrection and the greeting is relevant, "Christ is risen", and we now live in Him.
Finally, we must look at 2 Corinthians, "and He died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for Him who died for them and was raised again” (5 v15). Those for whom He died cannot continue in the sin that took Him to the cross, ruled by selfishness, which is what ruins our world. For us, this is the Door into fellowship with God, and one of the loveliest parts of the nature of God is that, "He who did not spare His own Son, but gave Him up for us all—how will He not also, along with Him, graciously give us all things?" (Romans 8 v32). The story of the conversion of Count Zinzendorf, was the day he visited an art gallery in Düsseldorf. He saw a picture of Christ on the cross. One writer, says of this event, that, “young, rich, happy and impressionable, the picture powerfully appealed to Him, whilst the inscription beneath it went through his soul like a challenge. The words under the picture were, ‘all this I did for you, what have you done for Me?’”.
I leave these words for you to think upon.