3. _The Resurrection of Christ_.--If the Incarnation naturally issues in the sacrifice unto death, that again is crowned and sealed by Christ's risen life. The Resurrection is the vindication and completion of the Redeemer's work. He who was born of the seed of David according to the flesh was declared to be the Son of God by the Resurrection. It was the certainty that He had risen that gave to His death, in the apostles' eyes, its sacrificial value. This was the ground of St. Paul's conviction that the old order had passed away, and that a new order had been established. 'If Christ be not risen ye are yet in your sins.' In virtue of His ascended life Christ becomes the indwelling presence and living power within the regenerate man. It is in no external way that the Redeemer exerts His influence. He is the principle of life working within the soul. The key { 168} to the new state is to be found in the mystical union of the Christian with the risen Lord. The twofold act of death and resurrection has its analogy in the experience of every redeemed man. Within the secret sanctuary of the human soul that has passed from death to life, the history of the Redeemer is re-enacted. In the several passages which refer to this subject the idea is that the changed life is based upon an ethical dying and rising again with Christ.[4] The Christ within the heart is the vital principle and dynamic energy by which the believer lives and triumphs over every obstacle--the world, sin, sorrow, and death itself. 'I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.'[5] All that makes life, 'life indeed'--an exalted, harmonious, and joyous existence--is derived from union with the living Lord, who has come to be what He is for man by the earthly experiences through which He has passed. Thus by His Incarnation, Death, and Resurrection He is at once the source and goal, the spring and ideal of the new life.
'Yea, thro' life, death, sorrow, and through sinning, He shall suffice me for He hath sufficed; Christ is the end, for Christ was the beginning; Christ the beginning, for the end is Christ.'[6]
Theology may seek to analyse the personality of Christ into its elements--the incarnation, death, and resurrection of Jesus. But after all it is one and indivisible. It is the whole fact of Christ, and not any particular experience taken in its isolation, which is the power of God unto salvation. The question still remains after all our analysis, What was it that gave to these events in the history of Jesus their creative and transforming power? And the answer can only be--Because Christ was what He was. It was the unique character of the Being of whom these were but the manifestations which wrought the spell. What bound the New Testament Christians to the cross was that their Master hung there. They saw in that life lived among { 169} men, and in that sacrifice upon Calvary, the perfect consummation of the ideal manhood that lived within their own hearts, and of the love, new upon the earth, which made it possible. The cross stood for the symbol of a truth that pierced to the inner core of their souls. 'He bore our sins.' And thus down the centuries, in their hour of shame, and grief, and death, men have lifted their eyes to the Man of Sorrows, and have found in His life and sacrifice, apart from all theories of atonement, their peace and triumph. It is this note of absolute surrender towards God and of perfect love for man which, because it answers to a deep yearning of the human heart, has given to the mystery of the Incarnation and the Cross its lifting and renewing power,