The opening verses of
the second chapter of the Second Epistle to Timothy are in essence a
comprehensive exhortation to faithfulness. The apostle Paul was lying
imprisoned at Rome, with expectation of no other issue than death.
The infant Church had fallen upon perilous times. False teachers were
assailing the very essence of the Gospel. Defection had invaded the
innermost circle of the apostle's companions. Treachery had attacked
his own person. Over against all these dreadful manifestations of
impending destruction, he strenuously exhorts his own son in faith,
Timothy, to steadfast faithfulness. Faithfulness to himself,
faithfulness to the cause he had at heart, faithfulness to the truth
as he preached it, faithfulness to Jesus Christ, their common
Redeemer and Lord.
The temptations to unfaithfulness by which
Timothy was assailed were very numerous and very specious. Many good
men had fallen and were falling victims to them. The perverted
teachings of the errorists of the day were urged with a great show of
learning and with eminent plausibility. And they were announced with
a fine scorn which openly declared that only dull wits could rest in
the crude ideas with which Paul had faced the world-and lost. The
sword of persecution had been ruthlessly unsheathed, and sufferings
and a cruel death watched in the way of those who would fain walk in
the path Paul had broken out. It seemed as if the whole fabric which
the apostle had built up at such cost of labour and pain was about to
fall about his ears.
Paul does not for a moment, however,
lose courage, either for himself, or for his faithful followers. But
neither does he seek to involve Timothy unwittingly in the
difficulties and dangers in which he found himself. He rather bids
him first of all to count the whole cost. And then he points him to a
source of strength which will supply all his needs. We called the
passage an exhortation. We might better call it, more specifically,
an encouragement. And the encouragement culminates in a very
remarkable sentence. This sentence is pregnant enough to reveal at
once the central thought of Paul's Gospel and the citadel of his own
strength. Amid all the surrounding temptations, all the encompassing
dangers, Paul bids Timothy to bear in mind, as the sufficing source
of abounding strength, the great central doctrine, — or rather,
let us say, the great central fact-of his preaching, of his faith, of
his life. And he enunciates this great fact, in these words: Jesus
Christ raised from the dead, of the seed of David.
It is, of
course, to the glorified Jesus that Paul directs his own and
Timothy's gaze. Or, to be more specific, it is to the regal lordship
of the resurrected Jesus that he points as the Christian's strength
and support. The language is compressed to the extremity of
conciseness. It is difficult to convey its full force except in
diluted paraphrase. Paul bids Timothy in the midst of all the
besetting perplexities and dangers which encompassed him to
strengthen his heart by bearing constantly in remembrance, not Jesus
Christ simpliciter, but Jesus Christ conceived specifically as the
Lord of the Universe, who has been dead, but now lives again and
abides for ever in the power of an endless life; as the royal seed of
David ascended in triumph to His eternal throne. It is not from the
exaltation of Jesus alone, let us observe, that Paul draws and would
have Timothy draw strength to endure in the crisis which had fallen
upon their lives. It is to the contrast between the past humiliation
and the present glory of the exalted Lord that he directs his eyes.
He does not say simply, "Bear in mind that Jesus Christ sits on
the throne of the universe and all things are under His feet,"
although, of course, it is the universal dominion of Jesus which
gives its force to the exhortation. He says, "Bear in mind that
Jesus Christ has been raised from the dead, of the seed of David-that
it is He that died who, raised from the dead, sits as eternal king in
the heavens." No doubt a part of the apostle's object in his
allusion to the past humiliation of the exalted Lord is to constitute
a connection between Jesus Christ and his faithful followers, that
they may become imitators of Him. They, the viatores, may see in Him,
the consummator, one who like them had Himself been viator, and may
be excited to follow after Him that they too may in due time become
consummatores. But the nerve of the exhortation, obviously, does not
lie in this, as the very language in which it is couched sufficiently
avouches. How could Timothy imitate our Lord in being of the seed of
David? How could he imitate Him by ascending the throne of the
universe? Fundamentally the apostle is pointing to Christ not as our
example, but as our almighty Saviour. He means to adduce the great
things about Him. And the central one of the great things he adduces
about Him is that He has been raised from the dead.
It is not
to be overlooked, of course, that Paul adverts to the resurrection of
Christ here with his mind absorbed not so much in the act of His
rising as in its issues. "Bear in mind," he says, "Jesus
Christ as one who has been raised from the dead": that is to
say, as one who could not be holden of the grave, but has burst the
bonds of death, and lo! He lives for evermore. But neither can it be
overlooked that it is specifically to the resurrection, which is an
act, that he adverts; and that he adverts to it in such a manner as
to make it manifest that the fact of the resurrection of Christ held
a place in his Gospel which deserves to be called no-thing less than
central. The exalted Christ is conceived by him distinctly as the
resurrected Jesus; and it is clear that, had there been no
resurrection of Jesus, Paul would not have known how to point Timothy
to the exalted Christ as the source of his strength to face with
courage the hardships and defeats of life. From this great fact, he
derives, therefore, the very phraseology with which he exhorts
Timothy, with rich reference to all that is involved in Christ our
Forerunner, to die with his Lord that he might also live with Him, to
endure with Him that he might also reign with Him. To Paul, it is
clear, the resurrection of Christ was the hinge on which turned all
his hopes and all his confidence, in life and also in death.
Now,
there is a sense in which it is of no special importance to lay
stress on the place which the resurrection of Christ held in Paul's
thought and preaching. In this sense, to wit: that nobody doubts that
it was central to Paul's Gospel. It would seem impossible, in fact,
to read the New Testament and miss observing that not only to Paul,
but to the whole body of the founders of Christianity, the conviction
of the reality of Christ's bodily resurrection entered into the very
basis of their faith. The fact is broadly spread upon the surface of
the New Testament record. Our Lord Himself deliberately staked His
whole claim to the credit of men upon His resurrection. When asked
for a sign He pointed to this sign as His single and sufficient
credential. The earliest preachers of the Gospel conceived witnessing
to the resurrection of their Master to be their primary function. The
lively hope and steadfast faith which sprang up in them they ascribed
to its power. Paul's whole gospel was the gospel of the Risen
Saviour: to His call he ascribed his apostleship; and to His working,
all the manifestation of the Christian faith and life. There are in
particular two passages in Paul's Epistles, which reveal, in an
almost startling way, the supreme place which was ascribed to the
resurrection of Christ by the first believers in the Gospel.
In
a context of very special vigour he declares roundly that "if
Christ hath not been raised" the apostolic preaching and the
Christian faith are alike vanity, and those who have believed in
Christ lie yet unrelieved of their sins. His meaning is that the
resurrection of Christ occupied the centre of the Gospel which was
preached alike by him and all the apostles, and which had been
received by all Christians. If, then, this resurrection should prove
to be not a real occurrence, the preachers of the Gospel are
convicted of being false witnesses of God, the faith founded on their
preaching is proved an empty thing, and the hopes conceived on its
basis are rendered void. Here Paul implicates with him the whole
Christian community, teachers and taught alike, as suspending the
truth of Christianity on the reality of the resurrection of Christ.
And so confident is he of universal agreement in the
indispensableness of this fact to the integrity of the Christian
message, that he uses it for his sole fulcrum for prying back the
doctrine of the resurrection of believers into its proper place in
the faith of his sceptical readers. "If dead men are not raised,
neither hath Christ been raised," is his sole argument. And he
plies this argument with the air of a man who knows full well that no
one who calls himself a Christian will tolerate that conclusion. The
fact that Christ has been raised lay firmly embedded in the depths of
the Christian consciousness.
In some respects even more
striking are the implications of such phraseology as meets us in
another passage. Here the apostle is contrasting all the "gains"
of the flesh with the one great "gain" of the spirit-Christ
Jesus the Lord. As over against "the excellency of the knowledge
of Christ Jesus, his Lord," he declares that he esteems "all
things" as but refuse, - the heap of leavings from the feast
which is swept from the table for the dogs, — if only he may
"gain Christ and be found in Him," if only, he repeats, he
may "know Him, and the power of His resurrection, and the
fellowship of His sufferings, becoming conformed into His death; if
by any means he may attain to the resurrection from the dead."
The structure of the sentence requires us to recognize the very
essence of the saving efficacy of Christ as resident in "the
power of His resurrection." It is through the power exerted by
His resurrection that His saving work takes effect on men. That is to
say, Paul discovers the centre of gravity of the Christian hope no
less than of the Christian faith in the fact of the resurrection of
Christ. And of the Christian life as well. From the great fact that
Christ has risen from the dead, proceed all the influences by which
Christians are made in life and attainments, here and hereafter, like
Him.
In the face of such evidence, spread broadcast over the
New Testament, no one has been able to question that the founders of
Christianity entrenched themselves in the fact of Christ's
resurrection as the central stronghold of their hope, faith, and
proclamation. We do not need to lay stress, therefore, on this
implication in such a passage as that before us, as if we were
seeking proof for a doubtful or even for a doubted fact. The
importance of our laying stress on its implication here and its open
assertion throughout the New Testament, is that we may be able to
estimate the real significance of a very wide-spread tendency which
has arisen in our own time to question the importance of this event
on which the founders of Christianity laid such great emphasis, and
to which they attached such palmary consequence. If nobody doubts
that the first preachers of the Gospel esteemed the resurrection of
Christ the foundation-stone of their proclamation, the chief stay of
their faith and hope alike, there are nevertheless many who do not
hesitate to declare roundly that the first preachers of the Gospel
were grossly deceived in so esteeming it. This is an inevitable
sequence, indeed, of the chariness with respect to the supernatural
which so strongly characterizes our modern world. The "unmiraculous
Christianity" which has, in one or another of its modes of
conception, grown so fashionable in our day, as it could scarcely
allow that the most stupendous of all miracles really lay at the
basis of Christianity in its historical origins, so cannot possibly
allow that confidence in the reality of this stupendous miracle lies
to-day at the foundation of the Christian's life and hope. To allow
these things would be to confess that Christianity is through and
through a supernatural religion — supernatural in its origin,
supernatural in its sanctions, supernatural in its operations in the
world. And then, — what would become of "unmiraculous
Christianity"?
Accordingly, we have now for more than a
whole generation, been told over and over again, and with
ever-increasing stridency of voice, that it makes no manner of
difference whether Jesus rose from the dead or not. The main fact, we
are told, is not whether the body that was laid in the tomb was
resuscitated. Of what religious value, we are asked, can that purely
physical fact be to any man? The main fact is that Jesus-that Jesus
who lived in the world a life of such transcendent attractiveness,
going about doing good, and by His unshaken and unshakable faith in
providence revealed to men the love of a Father-God, this Jesus,
though He underwent the inevitable experience of change which men
call death, yet still lives. Lives ! — lives in His Church; or
at least lives in that heaven to which He pointed us as the home of
our Father, and to which we may all follow Him from the evils of this
life; or in any event lives in the influence which His beautiful and
inspiring life still exerts upon His followers and through them in
the world. This, this, we are told, is the fact of real religious
value; the only fact upon which the religious emotions can take hold;
by which the religious life can be quickened; and through which we
may be impelled to religious effort and strengthened in religious
endurance.
The beauty of the language in which these
assertions are clothed and the fervour of religious feeling with
which it is suffused, must not be permitted to blind us to the real
issue that is raised by them. This is not whether our faith is
grounded in a mere resuscitation of a dead man two thousand years
ago; or rather in a living Lord reigning in the heavens. It is not
the peculiarity of this new view that it focuses men's eyes on the
glorified Jesus and bids them look to Him for their inspiration and
strength. That is what the apostles did, and what all, since the
apostles, who have followed in their footsteps, have done. Paul did
not say to Timothy merely, "Remember that Jesus Christ, when He
died, rose again from the dead, "- although to have said that
would have been to have said much. Directing Timothy's eyes to the
glorified Jesus, reigning in power in the heavens, he said, "Remember
Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, of the seed of David." It is
not, then, the peculiarity of this new view that it has discovered
the living and reigning Christ. The living and reigning Christ has
always been the object of the adoring faith of Christians. It is its
peculiarity that it neglects or denies the resurrected Christ.
It
does not pretend that in neglecting or denying the resurrected Christ
it does not break with the entirety of historical Christianity. It
freely allows that the apostles firmly believed in a resurrected
Christ, and that, following the apostles, Christians up to today have
firmly believed in a resurrected Christ. And it freely allows that
this firm belief in a resurrected Christ has been the source of much
of the enthusiasm of Christian faith and of the Christian propaganda
through all the ages. But it hardily affirms that this emphasis on
the resurrected Christ nevertheless involves a gross confusion —
no less a confusion than that of the kernel with the husk. And it
stoutly maintains that the time has come to shell off the husk and
keep the kernel only. Religious belief, we are told, cannot possibly
rest on or be inseparably connected with a mere occurrence in time
and space. What others have seen in a different age from ours-what is
that to us? That Jesus rose from the dead two thousand years ago and
was seen of men — howcan that concern us to-day? All that can
possibly be of any significance to us is that He was "not
swallowed up in death, but passed through suffering and death to
glory, that is, to life, power, and honour." "Faith has
nothing to do with the knowledge of the form in which Jesus lives,
but only with the conviction that He is the living Lord."
Here
now is a brand-new conception of the matter, standing in express
contrast, and in expressly acknowledged contrast, with the conception
of the founders, and hitherto of the whole body of the adherents, of
Christianity. It is the outgrowth, as we have already hinted, of a
distaste for the supernatural. To get rid of the supernatural in the
origins of Christianity, its entire historical character is
surrendered. The Christianity now to be proclaimed is to be
confessedly a "I new Christianity " — a different
Christianity from any which has ever heretofore existed on the face
of the earth. And its novelty consists in this, that it is to have no
roots in historical occurrences of any kind whatsoever. Religious
belief, we are told, must be independent of all mere facts.
We
must not forget that the professed purpose of this new determination
of the relation of Christianity to fact is to save Christianity. If
Christianity is independent of all historical facts, why, it is clear
that it cannot be assailed through the medium of historical
criticism. Let criticism reconstruct the historical circumstances
which have been connected with its origin as it may; it cannot touch
this Christianity which stands out of relation with all historical
occurrences whatever. Doubtless it would be a great relief to many
minds to be emancipated from all fear of historical criticism. But it
is certainly a great price we are asked to pay for this emancipation.
The price indeed is no less an one than Christianity itself. For the
obvious effect of the detachment of Christianity from all historical
fact is to dismiss Christianity out of the realm of fact.
Christianity is a "historical religion," and a
"Christianity" wholly unrelated to historical occurrences
is just no Christianity at all. Religion, — yes, man may have
religion without historical facts to build upon, for man is a
religious animal and can no more escape from religion than he can
escape from any other of his persistent instincts. He may still by
the grace of God know something of God and the soul, moral
responsibility and immortality. But do not even the heathen know the
same? And what have we more than they? We may still call by the name
of "Christianity" the tattered rags of natural religion
which may be left us when we have cast away all the facts which
constitute Christianity, — the age-long preparation for the
coming of the Kingdom of God; the Incarnation of the Son of God; His
atoning death on the Cross; His rising again on the third day and His
ascension to heaven; the descent of the Spirit on the Pentecostal
birthday of the Church. But to do so is to outrage all the
proprieties of honest nomenclature. For "Christianity" is
not a mere synonym of "religion," but is a specific form of
religion determined in its peculiarity by the great series of
historical occurrences which constitute the redemptive work of God in
this sinful world, among which occurrences the resurrection of Christ
holds a substantial and in some respects the key position.
The
impossibility of sustaining anything which can be called
"Christianity" without embracing in it historical facts,
may be illustrated by the difficulty in carrying out their programme
which is experienced by men who talk of freeing Christianity from its
dependence on facts. For do they not bid us to abstract our minds,
indeed, from that imagined resuscitation that occurred in Palestine
(if it occurred at all) two thousand years ago, but to focus them
nevertheless on the living Jesus, who has survived death and still
lives in heaven? Do they forget that when they say "Jesus"
they already say "history"? Who is this "Jesus"
who still lives in heaven, and the fact of whose still living in
heaven, having passed through death, is to be our inspiration? Did He
once live on earth? And, living on earth, did He not manifest that
unwavering faith in providence which reveals the Father-God to us?
Otherwise what is it to us that He "still" lives in heaven?
To be free from the entanglements of history; to be immune from the
assaults of historical criticism; it is not enough to cease to care
for such facts as His resurrection: we must cease to care for the
whole fact of Jesus. Jesus is a historical figure. What He was, no
less than what He did, is a matter of historical testimony. When we
turn our backs on historical facts as of no significance to our,
Christianity," we must turn our backs as well on Jesus-any Jesus
we choose to rescue for ourselves from the hands of historical
criticism. He who would have a really "unhistorical
Christianity" must know no Jesus whether on earth or in heaven.
And surely a Christianity without Jesus is just no Christianity at
all.
Christianity then stands or falls with the historical
facts which, we do not say merely accompanied its advent into the
world, but have given it its specific form as a religion. These
historical facts constitute its substance, and to be indifferent to
them is to be indifferent to the substance of Christianity. In these
circumstances it is a dangerous proceeding to declare this or that
one of them of no significance to the Christian religion. Especially
is it a dangerous proceeding to single out for this declaration, one
in which the founders of Christianity discovered so much significance
as they discovered in the resurrection of Christ. When Paul says to
us, not "Remember Jesus Christ enthroned in heaven," but
"Remember Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, of the seed of
David," we surely must pause before we allow ourselves to say,
"It is of no importance whether He rose from the dead or not."
And if we pause and think but a moment, we certainly shall not fail
to set our seal to Paul's judgment of the significance of His rising
from the dead to the Christian religion. For once let us cast our
minds over the real place which the resurrection of Christ holds in
the Christian system and we shall not easily escape the conviction
that this fact is fundamental to its entire message.
Let us
recall in rapid survey some of the various ways in which the
resurrection of Jesus evinces itself as lying at the basis of all our
hope and of all the hope of the world.
It is natural to
think, first of all, of the place of this great fact in Christian
apologetics. Opinions may conceivably differ whether it would have
been possible to believe in Christianity as a supernaturally given
religion if Christ had remained holden of the grave. But it is
scarcely disputable that the fact that He did rise again, being once
established, supplies an irrefragable demonstration of the
supernatural origin of Christianity, of the validity of Christ's
claim to be the Son of God, and of the trust worthiness of His
teaching as a Messenger from God to man. In the light of this
stupendous miracle, all hesitation with respect to the supernatural
accompaniments of the life that preceded it, or of the succeeding
establishment of the religion to which its seal had been set,nay, of
the whole preparation for the coming of the Messenger of God who was
to live and die and rise again, and of the whole issue of His life
and death and resurrect ion-becomes at once unreasonable and absurd.
The religion of Christ is stamped at once from heaven as divine, and
all marks of divinity in its preparation, accompaniments, and
sequences become at once congruous and natural. From the empty grave
of Jesus the enemies of the cross turn away in unconcealable dismay.
Christ has risen from the dead! After two thousand years of the most
determined assault upon the evidence which establishes it, that fact
stands. And so long as it stands, Christianity too must stand as the
one supernatural religion. The resurrection of Christ is the
fundamental apologetical fact of Christianity.
But it holds
no more fundamental place in Christian apologetics than in the
revelation of life and immortality which Christianity brings to a
dying world. By it the veil was lifted and men were permitted to see
the reality of that other world to which we are all journeying. The
whole relation they bore to life and death, and the life beyond
death, was revolutionized to those who saw Him and companied with Him
after He had risen from the dead. Death had no longer any terrors for
them: they no longer needed to believe, they knew, that there was
life on the other side of death, that the grave was but a sojourning
place, and, though their earthly tentdwelling were dissolved, they
had a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the
heavens.
And we who have come later may see with their eyes
and handle with their hands the Word of Life. We can no longer speak
of a bourne from which no traveller e'er returns. The resurrection of
Christ has broken the middle wall of partition down and only a veil
now separates earth from heaven. That He who has died has been raised
again and ever lives in the completeness of His humanity is the
fundamental fact in the revelation of the Christian doctrine of
immortality.
Equally fundamental is the place which Christ's
resurrection occupies relatively to our confidence in His claims, His
teachings, and His promises. The Lord of Life could not succumb to
death. Had he not risen, could we have believed Him when He "made
Himself equal with God"? By His resurrection He set a seal on
all the instructions which He gave and on all the hopes which He
awakened. Had the one sign which He chose failed, would not His
declarations have all failed with it? Is it nothing to us that He who
said, "Come unto Me and I will give you rest who has promised to
be with those who trust Him always even unto the end of the world";
who has announced to us the forgiveness of sins; has proved that He
has power to lay down His life and to take it again? Whether is it
easier to say, "Thy sins be forgiven thee," or "I will
arise and walk "?.That He could not be holden of death, but
arose in the power of a deathless life, gives us to know that the Son
of Man has power to forgive sins.
And there is a yet deeper
truth: the resurrection of Christ is fundamental to the Christian's
assurance that Christ's work is complete and His redemption is
accomplished. It is not enough that we should be able to say, "He
was delivered up for our trespasses." We must be able to add,
"He was raised for our justification." Else what would
enable us to say, He was able to pay the penalty He had undertaken?
That He died manifests His love and His willingness to save. It is
His rising again that manifests His power and His ability to save. We
cannot be saved by a dead Christ, who undertook but could not
perform, and who still lies under the Syrian sky, another martyr of
impotent love. To save, He must pass not merely to but through death.
If the penalty was fully paid, it cannot have broken Him, it must
needs have been broken upon Him. The resurrection of Christ is thus
the indispensable evidence of His completed work, of His accomplished
redemption. It is only because He rose from the dead that we know
that the ransom He offered was sufficient, the sacrifice was
accepted, and that we are His purchased possession. In one word, the
resurrection of Christ is fundamental to the Christian hope and the
Christian confidence.
It is fundamental, therefore, to our
expectation of ourselves rising from the dead. Because Christ has
risen, we no more judge that "if one died for all, then all
died," "that the body of sin might be done away," than
that having died with Him "we shall also live with Him."
His resurrection drags ours in its train. In His rising He conquered
death and presented to God in His own person the first-fruits of the
victory over the grave. In His rising we have the earnest and pledge
of our rising: "For if we believe that Jesus died and rose
again, even so them also that are fallen asleep in Jesus will He
bring with Him." Had Christ not risen could we nourish so great
a hope? Could we believe that what is sown in corruption shall be
raised in incorruption; what is sown in dishonour shall be raised in
glory; what is sown in weakness shall be raised in power; what is
sown a body under the dominion of a sinful self shall be raised a
body wholly determined by the spirit of God?
Last of all, to
revert to the suggestion of the words of Paul with which we began, in
the resurrection of Christ we have the assurance that He is the Lord
of heaven and earth whose right it is to rule and in whose hands are
gathered the reins of the universe. Without it we could believe in
His love: He died for us. We could believe in His continued life
beyond the tomb: who does not live after death? It might even be
possible that we should believe in His victory over evil: for it
might be conceived that one should be holy, and yet involved in the
working of a universal law. But had he not risen, could we believe
Him enthroned in heaven, Lord of all? Himself subject to death;
Himself the helpless prisoner of the grave; does He differ in kind
from that endless procession of the slaves of death journeying like
Him through the world to the one inevitable end? If it is fundamental
to Christianity that Jesus should be Lord of all; that God should
have highly exalted Him and given Him the name which is above every
name; that in the name of Jesus every knee should bow, and every
tongue confess Him Lord: then it is fundamental to Christianity that
death too should be subject to Him and it should not be possible for
Him to see corruption. This last enemy too He must needs, as Paul
asserts, put under His feet; and it is because He has put this last
enemy under His feet that we can say with such energy of conviction
that nothing can separate us from the love of God which is in Christ
Jesus our Lord, — not even death itself: and that nothing can
harm us and nothing take away our peace.
O the comfort, O the
joy, O the courage, that dwells in the great fact that Jesus is the
Risen One, of the seed of David; that as the Risen One He has become
Head over all things; and that He must reign until He shall have put
all things under His feet. Our brother, who has like us been
acquainted with death, -He it is who rules over the ages, the ages
that are past, and the ages that are passing, and the ages that are
yet to come. If our hearts should fail us as we stand over against
the hosts of wickedness which surround us, let us encourage ourselves
and one another with the great reminder: Remember Jesus Christ, risen
from the dead, of the seed of David!
This article was written
by the great Princeton theologian, Benjamin Warfield.