Sermon #1530 Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit 1 FOLLOWING THE RISEN CHRIST NO. 1530 A SERMON DELIVERED ON LORD’S-DAY MORNING, MARCH 28, 1880, BY C. H. SPURGEON, AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON. “If you then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sits on the right hand of God. Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth.” Colossians 3:1-2. THE resurrection of our divine Lord from the dead is the cornerstone of Christian doctrine. Perhaps I might more accurately call it the keystone of the arch of Christianity, for if that fact could be disproved the whole fabric of the gospel would fall to the ground. If Jesus Christ be not risen then is our preaching in vain, and your faith is also in vain, you are yet in your sins. If Christ be not risen, then they which have fallen asleep in Christ have perished, and we ourselves, in missing so glorious a hope as that of resurrection, are of all men the most miserable. Because of the great importance of His resurrection, our Lord was pleased to give many infallible proofs of it by appearing again and again in the midst of His followers. It would be interesting to search out how many times He appeared, I think we have mention of some sixteen manifestations. He showed Himself openly before His disciples, and did eat and drink with them. They touched His hands and His side, and heard His voice, and knew that it was the same Jesus that was crucified. He was not content with giving evidence to the ears and to the eyes, but even to the sense of touch He proved the reality of His resurrection. These appearances were very varied. Sometimes He gave an interview to one alone, either to a man, as to Cephas, or to a woman, as to Magdalen. He conversed with two of His followers as they went to Emmaus and with the company of the apostles by the sea. We find Him at one moment amongst the eleven when the doors were shut for fear of the Jews, and at another time in the midst of an assembly of more than five hundred brethren, who years after were most of them living witnesses to the fact. They could not all have been deceived. It is not possible that any historical fact could have been placed upon a better basis of credibility than the resurrection of our Lord from the dead. This is put beyond all dispute and question, and of purpose is it so done, because it is essential to the whole Christian system. For this same cause the resurrection of Christ is commemorated frequently. There is no ordinance in Scripture of any one Lord’s-day in the year being set apart to commemorate the rising of Christ from the dead, for this reason, that every Lord’s-day is the memorial of our Lord’s resurrection. Wake up any Lord’s-day you please, whether in the depth of winter or in the warmth of summer, and you may sing— “Today He rose and left the dead, And Satan’s empire fell; Today the saints His triumph spread, And all His wonders tell.” To set apart an Easter Sunday for special memory of the resurrection is a human device, for which there is no Scriptural command, but to make every Lord’s-day an Easter Sunday is due to Him who rose early on the first day of the week. We gather together on the first rather than upon the seventh day of the week, because redemption is even a greater work than creation, and more worthy of commemoration, Volume 26 1 2 Following the Risen Christ Sermon #1530 and because the rest which followed creation is far outdone by that which ensues upon the completion of redemption. Like the apostles, we meet on the first day of the week, and hope that Jesus may stand in our midst and say, “Peace be unto you.” Our Lord has lifted the Sabbath from the old and rusted hinges whereon the law had placed it long before, and set it on the new golden hinges which His love has fashioned. He has placed our rest day, not at the end of a week of toil, but at the beginning of the rest which remains for the people of God. Every first day of the week we should meditate upon the rising of our Lord, and seek to enter into fellowship with Him in His risen life. Never let us forget that all who are in Him rose from the dead in His rising. Next in importance to the fact of the resurrection is the doctrine of the federal headship of Christ, and the unity of all His people with Him. It is because we are in Christ that we become partakers of everything that Christ did— we are circumcised with Him, dead with Him, buried with Him, risen with Him, because we cannot be separated from Him. We are members of His body, and not a bone of Him can be broken. Because that union is most intimate, continuous and indissoluble, therefore all that concerns Him concerns us, and as He rose so all His people have arisen in Him. They are risen in two ways. First, representatively. All the elect rose in Christ in the day when He quit the tomb. He was justified, or declared to be clear of all liabilities on account of our sins, by being set free from the prison-house of the tomb. There was no reason for detaining Him in the sepulcher, for He had discharged the debts of His people by dying “unto sin once.” He was our hostage and our representative, and when He came forth from His bonds we came forth in Him. We have endured the sentence of the law in our Substitute, we have lain in its prison, and even died under its death warrant, and now we are no longer under its curse. “Now if we be dead with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him: knowing that Christ being raised from the dead dies no more; death has no more dominion over him. For in that he died, he died unto sin once: but in that he lives, He lives unto God.” Next to this representative resurrection comes our spiritual resurrection, which is ours as soon as we are led by faith to believe in Jesus Christ. Then it may be said of us, “And you has he quickened who were dead in trespasses and sins.” The resurrection blessing is to be perfected by and by at the appearing of our Lord and Savior, for then our bodies shall rise again, if we fall asleep before His coming. He redeemed our manhood in its entirety, spirit, soul, and body, and He will not be content until the resurrection which has passed upon our spirit shall pass upon our body too. These dry bones shall live, together with his dead body they shall rise. “When He arose ascending high, He showed our feet the way; Up to the Lord our flesh shall fly At the great rising day.” Then shall we know in the perfection of our resurrection beauty that we are indeed completely risen in Christ, and “as in Adam all die, so in Christ shall all be made alive.” This morning we shall only speak of our fellowship with Christ in His resurrection as to our own spiritual resurrection. Do not misunderstand me as if I thought the resurrection to be only spiritual, for a literal rising from the dead is yet to come, but our text speaks of spiritual resurrection, and I shall therefore endeavor to set it before you. I. First, then, LET US CONSIDER OUR SPIRITUAL RISING WITH CHRIST, “If you then be risen with Christ.” Though the words look like a supposition they are not meant to be. The apostle casts no doubt, and raises no question, but merely puts it thus for argument’s sake. It might just as well be read, “Since you 2 Volume 26 Sermon #1530 Following the Risen Christ 3 then are risen in Christ.” The “if” is used logically, not theologically, by way of argument, and not by way of doubt. All who believe in Christ are risen with Christ. Let us meditate on this truth. For, first, we were “dead in trespasses and sins,” but having believed in Christ we have been quickened by the Holy Ghost, and we are dead no longer. There we lay in the tomb, ready to become corrupt, yea, some of us were corrupt, the marks of the worm of sin were upon our character, and the foul stench of actual sin arose from us. More or less according to the length of time in which we abode in that death and according to the circumstances with which we were surrounded, death wrought in us corruption. We lay in our death quite unable to raise ourselves therefrom, ours were eyes that could not see, and ears that could not hear, a heart that could not love, and withered hands that could not be stretched out to give the touch of faith. We were even as they that go down into the pit, as those that have been long dead, only in this we were in a worse plight than those actually dead, for we were responsible for all our omissions and inabilities. We were as guilty as if we had power, for the loss of moral power is not the loss of moral responsibility, we were, therefore, in a state of spiritual death of the most fearful kind.