THE JOY OF SEEING CHRIST IN RESURRECTION
“I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no man taketh from you”, John 16: 22. There is no true joy apart from seeing Christ in resurrection; every other joy must end in death. The joy of thus knowing Him is real, deep and abiding. Whatever men may do to us they cannot take this joy from us; they may rob us of everything of this world, they might shut us up in prison, they might kill us, but they cannot take away this, our joy.
What is involved in seeing Him in resurrection? It is the proof that sin has been put away, that the whole state of man as a sinful ruined being has for God been brought to an end, for Christ having identified Himself with it, made sin for us on the cross and having borne the judgment of it, He has done with it: “In that he died, he died unto sin once; but in that he liveth, he liveth unto God”, Rom 6: 10.
It is proof that God has been glorified in view of all that came in by man, see John 13: 31,32. It is proof that the power of death has been broken. He has annulled death—for the believer death no longer reigns. The power of Satan has been annulled, the serpent’s head has been bruised; that means that sooner or later he will be entirely dispossessed and cast out of the whole universe of God and his kingdom completely destroyed, 1 Cor 15: 20-28. We are already delivered from his power and his kingdom, for Christ is now dividing the spoil with the strong, having led captivity captive, so that we no longer fear the power of the enemy in the light of the resurrection of Christ; he is a vanquished foe, and we have only to resist the devil and he will flee from us. The resurrection is the proof that Christ has triumphed over the power of the grave, so that if we have to go into the grave we go there in triumph, in the certain hope of resurrection, of being raised in bodies like that in which He rose, so that as we have borne the image of the earthly man we shall also bear the image of the heavenly man. But the power of death and the grave being so completely set aside, there is no reason why we should die, even as to our bodies, or go into the grave at all. The Lord has the right and the power to claim His saints at any time, to raise the sleeping saints and change the living ones, changing our bodies of humiliation into the likeness of His body of glory, to take us into the glory into which He has entered as our forerunner.
The resurrection of Christ is the evidence of God’s triumph over all that could oppose His will, and hence the earnest of His ultimate and final triumph over all evil, of good over evil, and the carrying into effect by Christ of all His will in heaven and upon earth.
In the resurrection of Christ we have the birthday of another world, the rising of the Sun of the eternal world. In resurrection He is the beginning of the creation of God, a creation in which all things are of God, into which sin will never enter, where all is perfect and hence eternal. The present world began in a sinful man driven out from the presence of God, built up by the will and energy of man controlled by Satan. God has no place in it; He has been refused and rejected by it. Hence, as we read in John 12: 31, this world is judged, the presence of the Spirit here is the witness of it, chap 16.
God has begun to build up another world, what we may call the Father’s world—the “all things” which the Father has (v 15) and which He has given to be in the hands of the Son (chap 3: 35), the “all things” which the Father is doing and which He has shewn unto the Son, chap 5: 20. This world is composed of every family named of the Father in heaven and on earth (Eph 3: 15), all the redeemed and all the unfallen intelligent beings. It is all built up in Christ, He is Head over it, and will fill it to the glory of God. All will take its character from the one Head, and hence will be to the Father’s satisfaction. It will be characterised by the universal knowledge of God and the universal worship of God, the response to His love. To see such a world springing into existence, to know that through grace we are a part of it, that God has already wrought us for it—it is ours to enjoy the light of it, to enter upon the blessing of it even now, and this indeed is cause for joy that no man can take from us, because it rests upon what God is and what God does according to His own eternal purpose in a power which has already triumphed over Satan and man in raising Christ from the dead; the accomplishment of all that He has purposed in Himself before we existed, and the bringing into existence that universe where all will be of Himself and according to His nature and glory and for His pleasure, in which He will rest eternally and in which we shall enter into and enjoy His rest with Him; then man and God will be together (Rev 21: 3) according to God’s original purpose, and God will be all in all. This involves the complete setting aside of all lawlessness, of all the will of man, sin being for ever taken out of the world and, as we have said, the complete overthrow of Satan’s kingdom, 1 Cor 15: 20-28; Rev 21. Thus we see in the light of the resurrection of Christ our perfect salvation and victory and the earnest of all that we have spoken of. Hence we are entitled to rejoice with a joy that none can deprive us of. “Rejoice in the Lord alway: and again I say, Rejoice”, Phil 4: 4.
Helps for the Poor of the Flock vol 16 (1911)