SCHLEIERMACHER

1768—­1834

CHRIST’S RESURRECTION AN IMAGE OF OUR NEW LIFE

As Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we should walk in newness of life.—­Romans vi., 4.

It is natural, my friends, that the glorious festival of our Savior’s resurrection should attract the thoughts of believers to a far remote time, and that it should make them rejoice to think of the time when they shall be with Him who, after He had risen from the dead, returned to His and our Father.  But the apostle, in the words of our text, recalls us from what is far off to what is close to us—­to the immediate present of our life here.  He takes hold of what is the most immediate concern, of what we are at once to share in and which is to form us, even here, into the likeness of Christ’s resurrection.  We are buried with Him, He says, unto death, that as He was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we also might walk in newness of life.  And this new life is that which, as the Lord Himself says, all who believe in Him possess even now as having passed through death to life.  The apostle compares this with those glorious days of our Lord’s resurrection; and how could we more appropriately keep this feast—­a feast in which, above all others, many Christians draw renewed strength for this new life from the most intimate union with our heavenly Head—­how could we better celebrate it than by endeavoring to receive this directly for ourselves from the words of the apostle?  Let us then, according to the teaching of these words, consider the resurrection life of our Lord, as the apostle presents it to us, as a glorious, tho it may be unattainable, model of the new life in which we are all to walk through Him.

1.  This new life is like that of our risen Savior, first, in the manner of His resurrection.  In order to appear to His disciples in that glorified form, which already bore in it the indications of the eternal and immortal glory, it was necessary that the Savior should pass through the pains of death.  It was not an easy transformation; it was necessary for Him, tho not to see corruption, yet to have the shadow of death pass over Him; and friends and enemies vied with each other in trying to retain Him in the power of the grave; the friends rolling a stone before it, to keep the beloved corpse in safety, the enemies setting a watch lest it should be taken away.  But when the hour came which the Father had reserved in His own power, the angel of the Lord appeared and rolled away the stone from the tomb, and the watch fled, and at the summons of omnipotence life came back into the dead form.