Baptism—A Burial
A Sermon
(No. 1627)
Delivered on Lord's-Day Morning, October 30th, 1881, by
C. H. SPURGEON,
At the
Metropolitan
Tabernacle, Newington
"Know
ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized
into his death? Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that
like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even
so we also should walk in newness of life."—Romans 6:3-4.
SHALL not
enter into controversy over this text, although over it some have raised the
question of infant baptism or believers' baptism, immersion or sprinkling.
If any person can give a consistent and instructive interpretation of the
text, otherwise than by assuming believers' immersion to be Christian
baptism, I should like to see them do it. I myself am quite incapable of
performing such a feat, or even of imagining how it can be done. I am
content to take the view that baptism signifies the burial of believers in
water in the name of the Lord, and I shall so interpret the text. If any
think not so, it may at least interest them to know what we understand to be
the meaning of the baptismal rite, and I trust that they may think none the
less of the spiritual sense because they differ as to the external sign.
After all, the visible emblem is not the most prominent matter in the text.
May God the Holy Spirit help us to reach its inner teaching.
I
do not understand Paul to say that if improper persons, such as unbelievers,
and hypocrites, and deceivers, are baptized they are baptized into our
Lord's death. He says "so many of us," putting himself with the rest of the
children of God. He intends such as are entitled to baptism, and come to it
with their hearts in a right state. Of them he says, "Know ye not, that so
many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death?"
He does not even intend to say that those who were rightly baptized have all
of them entered into the fullness of its spiritual meaning; for if they had,
there would have been no need of the question, "Know ye not?" It would seem
that some had been baptized who did not clearly know the meaning of their
own baptism. They had faith, and a glimmer of knowledge sufficient to make
them right recipients of baptism, but they were not well instructed in the
teaching of baptism; perhaps they saw in it only a washing, but had never
discerned the burial. I will go further, and say that I question if any of
us yet know the fullness of the meaning of either of the ordinances which
Christ has instituted. As yet we are, with regard to spiritual things, like
children playing on the beach while the ocean rolls before us. At best we
wade up to our ankles like our little ones on the sea shore. A few among us
are learning to swim; but then we only swim where the bottom is almost
within reach. Who among us has yet come to lose sight of shore and to swim
in the Atlantic of divine love, where fathomless truth rolls underneath, and
the infinite is all around? Oh, may God daily teach us more and more of what
we already know in part, and may the truth which we have as yet but dimly
perceived come to us in a brighter and clearer manner, till we see all
things in clear sunlight. This can only be as our own character becomes more
clear and pure; for we see according to what we are; and as is the eye such
is that which it sees. The pure in heart alone can see a pure and holy God.
We shall be like Jesus when we shall see him as he is, and certainly we
shall never see him as he is till we are like him. In heavenly things we see
as much as we have within ourselves. He who has eaten Christ's flesh and
blood spiritually is the man who can see this in the sacred Supper, and he
who has been baptized into Christ sees Christ in baptism. To him that hath
shall be given, and he shall have abundantly.
Baptism
sets forth the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ, and our
participation therein. Its teaching is twofold. First, think of our
representative union with Christ, so that when he died and was buried it was
on our behalf, and we were thus buried with him. This will give you the
teaching of baptism so far as it sets forth a creed. We declare in baptism
that we believe in the death of Jesus, and desire to partake in all the
merit of it. But there is a second equally important matter and that is our
realized union with Christ which is set forth in baptism, not so much as a
doctrine of our creed as a matter of our experience. There is a manner of
dying, of being buried, of rising, and of living in Christ which must be
displayed in each one of us if we are indeed members of the body of Christ.
I.
First, then, I want you to think of OUR REPRESENTATIVE UNION WITH CHRIST as
it is set forth in baptism as a truth to be believed. Our Lord Jesus is the
substitute for his people, and when he died it was on their behalf and in
their stead. The great doctrine of our justification lies in this, that
Christ took our sins, stood in our place, and as our surety suffered, and
bled, and died, thus presenting on our behalf a sacrifice for sin. We are to
regard him, not as a private person, but as our representative. We are
buried with him in baptism unto death to show that we accept him as being
for us dead and buried.
Baptism
as a burial with Christ signifies, first, acceptance of the death and burial
of Christ as being for us. Let us do that at this very moment with all our
hearts. What other hope have we? When our divine Lord came down from the
heights of glory and took upon himself our manhood, he became one with you
and with me; and being found in fashion as a man, it pleased the Father to
lay sin upon him, even your sins and mine. Do you not accept that truth, and
agree that the Lord Jesus should be the bearer of your guilt, and stand for
you in the sight of God? "Amen! Amen!" say all of you. He went up to the
tree loaded with all this guilt, and there he suffered in our room and stead
as we ought to have suffered. It pleased the Father, instead of bruising us,
to bruise him. He put him to grief, making his soul an offering for sin. Do
we not gladly accept Jesus as our substitute? O beloved, whether you have
been baptized in water or not, I put this question to you, "Do you accept
the Lord Jesus as your surety and substitute?" For if you do not, you shall
bear your own guilt and carry your own sorrow, and stand in your own place
beneath the glance of the angry justice of God. Many of us at this moment
are saying in our inmost hearts—
"My soul
looks back to see
The burdens thou didst bear,
When hanging on the cursed tree,
And hopes her guilt was there."
Now, by being buried with Christ in baptism, we set our seal to the fact
that the death of Christ was on our behalf, and that we were in him, and
died in him, and, in token of our belief, we consent to the watery grave,
and yield ourselves to be buried according to his command. This is a matter
of fundamental faith—Christ dead and buried for us; in other words,
substitution, suretyship, vicarious sacrifice. His death is the hinge of our
confidence: we are not baptized into his example, or his life, but into his
death. We hereby confess that all our salvation lies in the death of Jesus,
which death we accept as having been incurred on our account.
But
this is not all; because if I am to be buried, it should not be so much
because I accept the substitutionary death of another for me as because I am
dead myself. Baptism is an acknowledgment of our own death in Christ.
Why should a living man be buried? Why should he even be buried because
another died on his behalf? My burial with Christ means not only that he
died for me, but that I died in him, so that my death with him needs a
burial with him. Jesus died for us because he is one with us. The Lord Jesus
Christ did not take his people's sins by an arbitrary choice of God; but it
was most natural and fit and proper that he should take his people's sins,
since they are his people, and he is their federal head. It behooved Christ
to suffer for this reason—that he was the covenant representative of his
people. He is the Head of the body, the Church; and if the members sinned,
it was meet that the Head, though the Head had not sinned, should bear the
consequence of the acts of the body. As there is a natural relationship
between Adam and those that are in Adam, so is there between the second Adam
and those that are in him. I accept what the first Adam did as my sin. Some
of you may quarrel with it, and with the whole covenant dispensation, if you
please; but as God has pleased to set it up, and I feel the effect of it, I
see no use in my controverting it. As I accept the sin of father Adam, and
feel that I sinned in him, even so with intense delight I accept the death
and atoning sacrifice of my second Adam, and rejoice that in him I have died
and risen again. I lived, I died, I kept the law, I satisfied justice in my
covenant Head. Let me be buried in baptism that I may show to all around
that I believe I was one with my Lord in his death and burial for sin.
Look
at this, O child of God, and do not be afraid of it. These are Grand truths,
but they are sure and comforting. You are getting among Atlantic billows
now, but be not afraid. Realize the sanctifying effect of this truth.
Suppose that a man had been condemned to die on account of a great crime;
suppose, further, that he has actually died for that crime, and now, by some
wonderful work of God, after having died he has been made to live again. He
comes among men again as alive from the dead, and what ought to be the state
of his mind with regard to his offence? Will he commit that crime again? A
crime for which he has died? I say emphatically, God forbid. Rather should
he say, "I have tasted the bitterness of this sin, and I am miraculously
lifted up out of the death which it brought upon me, and made to live again:
now will I hate the thing that slew me, and abhor it with all my soul." He
who has received the wages of sin should learn to avoid it for the future.
But you reply, "We never did die so; we were never made to suffer the due
reward of our sins." Granted. But that which Christ did for you comes to the
same thing, and the Lord looks upon it as the same thing. You are so one
with Jesus, that you must regard his death as your death, his sufferings as
the chastisement of your peace. You have died in the death of Jesus, and now
by strange, mysterious grace you are brought up again from the pit of
corruption unto newness of life. Can you, will you, go into sin again? You
have seen what God thinks of sin: you perceive that he utterly loathes it;
for when it was laid on his dear Son, he did not spare him, but put him to
grief and smote him to death. Can you, after that, turn back to the accursed
thing which God hates? Surely, the effect of the great grief of the Saviour
upon your spirit must be sanctifying. How shall we who are dead to sin live
any longer therein? How shall we that have passed under its curse, and
endured its awful penalty, tolerate its power? Shall we go back to this
murderous, villainous, virulent, abominable evil? It cannot be. Grace
forbids.
This
doctrine is not the conclusion of the whole matter. The text describes us as
buried with a view to rising. "Therefore we are buried with him by
baptism unto death,"—for what object?—"that like as Christ was raised up
from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in
newness of life." Be buried in Christ! What for? That you may be dead for
ever? No, but that now getting where Christ is, you may go where Christ
goes. Behold him, then: he goes, first, into the sepulchre, but next out of
the sepulchre; for when the third morning came he rose. If you are one with
Christ at all, you must be one with him all through; you must be one with
him in his death, and one with him in his burial, then you shall come to be
one with him in his resurrection. Am I a dead man now? No, blessed be his
name, it is written, "Because I live ye shall live also." True, I am dead in
one sense, "For ye are dead"; but yet not dead in another, "For your life is
hid with Christ in God"; and how is he absolutely dead who has a hidden
life? No; since I am one with Christ I am what Christ is: as he is a living
Christ, I am a living spirit. What a glorious thing it is to have arisen
from the dead, because Christ has given us life. Our old legal life has been
taken from us by the sentence of the law, and the law views us as dead; but
now we have received a new life, a life out of death, resurrection-life in
Christ Jesus. The life of the Christian is the life of Christ. Ours is not
the life of the first creation, but of the new creation from among the dead.
Now we live in newness of life, quickened unto holiness, and righteousness,
and joy by the Spirit of God. The life of the flesh is a hindrance to us;
our energy is in his Spirit. In the highest and best sense our life is
spiritual and heavenly. This also is doctrine which is to be held most
firmly.
I
want you to see the force of this; for I am aiming at practical results this
morning. If God has given to you and to me an entirely new life in Christ,
how can that new life spend itself after the fashion of the old life? Shall
the spiritual live as the carnal? How can you that were the servants of sin,
but have been made free by precious blood, go back to your old slavery? When
you were in the old Adam life, you lived in sin, and loved it; but now you
have been dead and buried, and have come forth into newness of life: can it
be that you can go back to the beggarly elements from which the Lord has
brought you out? If you live in sin, you will be false to your profession,
for you profess to be alive unto God? If you walk in lust, you will tread
under foot the blessed doctrines of the Word of God, for these lead to
holiness and purity. You would make Christianity to be a by-word and a
proverb, if, after all, you who were quickened from your spiritual death
should exhibit a conduct no better than the life of ordinary men, and little
superior to what your former life used to be. As many of you as have been
baptized have said to the world,—We are dead to the world, and we have come
forth into a new life. Our fleshly desires are henceforth to be viewed as
dead, for now we live after a fresh order of things. The Holy Spirit has
wrought in us a new nature, and though we are in the world, we are not of
it, but are new-made men, "created anew in Christ Jesus." This is the
doctrine which we avow to all mankind, that Christ died and rose again, and
that his people died and rose again in him. Out of the doctrine grows death
unto sin and life unto God, and we wish by every action and every movement
of our lives to teach it to all who see us.
So
far the doctrine: is it not a precious one indeed? Oh, if you be indeed one
with Christ, shall the world find you polluting yourselves? Shall the
members of a generous, gracious Head be covetous and grasping? Shall the
members of a glorious, pure, and perfect Head be defiled with the lusts of
the flesh and the follies of a vain life? If believers are indeed so
identified with Christ that they are his fullness, should they not be
holiness itself? If we live by virtue of our union with his body, how can we
live as other Gentiles do? How is it that so many professors exhibit a mere
worldly life, living for business and for pleasure, but not for God, in God,
or with God? They sprinkle a little religion on a worldly life, and so hope
to Christianize it. But it will not do. I am bound to live as Christ would
have lived under my circumstances; in my private chamber or in my public
pulpit, I am bound to be what Christ would have been in like case. I am
bound to prove to men that union to Christ is no fiction, or fanatical
sentiment: but that we are swayed by the same principles and actuated by the
same motives.
Baptism
is thus an embodied creed, and you may read it in these words: "Buried with
him in baptism, wherein also ye are risen with him through the faith of the
operation of God, who hath raised him from the dead."
II.
But, secondly, A REALIZED UNION WITH CHRIST is also set forth in baptism,
and this is rather a matter of experience than of doctrine.
1.
First, there is, as a matter of actual experience in the true believer,
death. "Know ye not that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus
Christ were baptized into his death?" It must be contrary to all law to bury
those who are yet alive. Until they are dead, men can have no right to be
buried. Very well, then, the Christian is dead,—dead, first, to the
dominion of sin. Whenever sin called him aforetime he answered, "Here am
I, for thou didst call me." Sin ruled his members, and if sin said, "Do
this," he did it, like the soldiers obedient to their centurion; for sin
ruled over all the parts of his nature, and exercised over him a supreme
tyranny. Grace has changed all this. When we are converted we become dead to
the dominion of sin. If sin calls us now, we refuse to come, for we are
dead. If sin commands us we will not obey, for we are dead to its authority.
Sin comes to us now—oh, that it did not,—and it finds in us the old
corruption which is crucified, but not yet dead; but it has no dominion over
our true life. Blessed be God, sin cannot reign over us, though it may
assail us and work us harm. "Sin shall not have dominion over you; for ye
are not under law, but under grace." We sin, but not with allowance. With
what grief we look back upon our transgressions! How earnestly do we
endeavour to avoid them! Sin tries to maintain its usurped power over us;
but we do not acknowledge it as our sovereign. Evil enters us now as an
interloper and a stranger, and works sad havoc, but it does not abide in us
upon the throne; it is an alien, and despised, and no more honoured and
delighted in. We are dead to the reigning power of sin.
The
believer, if spiritually buried with Christ, is dead to the desire of any
such power. "What!" say you, "do not godly men have sinful desires?"
Alas, they do. The old nature that is in them lusteth towards sin; but the
true man, the real ego, desires to be purged of every speck or trace
of evil. The law in the members would fain urge to sin, but the life in the
heart constrains to holiness. I can honestly say, for my own self, that the
deepest desire of my soul is to live a perfect life. If I could have my own
best desire, I would never sin again; and though, alas, I do consent to sin
so that I become responsible when I transgress, yet my innermost self
loathes iniquity. Sin is my bondage, not my pleasure; my misery, not my
delight; at the thought of it I cry out, "O wretched man that I am! who
shall deliver me?" In our heart of hearts our spirit cleaves steadfastly to
that which is good, and true, and heavenly, so that the real man delights in
the law of God, and follows hard after goodness. The main current and true
bent of our soul's wish and will is not towards sin, and the apostle taught
us no mere fancy when he said, "For he that is dead is freed from sin."
Moreover,
in the next place we are dead as to the pursuits and aims of the sinning
and ungodly life. Brethren, are any of you that profess to be God's
servants living for yourselves? Then you are not God's servants; for he that
is really born again lives unto God: the object of his life is the glory of
God and the good of his fellow-men. This is the prize that is set before the
quickened man, and towards this he runs. "I do not run that way," says one.
Very well, then you will not come to the desired end. If you are running
after the pleasures of the world or the riches of it, you may win the prize
you run for, but you cannot win "the prize of our high calling in Christ
Jesus." I hope that many of us can honestly say that we are now dead to
every object in life, except the glory of God in Christ Jesus. We are in the
world, and have to live as other men do, carrying on our ordinary business;
but all this is subordinate, and held in as with bit and bridle; our aims
are above yon changeful moon. The flight of our soul, like that of an eagle,
is above these clouds: though that bird of the sun alights upon the rock, or
even descends to the plain, yet its joy is to dwell above, out soaring the
lightning, rising over the black head of the tempest, and looking down upon
all earthly things. Henceforth our grace-given life speeds onward and
upward; we are not of the world, and the world's engagements are not those
upon which we spend our noblest powers.
Again,
we are dead in this sense, that we are dead to the guidance of sin.
The lust of the flesh drives a man this way and that way. He steers his
course by the question, "What is most pleasant? What will give me most
present gratification?" The way of the ungodly is mapped out by the hand of
selfish desire: but you that are true Christians have another guide, you are
led by the Spirit in a right way. You ask, "What is good and what is
acceptable in the sight of the Most High?" Your daily prayer is, "Lord, show
me what thou wouldest have me to do?" You are alive to the teachings of the
Spirit, who will lead you into all truth; but you are deaf, yea, dead to the
dogmas of carnal wisdom, the oppositions of philosophy, the errors of proud
human wisdom. Blind guides who fall with their victims into the ditch are
shunned by you, for you have chosen the way of the Lord. What a blessed
state of heart this is! I trust, my brethren, that we have fully realized
it! We know the Shepherd's voice, and a stranger we will not follow. One is
our teacher, and we submit our understandings to his infallible instruction.
Our
text must have had a very forcible meaning among the Romans in Paul's time,
for they were sunk in all manner of odious vices. Take an average Roman of
that period, and you would have found in him a man accustomed to spend a
large part of his time in the amphitheater, hardened by the brutal sight of
bloody shows, in which gladiators slew each other to amuse a holiday crowd.
Taught in such a school, the Roman was cruel to the last degree, and withal
ferocious in the indulgence of his passions. A depraved man was not regarded
as being at all degraded; not only nobles and emperors were monsters of
vice, but the public teachers were impure. When those who were regarded as
moral were corrupt, you may imagine what the immoral were. "Enjoy yourself;
follow after the pleasures of the flesh," was the rule of the age.
Christianity was the introduction of a new element. See here a Roman
converted by the grace of God! What a change is in him! His neighbours say,
"You were not at the amphitheater this morning. How could you miss the sight
of the hundred Germans who tore out each other's bowels?" "No," he says, "I
was not there; I could not bear to be there. I am totally dead to it. If you
were to force me to be there, I must shut my eyes, for I could not look on
murder committed in sport!" The Christian did not resort to places of
licentiousness; he was as good as dead to such filthiness. The fashions and
customs of the age were such that Christians could not consent to them, and
so they became dead to society. It was not merely that Christians did not go
into open sin, but they spoke of it with horror, and their lives rebuked it.
Things which the multitude counted a joy, and talked of exultingly, gave no
comfort to the follower of Jesus, for he was dead to such evils. This is our
solemn avowal when we come forward to be baptized. We say by acts which are
louder than words that we are dead to those things in which sinners take
delight, and we wish to be so accounted.
2.
The next thought in baptism is burial. Death comes first, and burial
follows. Now, what is burial, brethren? Burial is, first of all, the seal
of death; it is the certificate of decease. "Is such a man dead?" say
you. Another answers, "Why, dear sir, he was buried a year ago." There have
been instances of persons being buried alive, and I am afraid that the thing
happens with sad frequency in baptism, but it is unnatural, and by no means
the rule. I fear that many have been buried alive in baptism, and have
therefore risen and walked out of the grave just as they were. But if burial
is true, it is a certificate of death. If I am able to say in very truth, "I
was buried with Christ thirty years ago," I must surely be dead. Certainly
the world thought so, for not long after my burial with Jesus I began to
preach his name, and by that time the world thought me very far gone, and
said, "He stinketh." They began to say all manner of evil against the
preacher; but the more I stank in their nostrils the better I liked it, for
the surer I was that I was really dead to the world. It is good for a
Christian to be offensive to wicked men. See how our Master stank in the
esteem of the godless when they cried, "Away with him, away with him!"
Though no corruption could come near his blessed body, yet his perfect
character was not savoured by that perverse generation. There must, then, be
in us death to the world, and some of the effects of death, or our baptism
is void. As burial is the certificate of death, so is burial with Christ the
seal of our mortification to the world.
But
burial is, next, the displaying of death. While the man is indoors
the passers-by do not know that he is dead; but when the funeral takes
place, and he is carried through the streets, everybody knows that he is
dead. This is what baptism ought to be. The believer's death to sin is at
first a secret, but by an open confession he bids all men know that he is
dead with Christ. Baptism is the funeral rite by which death to sin is
openly set forth before all men.
Next,
burial is the separateness of death. The dead man no longer remains
in the house, but is placed apart as one who ceases to be numbered with the
living. A corpse is not welcome company. Even the most beloved object after
a while cannot be tolerated when death has done his work upon it. Even
Abraham, who had been so long united with his beloved Sarah, is heard to
say, "Bury my dead out of my sight." Such is the believer when his death to
the world is fully known: he is poor company for worldlings, and they shun
him as a damper upon their revelry. The true saint is put into the separated
class with Christ, according to his word, "If they have persecuted me, they
will also persecute you." The saint is put away in the same grave as his
Lord; for as he was, so are we also in this world. He is shut up by the
world in the one cemetery of the faithful, if I may so call it, where all
that are in Christ are dead to the world together, with this epitaph for
them all, "And ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God."
And
the grave is the place—I do not know where to get a word—of the
settledness of death; for when a man is dead and buried you never expect
to see him come home again: so far as this world is concerned, death and
burial are irrevocable. They tell me that spirits walk the earth, and we
have all read in the newspaper "The Truth about Ghosts," but I have my
doubts on the subject. In spiritual things, however, I am afraid that some
are not so buried with Christ but what they walk a great deal among the
tombs. I am grieved at heart that it should be so. The man in Christ cannot
walk as a ghost, because he is alive somewhere else; he has received a new
being, and therefore he cannot mutter and peep among the dead hypocrites
around him. See what our chapter saith about our Lord: "Christ being raised
from the dead dieth no more: death hath no more dominion over him. For in
that he died, he died unto sin once: but in that he liveth, he liveth unto
God." If we have been once raised from dead works we shall never go back to
them again. I may sin, but sin can never have dominion over me; I may be a
transgressor and wander much from my God, but never can I go back to the old
death again. When my Lord's grace got hold of me, and buried me, he wrought
in my soul the conviction that henceforth and for ever I was to the world a
dead man. I am right glad that I made no compromise, but came right out. I
have drawn the sword, and thrown away the scabbard. Tell the world they need
not try to fetch us back, for we are spoiled for them as much as if we were
dead. All they could have would be our carcasses. Tell the world not to
tempt us any longer, for our hearts are changed. Sin may charm the old man
who hangs there upon the cross, and he may turn his leering eye that way,
but he cannot follow up his glance, for he cannot get down from the cross:
the Lord has taken care to use the mallet well, and he has fastened his
hands and feet right firmly, so that the crucified flesh must still remain
in the place of doom and death. Yet the true, the genuine life within us
cannot die, for it is born of God; neither can it abide in the tombs, for
its call is to purity and joy and liberty; and to that call it yields
itself.
3.
We have come as far as death and burial; but baptism, according to the text,
represents also resurrection: "That like as Christ was raised up from
the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness
of life." Now, notice that the man who is dead in Christ, and buried in
Christ, is also raised in Christ, and this is a special work upon him.
All the dead are not raised, but our Lord himself is "the firstfruits of
them that slept." He is the first-begotten from among the dead. Resurrection
was a special work upon the body of Christ by which he was raised up, and
that work, begun upon the Head, will continue till all the members partake
of it, for—
"Though
our inbred sins require
Our flesh to see the dust;
Yet as the Lord our Saviour rose,
So all his followers must."
As to our soul and spirit, the resurrection has begun upon us. It has not
come to our bodies yet, but it will be given to them at the appointed day.
For the present a special work has been wrought upon us by which we have
been raised up from among the dead. Brethren, if you had been dead and
buried, and had been lying one night, say, in Woking Cemetery, and if a
divine voice had called you right up from the grave when the silent stars
were shining on the open heath—if, I say, you had risen right out from the
green mound of turf, what a lonely being you would have been in the vast
cemetery amid the stilly night! How you would sit down on the grave and wait
for morning! That is very much your condition with regard to the present
evil world. You were once like the rest of the sinners around you, dead in
sin, and sleeping in the grave of evil custom. The Lord by his power has
called you out of your grave, and now you are alive in the midst of death.
There can be no fellowship here for you; for what communion have the living
with the dead? The man out there in the cemetery just quickened would find
none among all the dead around him with whom he could converse, and you can
find no companions in this world. There lies a skull, but it sees not from
the eyeholes; neither is there speech in its grim mouth. I see a mass of
bones lying in yon corner: the living one looks at them, but they cannot
hear or speak. Imagine yourself there. All that you would say to the bones
would be to ask, "Can these dry bones live?" You would be a foreigner in
that home of corruption, and you would haste to get away. That is your
condition in the world: God has raised you up from among the dead, from out
of the company among whom you had your former conversation. Now, I pray you,
do not go and scratch into the earth, to tear up the graves to find a friend
there. Who would rend open a coffin and cry, "Come, you must drink with me!
You must go to the theatre with me"? No, we dread the idea of association
with the dead, and I tremble when I see a professor trying to have communion
with worldly men. "Come ye out from among them; be ye separate; touch not
the unclean thing." You know what would happen to you if you were thus
raised, and were forced to sit close to a dead body newly taken from the
grave. You would cry, "I cannot bear it; I cannot endure it"; you would get
to the wind side of the horrid corpse. So with a man that is really alive
unto God: deeds of injustice, oppression, or unchastity he cannot endure;
for life loaths corruption.
Notice
that, as we are raised up by a special work from among the dead, that rising
is by divine power. Christ is brought again "from the dead by the
glory of the Father." What means that? Why did it not say, "by the power of
the Father"? Ah, beloved, glory is a grander word; for all the attributes of
God are displayed in all their solemn pomp in the raising of Christ from the
dead. There was the Lord's faithfulness; for had he not declared that his
soul should not rest in hell, neither should His Holy One see corruption?
Was not the love of the Father seen there? I am sure it was a delight to the
heart of God to bring back life to the body of his dear Son. And so, when
you and I are raised out of our death in sin, it is not merely God's power,
it is not merely God's wisdom that is seen, it is "the glory of the Father."
Oh, to think that every child of God that has been quickened has been
quickened by "the glory of the Father. " It has taken not alone the Holy
Spirit, and the work of Jesus, and the work of the Father, but the very
"glory of the Father." If the tiniest spark of spiritual life has to be
created by "the glory of the Father," what will be the glory of that life
when it comes into its full perfection, and we shall be like Christ, and see
him as he is! O beloved, value highly the new life which God has given you.
Think of it as making you richer than if you had a sea of pearls, greater
than if you were descended from the loftiest of princes. There is in you
that which it required all the attributes of God to create. He could make a
world by power alone, but you must be raised from the dead by "the glory of
the Father."
Notice
next, that this life is entirely new. We are to "walk in newness of
life." The life of a Christian is an entirely different thing from the life
of other men, entirely different from his own life before his conversion,
and when people try to counterfeit it, they cannot accomplish the task. A
person writes you a letter and wants to make you think he is a believer, but
within about half-a-dozen sentences there occurs a line which betrays the
imposter. The hypocrite has very neatly copied our expressions, but not
quite. There is a freemasonry among us, and the outside world watch us a
bit, and by-and-by they pick up certain of our signs; but there is a private
sign which they can never imitate, and therefore at a certain point they
break down. A godless man may pray as much as a Christian, read as much of
the Bible as a Christian, and even go beyond us in externals; but there is a
secret which he knows not and cannot counterfeit. The life divine is so
totally new that the unconverted have no copy to work by. In every Christian
it is as new as if he were the very first Christian. Even though in every
one it is the image and superscription of Christ, yet there is a milled edge
or a something about the real silver that these counterfeits cannot get a
hold of. It is a new, a novel, a fresh, a divine thing.
And,
lastly, this life is an active thing. I have often wished that Paul
had not been so fast when I have been reading him. His style travels in
seven-leagued boots. He does not write like an ordinary man. I beg to tell
him that if he had written this text according to proper order, it should
run, "Like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father,
even so we also should be raised from the dead." But see; Paul has got over
ever so much ground while we are talking: he has reached to "walking." The
walking includes the living, of which it is the sign, and Paul thinks so
fast when the Spirit of God is upon him that he has passed beyond the cause
to the effect. No sooner do we get the new life than we become active: we do
not sit down and say, "I have received a new life: how grateful I ought to
be. I will quietly enjoy myself." Oh dear, no. We have something to do
directly we are alive, and we begin walking, and so the Lord keeps us all
our lives in his work; he does not allow us to sit down contented with the
mere fact that we live, nor does he allow us to spend all our time in
examining whether we are alive or no; but he gives us one battle to fight,
and then another; he gives us his house to build, his farm to till, his
children to nurse, and his sheep to feed. At times we have fierce struggles
with our own spirit, and fears lest sin and Satan should prevail, till our
life is scarce discerned by itself, but it is always discerned by its acts.
The life that is given to those who were dead with Christ is an energetic,
forceful life, that is evermore busy for Christ, and would, if it could,
move heaven and earth and subdue all things unto him who is its Head.
This
life Paul tells us is an unending one. Once get it, and it will never
go from you. "Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more."
Next,
it is a life which is not under the law or under sin. Christ came
under the law when he was here, and he had our sin laid on him, and
therefore died; but after he rose again there was no sin laid on him. In his
resurrection both the sinner and the Surety are free. What had Christ to do
after his rising? To bear any more sin? No, but just to live unto God. That
is where you and I are. We have no sin to carry now; it was all laid on
Christ. What have we to do? Every time we have the headache, or feel ill,
are we to cry out, "This is a punishment for my sin"? Nothing of the kind.
Our punishment is all done with, for we have borne the capital sentence, and
are dead: our new life must be unto God.
"All that
remains for me
Is but to love and sing,
And wait until the angels come
To bear me to the King."
I have now to serve him and delight myself in him, and use the power which
he gives me of calling others from the dead, saying, "Awake, thou that
sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light." I am
not going back to the grave of spiritual death nor to my grave-clothes of
sin; but by divine grace I will still believe in Jesus, and go from strength
to strength, not under law, not fearing hell, nor hoping to merit heaven,
but as a new creature, loving because loved, living for Christ because
Christ lives in me, rejoicing in glorious hope of that which is yet to be
revealed by virtue of my oneness in Christ.
Poor
sinner, you do not know anything about this death and burial, and you never
will till you have power to become sons of God, and that he gives to as many
as believe on his name. Believe on his name, and it is all yours. Amen and
Amen.
