That portion of scripture and many, many others are the basis of the instruction of our Heidelberg Catechism in Lord’s Day 17.

Q. 45. What doth the resurrection of Christ profit us?

A. First, by His resurrection He has overcome death, that He might make us partakers of that righteousness which He had purchased for us by His death; secondly, we are also by His power raised up to a new life; and lastly, the resurrection of Christ is a sure pledge of our blessed resurrection.

 

Introduction

The gospel, beloved, principally proclaims the truth of the resurrection, of the resurrection of Christ and of our resurrection through his. That is the gospel of glad tidings. A resurrection means righteousness, means life, means a living hope. I say that resurrection means righteousness because, beloved, the gospel of the resurrection proclaims a righteousness which was never seen, which was never experienced, by any man or any angel; a righteousness which comes out of unrighteousness as resurrection from the dead; a righteousness, moreover, that can never be touched again by any unrighteousness; [a righteousness] which is transcendent above any righteousness which man may acquire; an eternal righteousness that can never be marred or spoiled. That is resurrection.

That resurrection, beloved—that glorious gospel of the resurrection, which consists in righteousness that is above and transcendent above any possibility of unrighteousness—is in Christ. Christ is the resurrection and the life, and he that believeth in him shall never die.

The idea of the resurrection is that in connection with that everlasting righteousness that can never be spoiled, we have life. Again, resurrection life is life out of death and through death. And resurrection life is life out of death and through death and transcendent above death that can never die, life that is victorious over death forever. That is resurrection: life immortal.

And that glorious life, that immortal life, that victorious life, transcendent above death, which death can never touch, we preach unto you through the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. His resurrection is our resurrection.

Therefore, beloved, the gospel of the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ and the gospel of our resurrection through him is a gospel of hope. That is what you must have. You must have a gospel of hope. That is what you are here for. You must have comfort in the midst of death, in which we are, comfort in the midst of death. If my gospel, if the gospel, and if any gospel that is preached does not give you that, it is no gospel. You must have comfort while you are in the midst of death. That is the gospel. And the gospel of the resurrection is a gospel of hope, of the living hope, so that you can sing, “I know that I shall not be left forsaken, abandoned, in the grave. The path of life thou showest me. And thou wilt show me, even through the grave, the glorious life of Christ.”

That is the gospel I am called particularly to preach to you this morning hour on the basis of this seventeenth Lord’s Day of the Heidelberg Catechism: the gospel of the resurrection, the glad tidings of the resurrection of Christ, and the glad tidings of your resurrection through him. That is the subject which I must briefly expound to you in this morning hour as I speak on “The Resurrection of Christ”: A power of our righteousness, a principle of our life, a pledge of our everlasting resurrection—the life of the resurrection. That is the contents of this Catechism chapter, beloved, and briefly I will follow those contents and expound to you the gospel of the resurrection of Christ.

The Fact of the Resurrection of Christ

Rather strange, perhaps, you think that the Catechism does not say anything about the fact of the resurrection of Christ as such. It does so in connection with the suffering and death of Christ. It explains and expounds the facts of that death and the meaning of that death and so on and the suffering, rather broadly and elaborately. But when it comes to the resurrection of Christ, it does not say a word about it. It plunges right into the practical question, “What doth the resurrection of Christ profit us?” The answer is righteousness, life, the hope and pledge of our glorious resurrection. That is all right, beloved. Yet and perhaps this is expounded so briefly because at the time the Catechism was composed there was no need of explaining elaborately and defending elaborately the fact of the resurrection of Christ.

Nonetheless, for us we must briefly see the meaning of the resurrection of Christ before we can discuss its fruits. Then, beloved, we must say in the first place that the fact of the resurrection of Jesus is well attested by many faithful witnesses. The fact that Christ arose on the third day according to the scriptures is testified by many faithful witnesses. That is important, for the gospel of the resurrection must be proclaimed as the rock of our faith, and so the apostles do when they proceed into the world to preach. It is always the resurrection of Christ that they proclaim as the heart and the rock of the gospel they preach. But that fact of the resurrection is well attested from many angles and purposely so. It is attested, as you know, by the empty grave. That is a negative testimony but a very strong testimony nevertheless, especially if you take the empty grave in connection with its contents, the linen clothes. The fact of the resurrection is attested by the angels, whom God had sent to the grave to preach the first resurrection gospel to the disciples. And the fact of the resurrection is proclaimed, finally, by the several manifestations of the Lord, from the first one to Mary Magdalene to the last one on the occasion of the ascension on the Mount of Olives: ten in number.

By all these means not only the fact of the resurrection is attested but also its wonder. Also that is necessary for our faith, beloved. It is necessary if we want to understand why the resurrection of Christ proclaims our righteousness and our life and hope that was never seen and never experienced before in this world. It is necessary that we understand that the resurrection was a wonder and that the resurrection of Christ was altogether other, other than any other resurrection before. Other. Also that we must understand. The resurrection of Christ as to its wonder was attested too, beloved, by the strange linen clothes in the sepulcher that, as I explained more than once, meant that those linen clothes that were wrapped around the body of Jesus laid there in the shape of the body, although the body was not there. The wonder of the resurrection. The wonder of the resurrection was also attested by the strange appearances of Jesus in the forty days, very strange. Now in one form and now in another, the Lord appeared. Always the same Lord, always the same essence, always the same person but in many, many different forms, so that the disciples wondered whether it was really he that manifested himself to them.

And that means, beloved, that the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ did not mean that he returned. He did not come back, but he went on. That is necessary to understand. Christ went on. He went in the grave in the likeness of sinful flesh and in the likeness of death, but he did not return to us in the likeness of sinful flesh and the likeness of death at all. He went through the grave into immortality. Immortality is not simply an endless prolongation of our present life and existence. But immortality means, beloved, eternal life in the qualitative sense of the word, eternal life in the sense that Christ, who bore the image of the earthy, now appeared in the image of the heavenly; that Christ, who went into the grave in corruption, appeared out of the grave in incorruption, so that corruption could never touch him anymore; that Christ went into the grave in weakness because of the likeness of sinful flesh but also weakness because of the mortality of the body by nature; that Christ went into the grave in his body of weakness but appeared in power, power that never can be touched by death anymore; that Christ, who entered into the grave in dishonor because of the body in the likeness of sinful flesh, now arose in glory and in heavenly glory—glory being the radiation, beloved, of the glory of God, and the glory of God being the radiation of the goodness of God, that goodness of God in all its majesty, that goodness of God in all its beauty, now appeared in the body of Christ in the resurrection, in Christ as Lord in his whole nature. He went into the grave with a natural body, that is, with the body that belongs to our present soul, beloved, our present soul as the soul must live in this present world through our senses. We see, we hear, we taste, we smell, we touch the world through our senses. Our soul does that through the body; and, therefore, we have what is called in 1 Corinthians 15 a psychical body, a soul-body, a body that belongs to the soul. But Christ arose with a spiritual body, a body that does not belong to a soul in the earthly sense of the word, beloved, as our bodies do, but with a body that belongs to the Spirit, to the principle of the kingdom of heaven, to the Son of God in glory in the human nature. That is Christ. That is the resurrected Christ.

A Power of Our Righteousness

And that resurrection of Christ, beloved, our Catechism instructs us is righteousness, a righteousness and the application of his righteousness to us by him. That first of all. You know, we are in death. We are in death. There is no way out. There is no way out, beloved, no way out of death as far as we are concerned. We are in death physically; our body is in death. We are in death spiritually; our soul is dead, not living but dead—so dead that all the actions of our soul and of our body turn against the living God. And that is death. That is death. Life, life, is the harmonious activity of all our nature, of our mind and will and soul and body, in direction to God. That is life. Harmony with God, that is life. Death is the opposite. Death is disharmony with God—disharmony of our soul; disharmony of our mind, of our will, of our inclinations; disharmony of the operations of our body, of all our nervous system, of the whole business, of our blood, of our brains—everything against God. That is death. And in that death we are by nature. In that death there is no way out.

Mind you, the Catechism says here that by his resurrection Christ overcame the power of death. He did. He overcame death. He overcame the power of death, so that death has no more power to rule over him and over his people. That first of all.

In order to understand that briefly, beloved, briefly because we really must understand the gospel in order to have the comfort of it and understand it clearly, precisely, in order to have the comfort of it. We must understand that death is not a mere normal, natural power, so that we just die, we say. Everything dies in nature, and so we die too. A tree dies. A plant dies. Everything dies in autumn, as you can see everywhere today in nature. Everything dies, and so we die too. It is very natural. No, beloved, it is not so. But death is God’s power. Death is God’s power. We do not simply die; we are killed. I am sure, I am convinced, that that is the same in nature, beloved. Nature does not die either; God kills it. Oh, yes. Vanity of vanities. All creatures are killed, animals too, by God. But we too. We too. We are killed. Who kills us? God does. God kills us. Why does he kill us? Because he is angry with us because of our sins. That is the truth. That is death. Death is the curse. Death is the wrath of God. And because God is angry with us because of our sin and guilt, he kills us. That is death. That is God’s power of death. Nothing else. That is death.

And, beloved, there is no way out. There is no way out as far as we are concerned. No way out. We can never escape death. We can’t. We cannot. You can look all around you in this world, look all around you everywhere, but you cannot see a way out. Dying, you die. That is it. That is inevitable. That is true of all men. Dying, we die.

And if there is to be a way out, beloved, the way out is only the way of God’s righteousness, which we can never see or imagine or prepare. Not that way out. We cannot. The way out is the way in which life through death—the power of life through death—must be paved by righteousness that is sufficient to satisfy God against the sinner. That is the only way out.

That way out, beloved, that way out is the resurrection of Christ. Do not look around you to find a way. There is no doctor that can help you. But look at the cross and at the resurrection—the resurrection. The resurrection is the life, not the cross. The resurrection is the life, looking at which you may know there is a way out of death. Why? Because, beloved, in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, God testifies because he raised Christ. Just as he arose, so also Christ was raised. In the resurrection of Jesus Christ, God testifies that Christ is righteous, and therefore he is worthy of life and of life through death, of immortal life. Oh, yes, that is the meaning of the resurrection.

If Christ had not satisfied, beloved, if Christ had not become righteous through the cross—righteous not as an individual because he was righteous; he never was a sinner. Christ never was a sinner personally, but he was a sinner in connection with his people. He was made sin for us that we might be made the righteousness of God in him. That is the truth, beloved. Christ personally had no sin, but he did have sin in connection with his people. The sin of his people was heaped upon him. All the sins of his people were reckoned unto him from before the foundation of the world, the sins of his elect.

Of course, you cannot have atonement except when you preach election. That is impossible. You cannot have atonement unless you say that Christ died for his elect. Otherwise, there is no atonement possible. But he did. He did, beloved. He satisfied fully for all the sins of his own at the cross, in the center of history. There, there, at the moment of the cross, he blotted out the sins of the elect from the very beginning of the world to that moment and the sins of the elect from that moment to the very end of the world to the last elect that shall ever die. He there, there—otherwise, there is no atonement, beloved—there he covered the elect of every age from the beginning to the end of the world; he covered the elect and made them righteous with the righteousness that sin can never touch anymore. Because if that had not been the case, Christ would never have come out of the grave, beloved. He would have perished in the grave. But the fact that God took him out of the grave and that he raised him from the dead is God’s receipt to Christ and God’s receipt to you and to me in him to his whole church: “Your sins are blotted out. You are adopted as my children. You are righteous with the righteousness that no sin or corruption can ever touch anymore, with a transcendent righteousness.” That is the resurrection of Christ.

To you and to me that is gospel.

A Principle of Our Life

And that righteousness, the Catechism tells us, Christ lives to apply to us. He gives it to us. Christ, beloved, Christ stands—let me put it that way: Christ stands on the other side. He is no more here. He does not stand in our midst anymore. He stands on the other side. He stands on the other side of death and of the grave. And from that other side of death and of the grave, he calls. He calls and says to you and to me, “Come unto me ye who are heavy laden and weary and burdened.” “Ye who are burdened with death, burdened with sin and guilt and corruption, come unto me,” he calls to his people. “Ye that are heavy laden and laboring, come unto me, and I will give the rest of my resurrection, the righteousness that is of me, of God and me.”

That is gospel. That is the only gospel.

But, beloved, it is not so that he stands on the other side of the grave and that he beckons us to come unto him. Then we would never do it. Then you could not do it. Then you would not do it. Then you could not will to do it. You do not want anything of Christ. You do not want anything of life. You want death. That is what you want by nature. That is the way it is.

But the Catechism says, beloved, that is not so. He lives to apply his righteousness to us. He does it, not we. We do not come to him; he comes to us. And only as a fruit of his coming to us do we come to him. That is scripture. Otherwise, the whole gospel is impossible. Don’t you see that? If you must do anything to come to Christ, the whole gospel is impossible! You do not come; he comes to you. He applies his righteousness to you. And he calls. Oh, yes, he calls. But he calls as he only can call, as he only can call—efficaciously—so that he touches your heart and says to you personally, “Come unto me you that are heavy laden and laboring, and I will give you rest, the rest of righteousness, the rest of the resurrection.”

That is the gospel.

And, beloved, that is why on the same basis Christ gives us life. He gives us life. He gives all his people life. He raises them with him from the dead. That is resurrection. That is resurrection. When you are regenerated, beloved, you have the resurrection from the dead. And no more, no more, than at the end of time when Christ calls the physically dead out of the graves, there will be any action on their part, except through the resurrection of Christ, no more are you active in this work of regeneration. Christ raises you from the dead. Absolutely passively and unconditionally, Christ raises you from the death. And you have nothing to do with it, beloved. Except that when Christ so raises you from the dead, you live. Of course, you live then; and living, you love; and loving, you serve. All Christ’s work. That is the way it is. That is the truth.

And that we are actually raised with Christ, beloved, is scripture. That is the gospel. All the elect were raised with him at the moment of his resurrection—all of them, from Adam to the last elect that will be in history at the time of Christ’s coming. All the elect were raised with Christ and taken to heaven with Christ. That is scripture. That is scripture. We read, beloved, in Ephesians 2, listen: “But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ.” He has quickened us together with Christ; that is, when Christ was quickened, we were quickened. “(By grace ye are saved;) and hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.” The whole church. The church is raised from the dead. The church is in heavenly places with Christ. That is one thing.

But there is more, beloved. Christ realizes that life in us; that is, as really as the head of the body he imparted to his own elect in the resurrection, he also realizes that life. When you and I are born in sins and Christ makes us members of his church, he gives us that life of his resurrection. When we are regenerated, we have resurrection life, the life of Christ.

And resurrection life means, one, that we have a life that is free from sin. That principle of life is free from sin. We are liberated from the law of sin and death by the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus. That principle of new life is free from sin. Oh, that principle is. This does not mean that when we are regenerated, we are entirely without sin, beloved. Oh, no, no, no, no, no. When we are freed from sin in principle, we manifest that freedom from sin in this mortal body and in this old nature and in this old world of sin and corruption by crying out, “O God, be merciful to me, a sinner.” The antithesis of the new life to the old is the antithesis of freedom from sin to be enslaved to sin. And, therefore, in principle we experience and we manifest the freedom from sin by yearning for forgiveness and yearning for sanctification and yearning for the grace to be delivered from sin and to flee from sin and to walk in a new and holy life. If that is yours, beloved, in principle you are free from sin, and you are part of the resurrection life of Christ.

That resurrection life of Christ is immortal. Immortal—it can never die. It can never die. “He that believeth on me, though he were dead, yet shall he live. And he that liveth and believeth on me shall never die. Believest thou this?” the Lord asked Mary. I want to ask you the same question. The gospel this morning asks you the same question—you personally. “Believest thou this?” Then there is hope, beloved. Then we can preach a beautiful gospel of hope. Not otherwise.

A Pledge of Our Everlasting Resurrection

And that beautiful gospel of hope not only concerns the soul but also concerns the body. The resurrection of Christ includes the resurrection of the body in the last day, for Christ was raised bodily, beloved. He was raised bodily. The resurrection of Christ did not mean that he became a spirit, although he was raised with a spiritual body. The resurrection of Christ did not mean that his soul was sent to glory but his body remained in corruption. No, the very empty grave testifies to the fact that Christ’s body was raised. He was raised in glory; he was raised incorruptible; he was raised with an immortal body, so that his immortal spirit might unite his immortal body forever in glory. That is the resurrection of Christ.

But Christ was not raised as a mere individual, as I have made plain in this morning hour. He was not raised as a mere individual. He was raised as the head, the head, of the church; the firstborn of every creature; the first begotten of the dead; and the head, the head, of the church. As such he was raised. And being raised as the head of the church, beloved, he was raised also as far as his body was concerned as well as his soul was concerned as the firstfruits. That is what the text which I read to you from 1 Corinthians 15 means, beloved. “But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept.”

That is the gospel.

The firstfruits of them that slept.

You know what the figure, the firstfruits, means, of course. The firstfruits means, beloved, that the harvest is already ripe, and that one sheaf is taken out of the harvest and brought as a wave offering to the Lord in the temple. And after the wave offering is made in the temple before the face of the Lord, the Israelites might go and gather the harvest. But the harvest was ripe, and the first sheaf is simply a sample of the ripe harvest. That is Christ. Christ is the firstfruits of the dead, the first resurrected fruit of the dead, beloved. And his resurrection means that the whole rest of the harvest will be gathered in.

Christ the firstfruits; then they that are Christ’s at his coming, a glorious righteousness that can never be touched by unrighteousness, a glorious life that can never be touched by death anymore, a glorious hope of resurrection that can never fail.

That is the gospel.

Believest thou this?

Amen.¹

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