3.-THE LORD IN RESURRECTION

The 20th chapter of John was referred to as a starting point, and a question was asked as to the difference between our Lord's body before His death and after His resurrection.

. C. C.-First of all, we need to realize that our Lord's body when here on earth was not a mortal body. That idea is prevalent in some quarters. Some hold that He was not an immortal man until He arose from the dead. But there was in Him, as man, an energy of holiness that absolutely shut out sin, that shut out all evil, and of course shut out the power of corruption to lay hold upon His body. He was like Elisha's vessel with salt in it-salt symbolizing the preservative energy of holiness.

A. E. B.-That is the meaning of salt in the meal-offering. It is a preservative-the personal life of holiness that ever characterized the Lord in this world.

C. C.-While not subject to death, our Lord was able to die. Liability to death and ability to die, are very distinct things. In John u, as the Lord said to Martha, He was the resurrection and the life. He was that in Himself. He not only possessed in Himself the energy of holiness which shut out all evil, and therefore all tendency to corruption, but He was also the annulment of death and corruption for others.

A. E. B.-Will you give us a word on the difference between the life and the resurrection ?Would life here be the same as in John 14-"The Way the Truth, and the Life " ?

C. C.-The Son of God having become man, having assumed humanity as we have it, but apart from sin, He carried it beyond death. In Him was life and incorruptibility-possessing them in Himself, He was able to take humanity out of its present condition into a permanent condition.

W. H.-In resurrection, He speaks of flesh and bones, not of flesh and blood. He had poured out His blood on the cross, and is not said to take that up in resurrection.

F. J. E.-Thus He differs from the persons He raised from the dead when He was here. They were only raised to their former earthly condition, to a life such as they had previously known, so they were subject to die again.

C. C.-Yes. It was not to a fixed or final condition, as is His since He rose from the grave in His spiritual body,

W, H,-What about the order of verse 25-the resurrection and the life ?

C. C.-He had come into a place where sin is, where death reigns. In this scene, He is the resurrection and the life, the deliverer, the Saviour. He must be the resurrection to be the life.

F. J. E.-Does He carry the thought into the future when He says, "Though he were dead yet shall he live " ?
A. E. B.-That is our resurrection.

C. C.-There He is applying it backward:"He that believeth in Me, though he were dead yet shall he live"-they are going to be brought into that condition of life and incorruptibility. Then He says, " He that liveth and believeth in Me shall never die." Some would add, "when He returns:" but the Lord, it seems to me, is saying that no believer in Him shall die-as under sin's penalty.

F. J. E.-Is that in connection with John 5 :24, " Is passed from death unto life " ?

C. C.-Yes; is passed-the Lord Himself having taken the penalty.

A. E. B.-So if he actually dies it is counted as sleep.

B. C. G.-It is the same as, "Shall not taste of death," It comes not as the king of terrors to the believer.

C. C.-It comes as a friend, a servant, bringing rest after labor; so in this sense, death is ours.

W. H.-You get the solemn contrast in chapter 8:24, "If ye believe not that I am He, ye shall die in your sins."

C. C.-Well then, what we need to see is that the Lord was not under the appointment to die. " It is appointed unto men once to die, and after this the judgment;" but He was not a sinful man. He was not liable, therefore, either to judgment or death. He could have gone to heaven as a man without dying; but then He must have been a man eternally alone. He must have been without human associates.

F. J. E.-That is as in John 12, " Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit."

C. C.-Yes; so He takes the penalty in order to provide a way of deliverance for men, exposed to death and judgment, whom He would have with Himself for all eternity.

W. H.-Referring again to John 11:25, would you say that life in Him was always characterized by resurrection ?

A. E. B.-It could only be expressed as such where death had come in.

C. C.-I cannot realize how He could have been fore-ordained to be the Lamb of God if He was not characterized by resurrection life. God always knew what sin is-knew it absolutely, not experimentally. Therefore sin must always have been abhorrent to Him. He has never changed His attitude toward it. We see that attitude told out in the cross. God's abhorrence of sin was fully manifested there as it had never been manifested anywhere else. The flood told of God's hatred of sin; so did the judgment on Sodom and Gomorrah; but it was only in the cross that it was fully manifested. But if He always knew sin, and eternally abhorred it, He always had in Himself resources for vindicating His attitude in respect to it. God did not need that sin should come in and actually exist in order to know it.

H. A. I.-There is a striking verse in Daniel 2:22, "He knoweth what is in the darkness, and the light dwelleth with Him."

C. C.-He not only knew what would come, but He knew it in its nature and character, and provided for it.

F. J. E.-That is, redemption was no afterthought with God.

C. C.-He provided for it. It seems to me that unless what we have been saying is true we could not apply the term holiness to God. Holiness implies the knowledge of sin, but the refusal of it.

Ques.-What of the angels, are they not holy ?

C. C.-We do not speak of holiness until after testing. Men and angels were created in innocence, not in holiness. We do not properly speak of holiness until after the attitude as to sin is taken. Angels who stood the test are called "holy" and "elect" angels.

A. E. B.-Now shall we turn to John n again ? -"I am the resurrection and the life."

C. C.-It is what was ever true of Him, but manifested historically in its fulness after He arose from the dead.

B. C. G.-When it says, in Romans i, " Declared to be the Son of God with power. , . by the resurrection of the dead," does it not include both the ability to raise those sample cases in this life as well as His own resurrection ?

C, C.-Yes; He was always the Creator, so He was always the resurrection and the life. He was that essentially in Himself.

A. E. B.-Life, incorruptibility, resurrection, power to meet all the questions raised by sin, all were essentially His, apart altogether from the occasion of display,

W. H.-So, apart from all questions of manifestation or display, He was in Himself the resurrection and the life.

C, C.-And when arisen from the dead He was manifested as the Victor who could not be holden of death. In the same body that He arose, He was taken up into heaven.

A. E. B.-Now a word as to 2 Timothy 3, the last verse. It says He was received up in glory-not into. To what does that refer ?

P, J. E.-Is that going back to whence He came?

A. E. B.-Well take another passage-the last verse of Phil. 3:" The body of His glory." That
could not be said before death and resurrection.

C, C,-No; as man in this world, He had a body suited to this earth, not one suited to heaven. It was a body of flesh and blood, suited to existence here. When He arose from the dead He took up humanity in a new condition, suited to the glory.

A, E. B,-So it is written that as we have borne the image of the earthy we shall bear the image of the heavenly. As to Christ we may say that the same Person who had existed from all eternity took a body suited to earthly conditions, to die. Now, in resurrection, He has taken up humanity in a new and permanent condition.

C. C.-And now He is the Head of a new race, of humanity after a new order, and at His second coming we shall be made like Him in this. Even Adam innocent had not a body suited to heaven. Christ risen is the beginning of new creation-the creation where all things are of God,

A. E. B.-Adam unfallen had neither a nature nor a body suited for heaven. New birth was always needed,

W. H.-We are told that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God.

R. F. E.-Does not that passage show the necessity of the change that is to take place at the rapture? Blood is to sustain natural life and to repair waste. In resurrection, the glorified body will be of a different character.

C. C.-The difference between the Lord's body before death and after His resurrection is very clearly brought out in John's account of the visit of Peter and himself to the empty tomb. His body wrapped about with a winding-sheet (among the wealthy sometimes 120 yards long), wound round and round the body, came out of this without unwrapping it. What a proof of resurrection and the character of the resurrection-body. The great stone was not rolled away to let the Lord out of the tomb, but to let His disciples in. The napkin that was about His head was wrapped by itself, and the wrappings lying just as they had been around His body-Himself gone out of them.

H, A. I.-It is just as when the butterfly comes out of the chrysalis condition. The shell remains unchanged. Some have thought the description in John simply implied an orderly exit and lack of haste.

C. C.-But this is to miss the real truth of the passage.

B. C. G.-Nicodemus brought a hundred pounds of spices. The Lord had the burial of a rich man. This was ten times what was ordinarily used; so the winding-sheet was undoubtedly such as the wealthy used.

C. C.-Well, Scripture states we are to be like Him, that He shall change these bodies of our humiliation, and fashion them like unto the body of His glory. His resurrection-body is the typical one. We are to be conformed to His image.
W. H.-To guard against the thought of this resurrection-body not being material, we are told that He ate with His disciples after He arose from the dead, It was not needed to sustain Him, but He could do so.

A. E. B.-This however was miraculous; for we shall not need food in that new condition. It is written, " Meats for the belly, and the belly for meats, but God shall destroy both it and them." This makes it very definite that material food will not be required for the new, spiritual body. Thus we shall be like Him both morally and physically, though of course never like Him in omniscience, etc. We shall ever be learners.

B. C, G,-We shall be perfect in our sphere, not in His.

F, J. E.-We shall eat of the hidden manna, and of the tree of life.

C. C.-Yes; that is Christ Himself.

A brother.-What would be the difference between Christ's transfigured body and the resurrection-body ?

C. C.-When He arose He was in a permanent condition; unchanged He was taken up into heaven, The transfigured body was His body enveloped in glory, but it was the same as that in which He afterward died upon the cross. But no change, no transformation of His resurrection-body was required ere He ascended. Such as it was after He arose from the dead, such is it now in heaven; and such will our bodies be at His coming-bodies suited to the sphere in which we are going to be. As to His eating, it was only to convince them that He was a real man, as has been pointed out. On the Mount of Transfiguration we have a pattern of the coming kingdom. We have in vision the glorified Lord, Moses representing the saints who will be raised from the dead, and Elijah those caught up without passing through death.

A, E. B.-It was an earnest of what the kingdom will be.

H. A. I.-But there was no actual change in His body. For a moment, as it were, His essential glory was shining out, and He was enveloped in the glory conferred upon Him by the Father.

C. C.-See how Peter speaks of it. He says that by this "we have the word of prophecy made plainer" (2 Peter i:19, Greek). That is the meaning of it. It did not make it any more sure. But it confirmed it-made it plainer.

B. C. G.-It added emphasis to the Old Testament prophecy, and made the nature of the kingdom easier to understand,

C. C,-There is a word in the 5th chapter of 2 Cor. that is important here:"Though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now know we Him so no more" (ver. 16). There were those living when the epistle to the Corinthians was written, who had known Christ in His earthly existence-Peter, John, and others-they had seen Him in the body suited to that existence, His flesh-and-blood body, but He will never again be seen in a body like that,
H. A. I.-That is one great difference between Christ and the Antichrist. Christ will come from heaven in the body of His glory, the Antichrist will be a man in a flesh-and-blood body, and of natural birth. People are looking for a great world-teacher, Some imagine this will be the second coming of Christ. But we shall never know Christ after the flesh.

F. J. E,-Our Lord has been on earth once as a man of flesh and blood, but never again in that condition.

W. H.-That is it; He is out of that condition forever.

C. C.-In Mark 16:19, 20 we are told that He was received up into heaven and put on the right hand of God. The word means to place, to put, to cause to sit. It was what the Father did for Him, the resurrected man.

A. E, B.-Not as in Hebrews i, where we are told that He set Himself down.

C. C.-No; in Mark He is/«/ there. It is Power taking Him up and putting Him there, In Hebrews He established Himself there. Both are blessedly true,

A, E. B.-In Hebrews it is His deity. In Mark, His manhood.

W. II,-It is the same in regard to resurrection. God raised Him from the dead. Yet He raised Himself. It was His own act.

C. C.-And He is also said to have been "quickened by the Spirit." The important thing now is that God has put Him on the throne as man. In Matthew, as risen He says, "All authority is given unto Me." But we do not get the ascension there. In Mark we see Him exalted above every thing. God sets Him as a glorified man over all, as in Hebrews 2. So there is a man on the throne of God who is going to carry out all the plans and counsels of God, who will fulfil all His purposes. He is acting from the throne. He has many offices, but the great thing to see is that He is on the throne, and is there as man to fulfil all God's thoughts.