Christian Resurrection

Extract

Christian Resurrection
A. W. Pink

The title of this booklet will probably suggest to most of our readers that we shall treat therein exclusively with the future condition of the believer’s body. Really it is deplorable that such a circumscribed view should obtain so widely in this twentieth century—that “resurrection” should connote nothing more than physical resuscitation. Surely little more than a glance at the Epistles is needed to discover that in the New Testament “death” and “life” are used with a much broader and higher signification than merely physical—that “resurrection” is connected with other things than the body—that it has a present, yea a past, bearing upon the Christian as well as a future, that it has a forensic application as well as a literal. Believers are greatly the losers if they confine the resurrection to a mere emergence from the grave. The New Testament treats first of the Christian’s legal or representative resurrection; second of his spiritual or regenerative one and finally of his corporeal. As the first is now so little apprehended by God’s people we shall devote most space to it. Resurrection presupposes death and to understand what death is we must go back to the Fall. “In Adam all die” (1 Cor. 15:22): that is the basic fact, death being the wages of sin, the penalty of the broken law (Rom. 5:12). In Adam all died: what is meant by that? This: their relationship with God was radically altered and they experienced a fearful change in themselves. More specifically: first, they ceased to be well-pleasing in the sight of their Maker, they were no longer favourably regarded by Him. Positively, they fell under His curse and became “the children of wrath.” Second, they forfeited the Holy Spirit, became “alienated from the life of God” (Eph. 4:18). His image and likeness in them was greatly marred, communion with Him was severed. Third, corruption entered their bodies, the seeds of mortality obtained lodgement, disease invaded their earthly tabernacles. And, unless they are recovered from these calamities the “second death” or everlasting separation from God in endless torment in the Lake of Fire, will be the final consummation of that death which is the wages of sin. …