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If ye be risen with Christ, seek those things
which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. Set your
affections on things above, not on things on the earth. For ye are dead,
and your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life,
shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory. (Col. 3,
1-3)
Easter is the oldest and most important festival of the
Christian Year. From the earliest days of Christianity, the first day of
the week, the day of the Lord’s Resurrection, has been kept by Christians as
the Lord’s day, in place of the seventh day of the week, the Jewish
Sabbath. And around the annual observance of Easter, originally the only
annual Christian festival, the whole of the Christian year has gradually
taken shape.
This is as it should be; indeed, as it must be, for it is
around the Resurrection of the Lord that the whole Christian faith centres.
As St. Paul says, “If Christ is not risen, then our faith is vain” – empty –
meaningless. It is clear from the New Testament records that the first
Christians considered their mission to be above all else a witness to the
fact that Jesus Christ, who has offered himself as a perfect sacrifice on
the cross of Calvary, had vanquished sin and death, and returned from the
tomb, mighty to save - God risen from the dead, offering a new and eternal
life to men who had long lain in the bondage of sin and death.
The historical fact of the empty tomb on Easter morning;
the fact that Jesus Christ, who had been crucified, has risen as he said he
would, is one of the most interesting and astonishing events on record. But
for Christians, Easter is not simply the remembrance of an interesting event
which took place in the corner of the Roman Empire twenty centuries ago.
For us, the real significance of Easter is that Christ, in rising from the
dead, has conquered the power of sin and death, and offers to us the victory
which is his. We are risen with Christ. We are dead unto sin. Our life is
hid with Christ in God.
And if we go on to ask how it is that Christ’s new life
becomes our new life, we are asking really what Christianity is all about;
because Christianity is not basically a matter of having good behaviour, nor
of having a satisfactory interpretation of the universe, but a matter of
having new life. We have this new life only by virtue of the fact that we
are members of Christ, members of his body, the Church. It is in the new
society which we call the Church that we have Christ’s new life, and it is
in the sacramental life of this new society that we both receive this new
life, and grow in it. In our baptism we become members of Christ and
therefore, as the New Testament teaches, die and rise again with our
Saviour. And in Holy Communion our new life is nourished by that eternal
bread which cometh down from heaven, that true bread which is Christ
Himself. It is in these sacraments that we receive to ourselves all that
Christ accomplished in his Resurrection. All else that we can say about the
Christian religion rests upon this foundation – in baptism we receive
Christ’s new life, and in Holy Communion this new life is nourished and
preserved.
The language of the New Testament is clear and emphatic
on this subject: “Unless a man be born again of water and of the spirit, he
cannot enter into the Kingdom of God.” “Unless ye eat the flesh of the Son
and Man and drink his blood, ye have no life in you; but whoso eateth my
flesh and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life, and I will raise him up at
the last day.” The means by which we possess Christ’s new life is our
participation of the sacramental life of Christ’s body, the Church, in which
we are made members of Christ and are nourished by him. In the light of
this fact, it is very unfortunate indeed that we often treat these
sacraments as formalities, or as incidental to Christian life, as ceremonies
which can be taken or left depending upon how the individual happens to feel
about it. The fact of the matter is that being a Christian means being
risen with Christ, receiving the new life which he offers us in His Church.
For this there is no substitute.
Once we understand this fundamental point, that
Christianity consists in receiving Christ’s new life, we can follow our text
further in describing the character of this new life. “If we then be risen
with Christ,” says St. Paul – if “you are dead unto sin, if your life is hid
with Christ in God, you must set your affections on things above, not on
things of this earth.” This does not mean that we are not to have any
concern for the things which go on around us; but it does mean that things
above, the love and service of God, must be the most important factors in
our lives. It means that we must not set our affections upon all the
possessions and attachments which distract us so much from the love of God
in our day to day living. It is extremely easy for us to fool ourselves in
this matter. We certainly all agree that if we believe in God, God cannot
have second place in our lives; but yet when it comes to a question of a
practical decision in the ordinary affairs of life, how much is our conduct
affected by the love and service of God? When we examine our lives, we find
that there are a good many things which crowd for first place – pleasure,
possessions, popularity, security, satisfaction and contentment are only a
few of them. But the realization of our new life in Christ demands that
we must not let these things become the first objects of our love.
These are not the things we as Christians count on most. And if we build
our lives around these things, we are laying up for ourselves treasures upon
earth, where moth and rust corrupt and where thieves break through and
steal. If we allow ourselves to fall into bondage to these things (however
innocent they may seem at first), we are on the road to disappointment and
disaster. Our new life in Christ frees us from the tyranny of all such
things. If we are risen with Christ, our life is hid with Christ in God –
our affections are set upon things above, the love and service of God, which
is the ground not of passing pleasures, but of eternal blessedness.
This brings us to the final point made by the text we
have chosen: when Christ who is our life shall appear, then shall ye
also appear with him in glory. Our new life in Christ is the ground of
our hope as Christians, for in being members of Christ, nourished by his
body and blood, we have eternal life, here and now. But here and
now, we walk by faith, and we see things through a glass darkly – as a man
might see his reflection in a cloudy mirror – but finally we shall see God
face to face. Because we are with Christ, and Christ has triumphed over
death, we too, [his members] have triumphed over death. We have here and
now eternal life – but it is a life in which we must grow, in hope of its
fulfillment in us, so that finally we may appear with Christ in glory. We
are born anew of God – and whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world
– and this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith...God
hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. He that hath
the Son hath life, and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life.
The risen Lord has sent His Church into the world as the
new community of those who are his members, and has established within it
the means by which we become his members. The primary and all important
mission of the Church, and of us as individual Christians, is to show forth
Christ’s risen life, and to communicate that new life to all mankind. When
we consider our unworthiness for such a mission, we may well be dismayed:
but let us remember that it is the Risen Lord who sends us forth into all
the world, that new life is not of our making, but is God’s gift – so
thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ
– and therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye steadfast, unmoveable, always
abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labour is
not in vain in the Lord. [1 Cor 15:57-58]
Amen. +
