By J.R. Miller
The power of the risen Lord began to appear immediately after the resurrection. His death seemed to be the end of everything. While he lived, he had had great power. His ministry was radiant with kindness. His personal influence was felt over all the land. His gracious words as he went about, left benedictions everywhere. He had shown himself sympathetic with all suffering and sorrow. He went about doing good among the people, until he was known everywhere as a man who loved men. His kindness had made him universally beloved. He never wrought a miracle merely to win applause for himself. When in his ministry he did anything supernatural, it was in love and compassion for people. He multiplied the loaves to feed a hungry multitude. He healed blindness, cured the lame and the sick, opened deaf ears--all in sympathy with human distress.
But when he was put to death, his power seemed to end. He was helpless in the hands of his enemies. He was no stronger than the weakest of the land. No hand was lifted for his deliverance. His own strength which had wrought so resistlessly in mighty wonders, gave no sign of power. His name seemed buried in oblivion in the death which he died. Never did any man appear so utterly undone in his death, as did Jesus.
But the moment of his resurrection--his power began to show itself. He came from the grave like a God. Those who saw him were strangely impressed by his presence. Without resuming his familiar converse with his friends--he showed himself to them again and again, not in such ways as to awe to bewilder them with the splendors of his glory--but in such simple manifestations as to impress them with the fact of his continued humanness. Mary supposed he was the gardener, so familiar were his form and manner. To the two disciples journeying into the country, he was only a stranger going the same way--but at their simple evening meal, in the breaking of bread--he revealed himself as the risen Christ. To the fishermen on the lake he appeared only as a dim form on the beach--but in the dawn they saw him as the Lord, serving them with love.
Everywhere we see the power of the risen Christ. Think of the marvelous power which wrought in the resurrection itself. If the story were merely legendary we would have minute details of all the circumstances. The Gospels are "most silent, where myth and legend would be most garrulous." Yet the resurrection was the most stupendous of all the miracles. The world never saw such another exercise of power--as this sublime mastery of death when Jesus came from the grave. All the other of our Lord's miracles were only flashes of power. He changed water into wine. He made the blind to see, the lame to walk, the deaf to hear. A few loaves of bread grew under his hand, until it became abundance for thousands. Other dead were restored--but in every instance they returned again to death. Great as these greatest miracles were, they were little in comparison with this most wonderful of all his acts of power. He rose to die no more!
As soon as Christ arose, power began to go forth from him. Think of the change which came upon his friends as soon as they came to believe that their Lord was really alive again. They were transformed men! We know how despairing they were after Jesus died. All their hope was gone. Fear paralyzed them. They hid behind barred doors. But when they saw the hands with the nail prints and believed, they were like new men. The power of the risen Christ passed into them. All who saw them and heard them marveled at their boldness. When we compare the Peter of Good Friday, with the Peter of Pentecost, we see what the power of the risen Christ made of one man. So it was with all of them. Instead of being feeble, timid men, hiding away in the shadows, following their Master afar off, denying that they belonged to him, locking the doors for fear of assault or arrest, see how bold they became. They feared nothing. They were brave as lions! A tremendous energy was in their words. The power of the risen Christ was upon them. No trust in a dead Christ, would have wrought such a marvelous change in those plain, unlettered, untitled men.
The power of the risen Christ is seen in the story of the Christian centuries. Is Christianity the work of a dead leader, a man who was not strong enough to overcome death? Paul tells us that if Christ did not rise there is no Christianity and no hope. "If Christ has not been raised, then is our preaching vain, your faith also is vain; you are you in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ, have perished." If this is the final word about him, there is not a shadow of hope.
But this is not the last word. Rather, it is this, "Christ has been raised! He is alive for evermore!" The story of Christianity is the story of the risen Christ. All that has been done he has done. His last promise to his disciples, as he sent them out, was, "Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world." Just what did this promise mean? Is Christ present with his friends in this world in a different way from that in which John or Paul is present in the church? They are present in influence. The world is sweeter because John lived in it. He was the apostle of love. There is a fragrance poured out by his name wherever it is spoken. Paul still teaches in all the churches. His words live wherever the New Testament goes. Is it only in this way that Christ's promise must be understood? There are some who tell us this--that he is with his followers only in the memory of his life, work, and character, and not in any sense as a living person, to whom we may speak, who can help us. But the promise meant more than this when Jesus gave it to his friends. It meant that he, the risen Christ, would be with them in actual, living, personal presence, always, all the days--that he would be their Companion, their Helper, and their Friend. The things Christ in his ministry, before his death, "began to do," he has continued to do through all the centuries since. The power of the risen Christ is seen wherever any good work is wrought. We read the wonderful story of his public ministry, how he went everywhere doing good, healing, helping, comforting, and we sometimes wish we could have lived in those days, to have received his help; but the Christ is as really present in our community as he was in Judea and Galilee. We may have his touch, his cheer--his presence, as actually as if he were living in our home.
It is interesting to read of the friendships of the Master, when he was on the earth. He was the friendliest man that ever lived. A recent writer says, "The Son of Man was endowed at birth with impulse and the power to love and minister. His compassion for the multitude because they were distressed and scattered as sheep not having a shepherd; his charity for the outcast, the oppressed, and the weary; his affection for children, are among the tenderest and the sweetest chapters in the history of our race, and seem to have made the profoundest impression both upon those whose exceeding good fortune it was to see his human countenance, and upon the age that came after." If he is the risen Christ, and if he is actually living with us--he is just the same friend to us, that he was to those among whom he lived then. He goes among the people now as he used to do in Galilee. He is the same in our homes of sorrow--as he was in the home of Bethany.
He had his personal friendships. Think what he was to Peter--who was brought to him first as Simon, a man of many faults, undisciplined, unlettered, and impetuous. This man of the fishing boats became under his new Master's training and influences, the great apostle. The story of Peter shows what the friendship of Christ can do now with such a man, what it can make of the unlikeliest of us. Or think what the friendship of Christ did for John--who grew into such rare gentleness in his companionship, whose character ripened into manly beauty and into great richness and strength. It is possible to have the risen Christ for our friend today--and to have his friendship do for us, just what it did for Peter and John. The power of Christ is seen in Christian lives all over the world, which have been transformed by his love and by his influence.
Easter illustrates the work of the risen Christ in its marvelous power. The day leaves in true Christian hearts everywhere new aspirations, a new uplift of life, new revealing of hope. Easter sends a wave of comfort over the world as it tells of the conquest of death. It changes the mounds above the sleeping dead--into sacred resting places of saints waiting for glory.
But Easter does more. It reaches out and spreads radiance over all sorrow. It tells of victory, not only over death--but over everything in which men seem to suffer defeat--over all grief, pain, and trial. The grain of wheat dies--only that it may live. "If it dies, it bears much fruit." This is the great lesson Christian life. Easter comes on only one day in the year--but it has its lesson for every day. We are continually coming up to graves in which we must lay away some fond hope, some joy--from which the thing laid away rises again in newness of life and beauty.
Every call for self-denial is such a grave. Every call to a hard and costly duty is a seed which we bury in the ground--but which will grow into something rich and splendid. "You are called to give up a luxury." Says Phillips Brooks, "and you do it. The little bit of comfortable living is quietly buried away underground. But that is not the last of it. The small indulgence which would have made your bodily life easier for a day or two, undergoes some strange alteration in its burial, and comes out a spiritual quality that blesses and enriches your soul forever."
This is the wider truth of Easter. The only way to do the best and highest--is through the losing of the lower. The rose leaf must be bruised to get its fragrance. Love must suffer, to reveal its full meaning of beauty. The golden grain must be buried in service or sacrifice, that from its grave may rise that which is unseen and eternal.
The secret of all this wondrous truth, is the power of the risen Christ. These things are true--because he died and rose again!
