EASTER is a feast of new life. It comes up indeed from death, for “our Passover is sacrificed for us”, but, that passing of the Lamb of God through death, is itself the victory over death, and directed to the bringing out of an eternal, indestructible life.
The working of the mighty power of God, which He wrought in Christ, is evident in his Incarnation, before the eye of faith glistens on Golgotha, but, it exhibited itself in its full majesty only, “when He raised Christ from the dead, and set him at His own right hand in heavenly places” (Eph. 1:19, 20).
That our Passover is sacrificed, points directly to the Passover of Resurrection, the church of Christ expressed significantly, by celebrating her holy communion not on Good Friday, but at Easter.
Christians who had strayed from the true understanding already in earliest times wanted this otherwise. Our holy communion, they said, should be a memorial of Jesus’ dying on the day of His death.
But the apostolate did not tolerate this. You can only memorialize Jesus’ death, when the fruit of that death is brought out in life. And he alone, who hails in that dying the sorrows, the travailings of the birth of life, can renew for himself the dying on Golgotha in grateful, be it pensive, joy.
And therefore Christ’s church has these long centuries celebrated her holy communion, not on Good Friday that she might weep at the Cross, but on Passover morning, that she might glory in what Golgotha brought us.
Not Easter apart from Golgotha, but also Golgotha never viewed otherwise than in the light of the Resurrection.
So only does not merely Jesus’ dying, but also His Resurrection obtain a spiritual significance for us, and the memorial of His rising becomes a power that goes out from Jesus’ church, to elevate spiritual life.
For it can not be denied, that all too frequently, as far as we are concerned, Jesus’ resurrection is far too exclusively associated with our own resurrection.
This took place for many years in the superficial sense, that at Easter above everything else “the hope of immortality” was sounded. Since, after having died, Jesus appeared still to be alive, it was certain, that for us also after death a second existence disclosed itself.
So the preachers proclaimed it, and so it resounded in the echo of the congregation.
Yet this superficial trifling could not last, and thoughtful reading of 1 Cor. 15 blew this cardhouse over. For the holy apostle had said the very opposite. He did not write: “If Christ is not raised, then the dead are not raised”; on the contrary he wrote: “If the dead rise not, then is not Christ raised.”
And of course, for he who wanders about in the valley of the shadow of death without “the hope of immortality”, laughs with unholy scorn at everything that the evangelists and apostles tell us of Jesus’ Resurrection.
So Easter preaching gradually improved. That “hope of immortality” was ended. And it was correctly understood, that it is not “a life after this life”, but definitely the resurrection of the flesh, that is sealed in Jesus’ resurrection.
Yet this should not be too onesidedly emphasized.
Far more indeed than to the prophecy regarding our body, does Scripture point you to the fruit of your Easter for the soul.
“That we should be quickened with Him unto a new life,” as has been ably said; or if you will as Paul wrote to the church at Colosse, “If then Christ be risen, we should seek those things that are above,” and that therefore before all things else Easter has a spiritual significance, and brings us a spiritual message,—that is what time and again Scripture binds upon the heart, since the tendency to forget it is so strong.
Easter speaks to us of the raising of Jesus’ body. That He continued to live even though He died, was certain independently of His resurrection. No single disciple after Golgotha has doubted that.
Not His soul, but His body on the third day came back to life.
Hence that in His resurrection the physical appears so overwhelmingly in the foreground, and that because of this the temptation is so strong for the sake of that physical aspect of His resurrection, to minimize its spiritual significance.
Moreover it is so much easier to think of your own bodily resurrection, than of your spiritual rising again. The first goes on outside of your conscience. It carries your thoughts into a far future, when once the youngest day shall dawn. In this you are entirely passive.
But when there is mention of a spiritual rising again, it touches you personally, it touches the life of your soul, your conscience awakes, you can not remain passive, but action must follow, and, then your thoughts do not project themselves into a far future, but it must come to a lifting up of your spiritual life, now, in the present moment.