Then it is not: “If Christ is raised, you may ponder on the resurrection of your flesh, “but altogether different, and far more striking: “If then Christ is raised, seek those things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.”

The children of the world, and also, they who are still like children in the church, do not understand this; but they that are converted unto life understand this well.

For in their conversion they have passed over from the body to the soul.

Before their conversion, the body and the cares for the body stood in the foreground, with everything that belongs to it. All their thoughts and deliberations directed themselves to it, how to feed the body, how to satisfy its needs, how to yield to the body’s desire for sleep, to clothe the body, to add to the attractiveness of its appearance, to have money to spend on it, and by their outward appearance to command influence in the world.

But after their conversion all this was changed. From that hour on the body was placed in the background and the soul came to the fore.

Thus far they had cared for the body in a masterful way, but their soul had been left to starve, to pine away for thirst, to become barren and lean, to become diseased by all sorts of inward poison.

They had simply neglected their soul, had not looked after it, had not cared for it.

That soul was to them as a nightingale in the woods, a bird whose charming song they sometimes overheard, but which must not cost anything and for whose care they would not lift a finger. For hens, that lay eggs, they would spend pains and money, but that nightingale within was left to its own devices of obtaining food from God.

But now this has become different.

Now, after having been converted to the living God, they still provide for the needs of the body, for that is their duty, but the care for their soul keeps them continually more busy. First because, where strife arises, the body must give way to the soul, and never again, as before, may the soul be put second to the body. And again, because the soul which on account of the body had long been neglected, is now justified to demand a double measure of care, to make up for past neglect.

And this accounts for the fact, that a converted child of God with every incident, that is told him of Christ, asks indeed what the significance of it all is for his body, for the body too is God’s, but that in the first and foremost place he lends his ear, to hear, what those things that pertain to Jesus, have to say and what benefit they provide, for his so long undervalued, inwardly impoverished and neglected soul.

An Easter preaching which does not aim at this mark, and does not hit it, does not refresh the faithful.

It does not meet the want of the converted heart.

It is not after the spirit of childship, that cries: Abba Father!

But what refreshes and comforts, is the apostles’ word: “that Christ is raised for your justification.”

A sound without flavor or taste, to him who has to ask others, what justification is. But a sound full of sweetness and delight to him, who knows and mourns a guilt that consumes his hope, and who every time again when he lifts up his soul unto God, cries that that guilt might be turned away, that that guilt might be atoned for, that that guilt might be cast into the depths of the sea, and thus thirsts after justification.

He who breathlessly thirsts after water, knows water and knows well what water is. And so here, he who thirsts that he might be justified before God, knows the nature of justice, and understands what justification is.

And this justification is pledged and sealed in Jesus’ resurrection. For were He not risen, He would not have been the Son of God. Then He would have died for our sins as a martyr, and not as the Lamb of God. Then Golgotha would have brought us no result, and we would still be in our sins.

But now that Jesus is risen, and thereby has been shown with power to be the Son of God, now faith glories: “He Who there died upon the accursed wood was the Son of God, Himself God and with God”. And now the grace-seeking soul understands, that the dying of the Son of God was not for Himself but for us, an offering of infinite value and sufficient to atone for the sins of the whole world.

But there is more.

Not only does Jesus’ resurrection seal unto you, that in Golgotha lies the absolute antidote, that directly renders the poison, the deadly poison of guilt and of sin, nugatory in its working and destroys it, and therefore presents you just before God; but also in Jesus’ resurrection the mighty fact expresses itself, that the body follows the soul, and not the soul the body.

Because in dying, up to the moment when He gave up the ghost, Jesus after the soul gloriously overcame, therefore also His body could not be holden of death.

In the bitter conflict between soul and body, Jesus sacrificed His bodily life, His bodily existence. And just because the soul dominated over the body, it is from out the soul that life returns again to His body.

And this reacts directly upon our own life’s struggle.

To us also this life-struggle presents itself again and again under this same form.

On one side there is that which the body asks, and the body demands, and the body wills; but also on the other side the demand of the soul, that the body shall serve her, sacrifice itself for her, shall not be unto her an opponent, but an helpmeet.

True, all the struggle of life does not consist of this. But when by the sphere of the body you understand and comprise everything that from the visible and the external entices and would tempt you, and put over against this the need and the claim of the soul, then in nine cases out of ten, your life-struggle comes down to this, and your spiritual decline, your lack of spiritual animation and exaltation, yea, even the sobriety in your tone of life is attributable to an abandonment of the soul and a yielding to the body.

And therefore in all ages there has gone forth from Jesus’ resurrection unto all those that are known of the Lord a special call to spiritual revival.

Because Christ is risen, seek those things that are above.

For what is your Easter, what is Jesus’ resurrection, but the perfect triumph of spiritual life over the life of the flesh, the seal of God upon the rule, that when the soul abandons the body, the soul obtains power, gloriously to regain also that body again.

You see, you view it in the rising of Immanuel, how the spiritual life bears rule superpowerfully over the life of the body. Neither in Gethsemane nor on Golgotha did the spirit in Jesus shrink back before any demand whatever of the body. In all His suffering and dying you see Him moment by moment abandon the body, sacrifice it, make it serviceable to higher aim. And here at the open grave, you see, how the spirit of Jesus could bring that offering, and that He was obliged to bring that offering, because thereby alone could He reveal that higher power, first indeed to lay down life, but afterward also to take it up again.

This commandment He had received of His Father.

And now the conflict was ended.

The body glorious, because subjected to the soul, and in that glory of the body, evident, not the defeat, but the triumph of the spiritual life.

Hence you are a child of the Resurrection only, when that power that was aglow in Jesus’ resurrection, and at the opened grave shines forth upon all believers, is communicated to your soul, and in the life of your soul has so established the relation between soul and body, as it was sealed in Jesus’ resurrection.

A child of the Resurrection is himself spiritually quickened.

Not merely begotten again unto life in the mystery of regeneration, but also quickened in the spiritual tone of life, and quickened in the spiritual lifting up of soul.

Quickened not in the sense of over-exertion or spiritual excitement, or spiritual over-stimulation.

That over-exertion, that excitement and that over-stimulation comes to unstable souls from the foaming cup of spiritual emotionalism, not from the opened grave of your Savior.

But although all such excitement, over-exertion and over-stimulation, which is so diametrically opposed to that sobriety of spirit that governs the real children of God, must everytime be warned against, yet this should never be made an excuse, to seek the things that are on earth, and to forget those things that are above.

Continual awakening therefore among God’s people is most necessary. The “awake, thou that sleepest, and let Christ give thee light” (Eph. 5:14) should every morning be proclaimed from the pinnacle of the temple as a call for revival of spiritual life.

Where the atmosphere so often becomes sultry and oppressive, and renders spiritual breathing difficult and faint, the fresh wind of morning should blow everytime again through the garden of the Lord, that the fading flowerbud may lift itself up again on its stem.

Spiritual warming against the chill of the spiritual atmosphere, spiritual animation against the deadening influences of ordinary life, spiritual awakening against the spirit of sleep, that so easily overtakes the soul, and spiritual uplifting to safeguard us against so much that draws us on to the depths, is our common need, and woe to him, who instead of waking the brethren up to this again, extinguishes in them the spark of this sacred fire.

For if there is one speech that goes forth from the opened grave of Jesus, it is this: that after soul and body both you show your nobility only, when the soul may royally bear rule in you over the body, to sacrifice, where needful, the things of the body, and through that sacrifice to exalt not merely the soul, but also the body, to higher levels.

Dominion of soul over body, of the spirit over the flesh, of the invisible over that which is before our eyes, not for the sake of deeming in over-spirituality that the things before our eyes are valueless, but on the contrary, that in the power of God the glow of your higher spiritual life may radiate upon the whole of your outward life.

Celebrate the sense and the passion, that from the bodily sphere entices and tempts you, and the end is that both soul and body perish and go into perdition. But also, see it in Jesus, when you give the soul free rein to bear entire rule over the body, if needs be unto death, the soul overcomes royally and shares her wondrous triumph with the body.

Flesh and spirit, that and no other is the all-dominating antithesis, which in your Easter addresses you.

Here the spiritual art of the balance is at stake, and woe be unto you, when the scale, in which spiritual fruit is weighed, is found wanting.

Almost all spiritual heaviness, dulness and deathliness, proceeds from yielding to the body, from a fostering of the flesh, from not regularly feeding and watering, clothing and adorning the soul.

Always a broken equillibrium, so that the care for the flesh is too great, and anxiety for the daily care of the soul far too small.

And against this every year, as Easter returns, yea, each Lord’s day, when the hours of sacred rest start in again, the resurrection of Immanuel enters protest.

He your Savior has shown you in His dying and in His rising again, that the way to perfect glory is not the yielding to the demands of the flesh, but the fixed dominion of the spirit over the flesh.

And therefore your spiritual increase, O, children of revelation, is not, that in over-exertion or excitement you get away from yourself, but herein unlocks itself the gate through which you enter into the higher, more tender, more vital spiritual life, when, looking at the deliverance of Immanuel and His resurrection, you take the reins out of the hands of the body, of the flesh, of what is before your eyes, and, knowing the power of Jesus’ resurrection, you subject everything that is of the senses to the dominion of the spirit that is within you.

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