THE SON OF MAN TRIUMPHANT

Mark ix. 9, viii. 38 (Matt. xii. 40, xvii. 12, xiii. 41, xvi. 27, 28, xxvi. 64).

It appeared an incredible thing to the disciples of Jesus that He whom they believed to be the Messiah and who called Himself the Son of Man to them, should be put to death. The prediction of such an event was so startling and perplexing that the spokesman of the group must needs voice the protest of the faithful and loving followers. In this prediction what they saw of the supernatural element in their leader must have seemed to contradict itself. Trusting in the supernatural knowledge of their Master, they must believe His foreshadowing of His tragic end; but again, thinking of His supernatural power as a worker of miracles, could they believe that it was necessary for Him to surrender Himself to His enemies?

Moreover, why should He be put to death? He was no vehement preacher of sedition. What possible ground could there be upon which just action leading to His death could be taken by the rulers? Were He, like some former claimants to the Messiahship, the organizer of an open rebellion against the powers that be, His gloomy outlook into the future might have some plausibility; but for a teacher of righteousness, for a law-abiding citizen such as He was, the only just recompense must be a supernatural, or as we nowadays call it, "apocalyptic" ratification and establishment of His Messiahship.

But if it was bold for Jesus to predict His own violent death, it was quite as bold, if not indeed much bolder, to predict His rising from the tomb. Here, too, was an outlook highly improbable in itself. The resurrection idea, though not unfamiliar to the disciples, was by them, as it was by the Pharisees, associated with the remote event of the end of the world, the great "Day of Jehovah." For a resurrection to happen as a sporadic event to any individual was very hard indeed, if not impossible, to believe. And yet the combination of the two predictions of death and resurrection must have helped to lessen the difficulty of believing either separately. Just because He could and should rise again, the Son of Man might look upon His violent death with equanimity. In some way not to be clearly seen, His death might be the means towards the accomplishment of a higher end, if only He were to shake Himself free of the power of death in the end. And again, if Jesus was to die as the Messiah, His resurrection would at once be taken out of the class of ordinary events and placed in an entirely different category. Thus in the Son of Man apparent contradictions are always reconciled. If He exhibits weakness before the eyes of men, it is in order to show strength. If He is strong, it is that He may give up His strength in the struggle for the good of His loved ones. His defeat is His triumph.

1. The Resurrection of the Son of Man.

That the Chosen of Fortune could not remain a permanent victim of misfortune has been the widespread belief and conviction of all ages. It is, indeed, the counterpart of the prophetic "Thou wilt not suffer thy Holy One to see corruption." Unless it be regarded as a gratuitous introduction of prodigy into human thought, the resurrection of Osiris or Adonis means the confidence that what has flourished in glory is ever stronger than the powers of decay.

The Persian sages argued that it is easier to bring back into life one who has died than to create him out of nothing. For in creating, the creator must bring into being both the idea and the material of the creature, whereas in the restoring the dead to life the idea was already in existence. The pattern is at hand, and all that is needed is to give it back its power and substance. Or, to put it in another form, creation, because it must proceed without antecedents, must be harder than resurrection with the path already marked out for it by creation. But Persian sage, Greek philosopher, and Hebrew seer alike resorted to the idea of resurrection as a protest against the idea that the noble and great among men should be in the end swallowed up in nonexistence.

In all these earlier premonitions of a possible rising to life of those who had died, it is only the select that are thought of as entitled to the privilege. "Thou shalt not suffer thy beloved one to see corruption." In the case of Osiris, it was the demigod who through resurrection was deified. The hero who possessed irrepressible energy or indestructible life might aspire to victory over the powers of darkness. There was no comfort in this to the ordinary man. Hence it does not appear that belief in the resurrection of an Osiris or an Adonis had any bearing whatever on the everyday life of the devotee of the ancient cults.

Quite different is the function of the belief in the resurrection of the Christ in the New Testament. From the moment when Jesus predicted it the event is associated with His public work as Saviour. It is not for Himself that He either dies or rises again not to display His power over the world principle, nor to illustrate a cosmic law, nor yet to prove the truth of the conviction that a noble, a pre-eminent soul might enjoy a rare privilege, but that the whole race might be made partakers of eternal life. His resurrection is not meant as the occasion of arousing sympathy for and fellowship in His joy, but to assure of an inner and vital identification of Himself with them.

Thus the whole treatment of the saving work of Jesus in the apostolic references to it co-ordinates His resurrection with His death. As He dies in order to give His life a ransom for many, so He rises in order to bring many into a new life. Paul clearly and logically establishes this connection. "He was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification" (Rom. iv. 25). But He is not alone in making the resurrection the corner-stone of salvation. "God," according to Peter, "begat us again unto a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead" (1 Pet. i. 3). John has so thoroughly apprehended the significance of the resurrection of the Master that he not only gives the most extensive and detailed account of the event, but preserves the immortal and invaluable utterance: "I am the resurrection and the life" (John xi. 25 )One does not wonder that whereas the working out of the resurrection thought around the story of Osiris and around the story of Adonis once flourished in the form of a mere myth, but has now been left to the archeologist, the historian, and the lover of folklore to cherish, the resurrection fact of the Gospel, the return from the tomb of Jesus, has retained all its first vitality: yea, and that it has gained with every new interweaving of it into human experience.

2. The Victory over Death.

Thus far we have followed the thought of the resurrection of Jesus involved in His Messiahship. "Thou wilt not suffer thy Holy One to see corruption"; not, however, for His own sake. Nothing that enters into the experience of the Messiah, the Son of Man, is for His own sake. He is not suffered to see corruption in order that His holy ones might be associated with Him in His joys and have the assurance that though the worst had happened to them they can still maintain their place and privilege as the children of God.

The Son of Man is not exempt from suffering and death in a world of sin. How then can any other man expect to be? But the Son of Man has triumphed over suffering and death; he has defied it, and it has done its worst on him; yet he has won the victory over it at its strongest. Even death lies conquered and shorn of its terrors at his feet. Therefore all the sons of men for all time may look to the final victory over suffering and death.

"Jesus rose, no longer now

     Can thy terrors, death, appal me;

Jesus rose, and well I know

     From the grave He will recall me."

The revolutionary significance of the resurrection of Jesus for the experience of death, though at first glance obvious enough, can be easily underestimated. The anticipation of death has a tendency to distress, depress, and even paralyse the normal movement of life. There are times and circumstances in which the expectation comes with even terrifying force. In its mildest form the emotion excited, as, for instance, in the aged who have lived the full measure of days on earth, is one of deep regret. There is a pathetic passage in one of Herbert Spencer's latest letters, in which, after attaining his eightieth birthday, he faces the prospect of speedy dissolution, and speaks of the sadness that fills his soul as he thinks that soon the world of birds and flowers, of sunshine and blue skies, of progress in knowledge and enjoyment of friendships, must close to him.

And the fuller and purer has been the stream of life, the greater the regret at its running dry. The nobler the aspirations, the more strenuous the endeavours to achieve ideals, the greater the self-denials in the struggle for better things, the greater the waste and loss and the consequent pathos at the view of the cutting off of life even at the end of its normal length. "If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable." "If after the manner of men I have fought with beasts at Ephesus, what advantageth it me, if the dead rise not? Let us eat and drink; for to-morrow we die"(1 Cor. xv. 19, 32). Thus wrote one whose years were comparatively full; he was not a very young man; and his life had been full of good works; yet he found no perfect satisfaction in the backward look; nor will any one in a healthy frame of mind. The soul must be able to look forward in order to feel that it has had fair treatment in the struggle of life.

But the case is even more serious, more full of pathos and sadness, when, instead of coming to the end of a long and full career, man is cut off in the midst of his days. Add to this the frequent and unaccountable, either physically or morally, association of pain and disease with the ending of life. What is more pathetic than the sight of a young person stricken with an incurable malady, desirous to live, full of hope, and even of determination, realising that hopes and prayers and efforts of will and skill must alike prove futile? How even the Christian world stands dumbfounded and staggered by the untimely taking away of some heroic young man, like Henry Martyn, David Brainerd, Ion Keith-Falconer, or William Whiting Borden, whose life promised so much for the advancement of the kingdom of God. And if the gospel were a religion of this world and for this world only, the misgivings and forebodings of Christendom in such circumstances would be justified. But the rising of the Son of Man from the dead puts an entirely different aspect both on the peaceful departure of the aged and of the strong and active man in the flower of his manhood. Death is not the conqueror, but the servant of life.

The worst that could have been done has been done, and the Son of Man remains not only unscathed, but master over his adversary. He has the enemy at his mercy. There are conflicts which end in the annihilation of either party. They can end in no other way. The contestants are absolutely incompatible with one another. As long as they both live they must contend for the extermination of the other. Such is the conflict of Christ and sin, but not such was the conflict between Christ and death. It was rather a contest for place. Death being conquered, he becomes the obedient minister of the Lord of Life. Therefore the Church has ever sung:

"Alleluia; The strife is o'er, the battle done;

               The victory of life is won;

               The song of triumph has begun.

 

                The powers of death have done their worst;

                 But Christ their legions hath dispersed;

                 Let shouts of holy joy outburst.            Alleluia."

3. The Son of Man in Glory.

But rising from the dead, great and wonderful and meaningful as the fact may be, is not all that the Son of Man has achieved. He has ascended into glory. "What is man, that thou art mindful of him? or the son of man, that thou visitest him?" sang the ancient Psalmist. And the New Testament writer, quoting the words and applying them to Jesus, adds as he explains their meaning: "But now we behold him, who has been made a little lower than the angels, even Jesus, because of the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honour" (Heb. ii. 5-8). "Crowned with glory and honour" for the suffering of death! The experience of death, then, adds to the lustre of the crown which was His from the beginning. It may even be said that it was a new crown He won through death and resurrection. The Cross and the victory over death do not merely replace things in the order in which they were before sin. Redemption is no mere restitution. It involves an advance. There are diseases which, when healed, lead to purer health than that enjoyed before they came. There are misfortunes, the overcoming of which leaves a greater blessing than could have come without them. It is well at times to preserve a structure in its primitive simplicity; but when that structure has been wrecked, to take up the ruins and make them over into a grander and more stately edifice, this is, indeed, the noble part of the true artist It is conceivable that the almighty Creator might have prevented the entrance of sin into the world. But after sin did enter, that He should take up the ruins and reconstitute them into a better world than one that has never known sin, this is His glory. "Where sin abounded, grace did abound more exceedingly" (Rom. v. 20). The gain through redemption is greater than the loss through sin. The glory after the resurrection is more brilliant than the pleasure of a life without sacrifice and death.

We are not disturbed in this thought by the logical and purely speculative consideration, that if Christ was a divine person His glory in His pre-existence could not be increased by resurrection, as it could not have been diminished by the humiliation of the incarnation. Since as God He did yearn for those who needed His saving ministry, and since He did "for the joy that was set before him endure the cross, despising the shame," and that "he hath sat down at the right hand of God," it must needs be that the reward adds something to His satisfaction, that "the joy that was set before him" was greater than that He was possessing before.

But what, after all, is the glory of God? What is the glory of the Son of Man? The glory of God is surely nothing else than the glow of the warmth of His love spreading and engulfing ever increasing multitudes of His children. Men glorify God not when they stand in awe of His in" conceivable greatness, or obey His will out of sheer dread lest by disobeying they bring wrath and condemnation on themselves, or by chanting His praise in words and strains carrying no depth of meaning, but when they yield themselves to His love and allow Him to work His gracious will through them. It is thus that He gets honour to Himself through them.

What then, once more, is the glory of the Son of Man? Jesus told His disciples that His meat and drink was to do the will of the Father that sent Him. The glory of the Son of Man is to induce the largest number possible of His brethren to come within the reach of the Father's love. The glory of the Son of Man is the light which issues from His countenance as He contemplates the blessedness created by His successful achievement of the work of redemption. "He shall see of the travail of his soul and shall be satisfied" (Isa. liii. u). This must be taken as the standard and measure of the glory of the Redeemer at the right hand of God.

The tyrant may count it his glory that men fear him and obey him. The pompous potentate may deem it his glory that the dazzling splendour of his robes and the glittering crown he wears fill the poverty-stricken multitude with amazement and envy. The worldling may think it his glory when men praise his genius and applaud his wonderful achievements, or even his goodness and kindly disposition. But the mother's glory consists in the genuine well-doing (not merely the welfare) of those whom she has nourished and cared for. "Behold my jewels," she says, in the person of the Roman matron. It was the glory of the mother of the Gracchi to have given herself for her sons and to see in them realised her best ideals for herself.

This was in a manner signified when Jesus broke forth into rejoicing as He was told of the desire of the Greeks to see Him at Jerusalem. "The hour is come that the Son of Man should be glorified" (John xii. 23, 24). These Greeks were the vanguard of a vast army, the first arrivals of an endless migration. They evoked the vision before His eyes of the world-wide movement of the Gentiles toward Him. The multitudes, invisible to others, were seen by His own keen eyes. The hour had already struck. The love of God which He had made known and available to all would be presently tasted by the world for which He was to give His life a ransom. This was, indeed, a reward to be enjoyed and at the same time a goal to be achieved. No wonder that it filled His soul with inexpressible emotion and led Him to the sacrifice that He must make with new determination. What if that sacrifice seemed to be the effacement of Himself? "Except a grain of wheat fall into the earth and die, it abideth by itself alone; but if it die, it beareth much fruit" He was glorified in that he bore much fruit.

The resurrection of the Son of Man, His triumph over death, His reduction of the last enemy into not merely a harmless adversary, but into a willing and useful minister of good, His ascent into His glory, are not for Himself alone. They are like the wealth for which the father of the household toils and plans, to be placed at the disposal of his loved ones. He can only enjoy them in full as he shares them in full with those who belong to him, of whom he also says in his intercessory prayer, "I am glorified in them."