Part II Doctrine
XV. LIFE THROUGH HIS DEATH
humanity that Christ approaches us, and it is through his humanity that we must first draw near to him. His humanity is the door through which we must come into the throne room of his deity. "Let us therefore come boldly . . ." (4:16)
suffering from mortal illness, is especially significant for Christians because it was used by Jesus as an expression of his own final agony (Matt. 27:46). Although its anguish is as deep as Job’s, the psalm raises the solution of the problem to a higher level, since it ends with a song of praise and triumph (vv. 22—3 1), thus suggesting to the devout reader that suffering may not necessarily lead to defeat but may be the essential prelude to victory.
The most profound of the Old Testament passages dealing with the sufferings of the innocent is one we have already studied—Isaiah 53.
Since it is so important for understanding the Christian view of the meaning of Christ’s death, it might be well for the reader to review it once again. Whereas Psalm 22 more or less accidentally suggests that suffering may lead to triumph, Isaiah 53 declares unmistakably that in one case at least this was certainly so. The "Servant," whoever he may have been in the mind of the author, accomplished his great redeeming work, not in spite of his sufferings, but precisely because of them (vv. 4, 5, 11, 12). He did not abolish the evils of man’s lot by waving them away with an imperious and godlike hand, but by bearing theni away on his own shoulders, voluntarily bowed to suffering and death.
This is the Christian interpretation of the death of Christ, an
interpretation which sets the whole problem of innocent suffering in a new light. Christ’s death was not a tragic accident; he did not die
because he was weak and helpless, but because he was strong, strong in love such as no man had ever shown before. To save men, he became a man; to conquer suffering, he learned to suffer; to overcome death, he died as all his brethren must die. This is a theme which occurs
repeatedly, especially in the Gospel of John: the death of Jesus was not evidence of his failure, but of his love and his will to save. Furthermore, his love was not the love of a pitiable and impractical prophet, but a manifestation in human terms of the very love of God Himself. All our quotations from John’s Gospel (3:14—17; 13:1; 15:12—13) repeat this theme in some of its different aspects.
St. Paul in the Epistle to the Romans (5:6—19) also emphasizes that the death of Christ was a sacrifice of love (v. 8), the effectiveness of which depended upon his complete identification with sinful and suffering mankind. As the original and imperfect man brought disaster into the world by disobedience, a true and perfect man must, by obedience, even to suffering and death, remove it (12, 15, 17—19).
In all these things we are, of course, dealing with mysteries. How the suffering and death of Christ effect our redemption we can neither comprehend nor express in purely logical terms. But where the mystery of innocent suffering by itself is dark and frightening, the contemplation of redemptive suffering brings to men the light of hope and courage.
Once we apprehend, even dimly, that the suffering and death of one man can bring life to many, we begin to see all suffering in a new
perspective. We come to realize that God may use even our own sufferings for redemptive purposes.
Because redemption is necessarily a mystery, the nature of the process can best be expressed in poetic and imaginative language. Christ can be pictured (in Paul’s terms) as the Last Man undoing the evil of the First Man; or as the Divine Hero defeating man’s enemies in battle (Rev.
19:11); or by the best and most basic image of all, as the great High Priest offering the final sacrifice and opening the way into the Holy of Holies. This is the favorite image of the Epistle to the Hebrews. Much of the Pentateuch is occupied with the ritual of sacrifice; for Christians, and especially for the author of Hebrews, all this merely foreshadows the sacrifice of Christ. The meaning of the animal sacrifices of the Old Testament is to be found only as men see Christ offering on their behalf the perfect sacrifice—that of his own life (Heb. 10:19--25)—and as they endeavor themselves to follow him along this "new and living way."
XVI. VICTORY THROUGH HIS RESURRECTION Ecclesiastes 9:1—6; Psalm 16; Acts 13:26—37;
I Corinthians 15:12—19; Philippians 3:7—2 1
For ordinary sinful man, death is the final defeat; for Christ it led to the ultimate victory. He shared our common nature and suffered our
common mortality, but only to show that our true destiny is not death and corruption, but eternal life as the children of God. The resurrection of Christ is the central article of biblical faith and, once grasped, throws new light on the rest of the Bible, and on the total meaning of human life. For the old-fashioned paganism of the Greco-Roman world, the realities of life were essentially somber, and even for most men of the Old Testament the life of individuals had no ultimate meaning. The joyousness and sense of purpose which are characteristic of the
Christian view of life are due entirely to the fact of Christ’s resurrection.
The contrast between the Christian view and that of paganism or of Old Testament man at his unregenerate worst is well illustrated by the passage from Ecclesiastes (9:1—6) which is our first selection. This book is far from being typical of the Old Testament. Indeed it is so different from anything else in the Bible that readers frequently wonder why it is found there at all. But, whatever may have been the original reason for its inclusion, it has great value as showing what life is like without the resurrection faith. The author, a sophisticated Jew who lived at a late period in Israel’s history and no longer shared the ancient hope of his people, can find no meaning whatever in life since death is the end of it all. His final, cynical and unheroic conclusion is that "a living dog is better than a dead lion" (v. 4).
Far more characteristic of the outlook of the Old Testament is Psalm i6, a hymn which, like Psalm 22, expresses the emotions of an invalid seeking deliverance from serious illness. He speaks of his absolute trust in God and his almost mystical feeling that a sense of God’s nearness is the greatest blessing a man can have (vv. 2, 5, 11). He is sure that God’s will for him is not death, but life, and that God will not permit his
present sickness to end fatally (v. 10 should be translated "thou wilt not abandon me to Sheol [meaning, the realm of the dead]"). It is not likely that he hopes for personal immortality, but at least he is sustained at each stage of this earthly life by a serene confidence in the goodness and power of God.
As we noted above, the fact of Jesus’ resurrection throws new light on the whole Bible story and when men of the New Testament read this psalm it seemed to them that the author (whom they assumed to be David) must not only have come near the resurrection faith, but must have actually anticipated it. So they understood the words of v. 10 to be a prophecy of Christ’s rising from the dead. This is the way it is
interpreted in Paul’s sermon at Pisidian Antioch, part of which is recorded in Acts 13:26— 37 (note especially 35—37). While a careful reading of the psalm shows that the author was speaking of his own deliverance from sickness rather than of the Messiah’s resurrection, Paul’s use of the passage is not entirely unjustified, because faith of such intensity as the author exhibits ultimately requires for its object a God who will deliver men (and therefore, above all, the Messiah) from death itself. As often happens, the psalmist spoke more largely than he knew.
The centrality of the resurrection faith in early Christian thought is illustrated by the passage from I Corinthians (15:12—19). St. Paul insists that neither his preaching nor his readers’ faith has any meaning if Christ did not rise from the dead (vv. 14, 17). There were evidently some in the Corinthian congregation who, like some in the modern Church, felt one could be a good Christian without believing in the resurrection of the dead (12). For Paul the two things are
inseparable—the resurrection of Christ and the resurrection of those who believe in him; the former is the assurance of the latter. If we believe in one we must also believe in the other. If we can believe in neither, then it would be better to have remained a pagan, without faith or hope, for our religion is an empty delusion and "we are of all men most miserable" (19).
The passage from Philippians (3:7—21) shows how profoundly the resurrection faith affected Paul’s whole attitude toward life. This letter is the most attractive of all the Pauline writings, written late in his life, warm, mellow, non-argumentative, the ripe fruit of a life spent in
Christ’s service. He tells how his knowledge of Christ had come to seem the only possession worth having (vv. 7, 8). Dissatisfied with his old religion and its attempt to make men right with God through obedience to the Covenant of Law, he had found perfect harmony with God
through faith in Christ (9). He had learned to be like Christ by sharing with him "the fellowship of his sufferings" and by this means had come also to know "the power of his resurrection" (10, 11). But Paul wants his readers to understand that his new-found strength has not caused him to be smugly satisfied with his achievements. He is in no danger of falling into a new kind of Christian Pharisaism. The resurrection faith is not a narcotic but a stimulant. The Christian, far from being content with what he is, must continually press forward toward a bright future in which he shall be more perfectly conformed to the image of the risen Christ (12—14, 20f).