B. B. Warfield

In Christ’s resurrection, therefore, the Christian man sees the earnest and pledge of his own resurrection; and by it he is enheartened as he lays away the bodies of those dear to him, not sorrowing “as the rest that have no hope,” but with hearts swelling with glad anticipations of the day when they shall rise to meet their Lord. “For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also that are fallen asleep in Jesus will He bring with Him.

If we compare the present state of the New Testament text with that of any other ancient writing, we must… declare it to be marvelously correct. Such has been the care with which the New Testament has been copied – a care which has doubtless grown out of true reverence for its holy words…. The New Testament is unrivaled among ancient writings in the purity of its test as actually transmitted and kept in use.

Had Christ not risen we could not believe Him to be what He declared Himself when He “made Himself equal with God.” But He has risen in the confirmation of all His claims. By it alone, but by it thoroughly, is He manifested as the very Son of God, who has come into the world to reconcile the world to Himself. It is the fundamental fact in the Christian’s unwavering confidence in “all the words of this life.

From the empty grave of Jesus the enemies of the cross turn away in unconcealable dismay. Those whom the force of no logic can convince, and whose hearts are steeled against the appeal of almighty love from the cross itself, quail before the irresistible power of this simple fact. Christ has risen from the dead! After two thousand years of the most determined assault upon the evidence which demonstrates it, that fact stands. And so long as it stands Christianity, too, must stand as the one supernatural religion.

If criticism has made such discoveries as to necessitate the abandonment of the doctrine of plenary inspiration, it is not enough to say that we are compelled to abandon only a “particular theory of inspiration…” We must go on to say that that “particular theory of inspiration” is the theory of the apostles and of the Lord, and that in abandoning it we are abandoning them.

We can no longer speak of a bourne from which no traveler e’er returns. The middle wall of partition has been broken down and the boundary become but an invisible line by the resurrection of Christ. That He who died has been raised again and ever lives in the form of a complete humanity is the fundamental fact in the revelation of the Christian doctrine of immortality.

Had He not emerged from the tomb all our hopes, all our salvation would be lying dead with Him unto this day. But as we see Him issue from the grave we see ourselves issue with Him in newness of life. Now we know that His shoulders were strong enough to bear the burden that was laid upon them, and that He is able to save to the uttermost all that come unto God through Him. The resurrection of Christ is thus the indispensable evidence of His completed work, His accomplished redemption.

In the infinite wisdom of the Lord of all the earth, each event falls with exact precision into its proper place in the unfolding of His divine plan. Nothing, however small, however strange, occurs without His ordering, or without its particular fitness for its place in the working out of His purpose; and the end of all shall be the manifestation of His glory, and the accumulation of His praise.

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