Philippians 3:10 That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable to his death; I. IN RELATION TO SIN. 1. The death of Christ, had the redemptive effort ended there, had sealed man's doom forever; the resurrection made it vital, the spring of purifying and renewing for the world. From the ground the blood of Christ, like that of Abel, cries out against humanity. It is from heaven that Jesus preaches peace through His blood, and makes it a power to save. 2. The resurrection brought to man precisely the power he needed for victorious resistance to that by which his higher life was in process of being destroyed. The risen form threw glorious light on the flesh, as completing the incarnation. The body was redeemed by it from degradation, and consecrated as the Spirit's organ and shrine forever. 3. When Christ had risen, men saw that the vileness, the curse, the stain, was the work of an alien and intrusive force which might be expelled, and in the might of that belief men for the first time rose in victory over those passions which had defiled the body. II. IN RELATION TO SORROW. 1. The mountains of the world are great or as nothing according as we view them from a valley or from a star, so all the storms and crosses of life dwindle looked at from the height of "Jesus and the resurrection." 2. The resurrection maintains the continuity of the life of the man of sorrows and the reigning king. So we need not shrink from our sorrows if we but bear in mind the glory that shall follow. 3. Nay, the men who first realized the power of the resurrection, "gloried in tribulations." It made them one with Christ, which guaranteed the ultimate victory. III. IN RELATION TO DEATH. 1. We have little power of realizing the anguish with which the men of old peered into the unseen. This was the world of light, of life — that of shadows and ghosts. To the children of the resurrection it is exactly the reverse. The sorrow and gloom is of time, the light and joy are everlasting. 2. The resurrection wedded the two worlds. Who now dreads to live or to die? Because "living or dying we are the Lord's." (Baldwin Brown, B. A.). Parallel Verses KJV: That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death; |
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