“If Christ is not risen, then is our preaching in vain, and your faith is also in
vain; you are yet in your sins.” But if Christ is risen, then I know where I am. If it is really so, that He is
God in human flesh—if He took my sin and bore the consequences of it, and made a clear sweep of it
from before the judgement seat of the Most High—and if His rising, again, is God’s testimony that the
work is done and that Christ, who stood as Substitute for me, is accepted for me, oh, hallelujah, hallelujah!
What more do I need, but to praise and bless the name of Him who has saved me with an effectual
salvation? Now will I work for Him! Now will I spend and be spent in His service! Now will I hate every
false way, and every sin, and seek after purity and holiness, but not, in any sense, as the groundwork of my confidence! My one hope for time and eternity is JESUS, only JESUS! Jesus crucified and risen
from the dead!
I do not know any passage of Scripture which, more thoroughly than this one, throws the stress where the stress must be—not on man, but on Christ alone—“If there is no resurrection of the dead, then is Christ not risen: and if Christ is not risen, then is our preaching in vain; and your faith is also in vain.” O dear hearer, if you would be saved, your salvation does not lie with yourself, but with Him who left His Father’s bosom and came down to earth a babe at Bethlehem, and hung upon a woman’s breast— upon Him who lived here, for 33 years, a life of suffering and of toil, and who then took all the sin of His people upon Himself—carried it up to the tree and there bore all the consequences of it in His own body—
Jesus Christ bore that which has made God’s pardon an act of justice and vindicated His forgiveness of sin so that none can say that He is unjust when He passes by transgression! Christ did all that and then, dying, was laid in the tomb, but, the third day His Father raised Him from the dead in token that He spoke the truth when He said, on the cross, “It is finished.” The debt is now paid! Then, O sinner, leave your prison, for your debt is paid! Are you shut up in despair on account of your debt of sin? It is all discharged if you have believed in Him who was raised from the dead! He has taken all your sin and you are free. That handwriting of ordinances that was against you is nailed to His cross. Go your way and sing, “The Lord is risen, indeed,” and be as happy as all the birds in the air, till you are, by-and-by, as happy as the angels in heaven, through Jesus Christ our Lord! Amen.
If There is No Resurrection, Sermon 2287, Charles Haddon Spurgeon
I do not know any passage of Scripture which, more thoroughly than this one, throws the stress where the stress must be—not on man, but on Christ alone—“If there is no resurrection of the dead, then is Christ not risen: and if Christ is not risen, then is our preaching in vain; and your faith is also in vain.” O dear hearer, if you would be saved, your salvation does not lie with yourself, but with Him who left His Father’s bosom and came down to earth a babe at Bethlehem, and hung upon a woman’s breast— upon Him who lived here, for 33 years, a life of suffering and of toil, and who then took all the sin of His people upon Himself—carried it up to the tree and there bore all the consequences of it in His own body—
“Bore all that Almighty God could bear,
With strength enough, but none to spare.”
Jesus Christ bore that which has made God’s pardon an act of justice and vindicated His forgiveness of sin so that none can say that He is unjust when He passes by transgression! Christ did all that and then, dying, was laid in the tomb, but, the third day His Father raised Him from the dead in token that He spoke the truth when He said, on the cross, “It is finished.” The debt is now paid! Then, O sinner, leave your prison, for your debt is paid! Are you shut up in despair on account of your debt of sin? It is all discharged if you have believed in Him who was raised from the dead! He has taken all your sin and you are free. That handwriting of ordinances that was against you is nailed to His cross. Go your way and sing, “The Lord is risen, indeed,” and be as happy as all the birds in the air, till you are, by-and-by, as happy as the angels in heaven, through Jesus Christ our Lord! Amen.
If There is No Resurrection, Sermon 2287, Charles Haddon Spurgeon
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