Originally
by Geerhardus Vos 23 April 1905, Princeton Seminary Chapel
Edited
for Christ the Redeemer Church of Manhattan, KS by Nate Wilson 17
April 2022
150 years ago, Princeton was a place where conservative, Bible-believing Christians could get a good education and preparation for church pastoring, but the modern tides of Secular Humanism were also beginning to take root in America, and by the 1920’s, Princeton was so compromised by liberalism and neo-orthodoxy that most of the Bible-believing, evangelical professors were no longer able to stay in that environment. Shortly thereafter, the Presbyterian denomination which sponsored Princeton ruled that a minister did not have to believe that the Bible is inspired or that Jesus was born of a virgin, or that the other miracles of the Bible really happened, or that there was a literal Adam and Eve, or that Jesus is actually coming back1. For those of us in the flyover states, it’s taken perhaps 100 years for those tectonic shifts to begin rocking our world, but we’re all seeing by now the gigantic problems that happen when you take the Biblical God out of religion. But there was a professor at Princeton who saw it coming over 100 years ago and who stood fast for the gospel, even as the tide of truth was receding from America’s Ivy League institutions, and who, together with friends like B. B. Warfield, kept teaching the Bible and preaching the gospel at Princeton. His name was Geerhardus Vos. Of all the textbooks that I read in seminary, I enjoyed his Biblical Theology the most. Maybe some of you have read his wife Catherine’s book of Children’s Bible stories. Last year, I was given a book containing 16 sermons that Geerhardus preached at the Princeton Seminary chapel, and when I read his Easter sermons, I knew I wanted to share one of them with y’all this Resurrection Day. I’ve reshaped some of it into my own words, but, for the most part, these are the words that Geerhardus Vos shared at Easter in the year 1905 at Miller Chapel, Princeton:
Among the evils which threatened the life of the church at Corinth… were certain doubts and errors on the subject of the resurrection. Evidently Paul attributed very great importance to these. You can infer this from the fact that, in dealing with the various abnormal conditions in the church, he reserves the treatment of this particular evil for the close of the epistle. He wanted the impression of what he had to say on this point to be the final and most-lasting impression left upon the minds of the Corinthians. All the other problems concerning such matters as divisions and partisanship, the relapse into pagan modes of living, marriages between believers and unbelievers – important though they were in themselves – belonged, after all, to the periphery – the outcome, not the root and center of Christianity.
But with the resurrection, it was a totally different matter. Here the heart, the core, the very foundation and substance of the Christian faith were at stake. Paul felt that if, on this vital point, a serious departure from the truth were allowed to develop unhindered, then, sooner or later, by the inexorable law of organic disease, the whole body was doomed to destruction. This is the only way in which we can explain the intensely-earnest, careful, thorough-going manner of 1 Corinthians 15. Paul was so profoundly impressed with the vital character of the resurrection, that no other method of vindicating it could satisfy him than... [to place] it in the center of the Christian religion... and focus upon it...
He exhibits the resurrection as that towards which everything in Christianity tends; the goal in which all thinking and striving and hoping of believers finds its perfect rest and triumphant solution. We can set for ourselves no more appropriate or profitable task, on this day, than to trace, at the hand of the apostle, the nexus of our Christian faith with the resurrection of Christ… Our holy faith stands or falls with the resurrection of Christ.
This can be broken down into three points: the relationship of Christ’s resurrection to our Justification, to our Regeneration, and to our Glorification.
For Paul, the resurrection stands in the center of the gospel as the good news of justification – of deliverance from the guilt of sin. To him, the one religious question which overshadows all others in importance is the question: “How shall a sinful man become righteous in the sight of God?” Now, if the resurrection of Christ had nothing to contribute towards the solution of this one stupendous problem, then it could scarcely be said to be of the heart of the gospel. It would have to recede into the shadow of the cross.
As a matter of fact, this frequently takes place in our minds when we think of the forgiveness of sins. That justification depends on the cross is one of the common understandings of our evangelical belief; so much so that we hardly deem it necessary to ask whether the resurrection perhaps may not have an equally-important bearing on our righteousness with God. But the resurrection is an absolutely necessary step in the work of atonement and justification: “If Christ has not been raised,” [Paul] says to the Corinthians, “your faith is vain.” That is to say, your faith is ineffective and worthless because “you are yet in your sins.” It is justifying faith – faith in its connection with the forgiveness of sins – the efficacy of which is somehow bound up with the Savior’s resurrection. “Y’all are yet in your sins” means “Y’all are yet under the condemnation of sin,” subject to the wrath of God, exposed to eternal destruction. This appears still more clearly from what the apostle adds straight away: “Then the Christians who have fallen asleep [in death] would have perished.”
And this isn’t the only place in the epistles of Paul where the justification of the believer and the resurrection of Christ are joined together.
In Romans 10:9 we read that “our [Christian] faith,” on which the imputation of righteousness depends, “is in God” as the one “who raised [Jesus] from the dead.”
And Romans 4:25 says that Christ was “delivered for our sins [and] raised for our justification.”
Then in Romans 8:33-34, we see that no one can make any charges stick against God’s elect because “God justifies” and none “can condemn, for it is Christ Jesus who died and was raised from the dead.”
Furthermore, Romans 10 says that to speak in one’s heart despairingly, as if righteousness were still to be provided, would be equivalent to saying, “Who shall ascend into heaven for the purpose of bringing Christ down [to His life of suffering and humiliation], or who shall descend into the abyss for the purpose of bringing Christ up [from the realm of death]”? The two things, therefore, on which righteousness depends are the descent of Christ from heaven to bear our sins and the resurrection. Hence, Romans 10:9, “If you believe in your heart that God raised Jesus from the dead, you shall be saved.”
From all this, it is perfectly plain that we are not dealing here with an outlier doctrine, but with something which stands out in the apostle’s teaching as a fundamental truth.
But the question remains, “What is it that the resurrection contributes to our becoming righteous in the sight of God?” We can put the answer in the most simple form by saying, “The resurrection is related to righteousness in the same way that death is related to sin.” Once we clearly understand what death meant to the apostle, then it will become plain what the resurrection of Christ meant.
“Death” is a word that looms large in the Pauline epistles... Death is personified as a great enemy, a huge spectre, casting its dreadful shadow over human existence… And to what does death owe this unique terror in the mind of Paul?
Is it simply a knee-jerk response to the loathsomeness of physical dissolution?
Or shall we say that it is just the instinctive desire to live?
Such feelings... undoubtedly colored, to some extent, Paul’s intense consciousness on the subject, but they do not explain it exhaustively.
In the apostle’s attitude towards death, there is something more than this, something different; it is an element of moral revulsion.
Paul abhors and hates death because it is the wages – the penalty of – sin. Whatever else it might be, to him, it appeared first of all as a minister of condemnation, the personified, incarnate sentence of God against sin.
This is what death is when you strip it of all accidental features. Death is the exponent of sin. Its sentence and penalty is one with which the criminality of sin ineffaceably stamps the sinner.
“The sting of death is sin,” and the power of sin is the law, and the law is nothing else than God himself personally confronting the transgressor and rendering judgment: “The soul that sinneth, it shall die” (Ezekiel 18:4 & 20).
Now, if this is the significance of death in general, it follows that the death of Christ in particular must be interpreted on the same principle. “Christ was made sin on our behalf” (2 Cor. 5:21). When He assumed our guilt, it became inevitable that, not merely some general form of suffering entailed by sin should fall on Him, but also that the one great typical punishment of sin should be visited on Him – that He should die. Although His whole life in the flesh was sin-bearing, from beginning to end, yet it was specifically in the cross and in the death that took place upon the cross, that the condemnatory power of the law was concentrated on Christ. There it was made manifest that He had become sin for us – the curse incarnate.
And if this is so, then the significance of the resurrection for the atoning work of Christ immediately springs into view. If the Savior’s death was the embodiment of the curse which rests upon the world, then, so long as He remained under the power of death, there could be no assurance that satisfaction had been rendered and the condemnation of the divine wrath removed. On the other hand, as soon as the process of death is suspended and life is permitted to emerge from death, this is a practical declaration, on God’s part, that the curse has exhausted itself – that the penalty has been paid. Christ’s bodily resurrection was the only way in which this could be effectively declared. As the curse laid upon Him had assumed the visible form of separation between body and soul, it was necessary that, in the same physical sphere – in the same palpable form – the divine absolution should be solemnly pronounced and placed on record. By raising Christ from death, God, as the supreme Judge, set His seal to the absolute perfection and completeness of His atoning work. The resurrection is a public announcement to the world that the penalty of death had been borne by Christ to its bitter end, and that, in consequence, the dominion of guilt has been broken, and the curse annihilated for evermore.
… We were concerned – you, and I, and all believers – in this momentous transaction. The principle of our justification [our being made right with God] was given here [in the resurrection of Jesus] as an accomplished fact. It is just as impossible that any one for whom Christ rose from the dead should fail to receive the righteousness of God, as it is that God should undo the resurrection of Christ itself. Consequently, knowing ourselves to be one with Christ, we find in the resurrection the strongest possible assurance of pardon and peace. When Christ rose on Easter morning, He left behind Him, in the depths of the grave, every one of our sins. There they remain buried from the sight of God so completely that, even in the day of judgment, they will not be able to rise up against us any more. And, not only is this true of the resurrection as an accomplished fact, it is true in an even-higher sense of the risen Lord Himself. The very life of the exalted Christ is a witness to the wonderful reality of the forgiveness of our sins. In the living Savior, Paul would have us, by faith, grasp our justification. In the same real sense in which, on earth, Christ was identified with our sin, He is now in His resurrection-life identified with our state of pardon and acceptance. In the profound words of the apostle, “we have become the righteousness of God in Him” (2 Cor. 5:21), because He has become the righteousness of God for us.
The resurrection of Christ is also of basic importance for the renewal of our life, for our regeneration and sanctification. We’ve heard that the creative, regenerating power which transforms our life, and which expels sin and infuses holiness proceeds from the Spirit of Christ. And by this, Paul does not merely mean that, in accordance with the Trinitarian constitution of the Godhead, the Son sends the Holy Spirit as His representative and agent to execute His task. The apostle clearly teaches that Christ as God-Man – as Mediator – in His exalted state has, in a special, unique sense, the disposal of the Spirit; inasmuch as the Spirit dwells in His own human nature and invests it with transcendent power and glory. The Spirit is “the Spirit of the Lord”2 or, in even stronger language, we say with Paul, Christ is the Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45 “...the last Adam became the life-giving Spirit.” 2 Cor. 3:17 “Now the Lord is that Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.” KJV).
Now the point to be noticed here is that this unique and close relationship between the Spirit and Christ dates from the moment of the resurrection.
“By the resurrection of the dead He was effectually decreed by the Holy Spirit to be the Son of God in power” (Rom. 1:4).
At the resurrection, He “became the last Adam who is a life-giving Spirit” (1 Cor. 15:45).
In still another form, the same thought is expressed when Paul represents the glory of Christ as the source from which supernatural power is brought to bear upon the believer (2 Cor. 3:18 “But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.” KJV). This glory of Christ again is none other than His resurrection-glory.
From various points of view, therefore, we are taught by the apostle that the resurrection of Christ, besides being the divine acknowledgment of His perfect righteousness, is also the fountainhead of all the renewing and quickening influences that descend from Him to us.
To preach a risen Christ means to “preach” a gospel “with the demonstration of the Spirit and with power” (1 Cor. 2:4).
It means to assume that this world is “dead in trespasses and sins” (Eph. 2:1); that no word of persuasion, no force of example, no release from the body, in fact, nothing short of a “new creation” (2 Cor. 5:17) can give it life.
This is where the old apostolic gospel of Paul and the modern moralizing interpretations of Christianity part ways.
Because the modern world has ceased to take sin seriously, it has lost its sense for the necessity of the supernatural, in the work of salvation; and, to such a state of mind, the message of the resurrection of Christ no longer appeals...
The conviction seems to be gaining ground that all practical ends of religion will be equally well-served (and a possible cause of offense removed) by exchanging this doctrine of the resurrection for a simple belief in the immortality of the soul.
We may learn from Paul, that skepticism on this concrete point is symptomatic of infection with the poison of naturalism... The most striking feature of Paul’s treatment of the resurrection, here and elsewhere, is that, far from representing the resurrection as an isolated fact, he makes it part of an organic work of renewal involving both the soul and the body of man. The resurrection is supernatural for no other reason than that, from beginning to end – in regeneration, sanctification, and in everything, the work of grace is supernatural in the most absolute sense of the word. According to Paul, the same “exceeding greatness of divine power” is displayed in the production of spiritual life in the sinner’s soul as when “God raised Christ from the dead and made Him sit at His right hand in the heavenly places” (Eph. 1:19-20). The one is no more difficult to believe (and no more essential to hold) than the other. [If we take sin seriously, it is just as great a miracle that Jesus rose from the dead and ascended into heaven as it is a miracle that any sinner could receive the eternal life of God.] The great question for us all is not whether we shall believe or disbelieve the resurrection as a single historic event, but whether we shall maintain or surrender the character of Christianity as a resurrection-religion – a religion able to bring life out of death, both here and hereafter. Can the choice be difficult for any of us?
[The resurrection of Christ is not only essential for our justification and our sanctification;] it is fundamental for our glorification too. Ours is a religion whose center of gravity lies beyond the grave in the world to come.
The conviction that the gospel is primarily intended to prepare us for a future life, and that, consequently, neither its true nature can be understood nor its full glory appreciated unless it be placed in the light of eternity – this conviction broadly underlies the apostle’s reasoning both here in 1 Corinthians 15 and elsewhere. Christianity does many things for the present life, but if we wish to apprehend how much it can do, we much direct our gaze to the life beyond. And what more eloquent expression of this can there be than 1 Corinthians 15:19: “If we are such who have only hope in Christ in this life, we are of all men most pitiable”? What else does this mean than that the Christian’s main thinking, feeling, and striving revolve around the future state; and that, if this goal should prove to have no objective reality, the absoluteness with which the believer has staked everything in its attainment must make him appear in his delusion the most pitiable of all creatures?
What a gulf then lies between the statement of the apostle, on the one hand, and the sentiment we sometimes meet with, on the other hand, that Christianity had better disencumber itself of idle speculation about an uncertain future state, and concentrate all its energies upon the improvement of the present world. Paul could not have entertained such a sentiment for a moment, because the thirst for the world-to-come was of the very substance of the religion of his heart. He [was convinced] that the believer’s destiny – and God’s purposes with reference to him – transcend all limits of what this earthly life can possibly bring or possibly contain. [“Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him” (1 Cor. 2:9, KJV).]
Christ’s work for us extends even farther than the restoration of what sin had destroyed. If Christ [had merely] placed us back there where Adam stood in in the Garden of Eden, without sins and without death, this would be unspeakable grace indeed – more than enough to make the gospel “good news.” But grace exceeds sin far more abundantly than all this! Besides wiping out every last vestige of sin and its consequences, it opens up for us that higher world, the threshold to which even the first Adam did not enter [in this life]. This is not a mere matter of degrees of blessedness, it is a difference between two modes of life; as heaven is high above the earth, by so much the conditions of our future state will transcend those of the paradise of old.
It is for this reason that we know so little, and that, even in the moments of greatest clearness of our spiritual vision, we form such inadequate ideas of what awaits us hereafter. But thanks be to God, in the resurrection of Christ, for once, the veil has been lifted. When Christ rose from the grave, He rose as one whose human nature had been transformed into harmony with heavenly conditions. This was true not merely of His body, but of all the faculties and powers of His humanity... set free and made fit for perfect use in heavenly glory. In this respect, the resurrection of Christ is prophetic of the resurrection of all believers. “As we have borne the image of the earthly, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly man” (1 Cor. 15:49). In the resurrection, therefore, we have the assurance that we ourselves also shall be made fit – in our entire nature – for our habitation in heaven. It is only by understanding this that we can understand the true significance of the resurrection of the body. Not that the mere restoration of our bodies is the great hope of the Christian, but that they shall be restored to us in such a state as to resemble the resurrection body of Christ, and that through our resurrected bodies, our spirits may dwell in perfect harmony with their heavenly surroundings and may live-to-the-fullest the life that knows no end. [The resurrection of Jesus demonstrates that His followers are indeed made right with God, and indeed made into new holy creations, and it also shows us what our resurrected bodies will be like in the future, pointing us to our glorious eternity in heaven!]
In conclusion, please notice how these three aspects of the resurrection of Christ... when taken together, make for a comprehensive summary of the gospel that we are commissioned to proclaim. Peace of conscience, renewal of life, assurance of heaven: what more than this could we ever want to bring to our fellow man? And what less than this could we dare to offer them under the name of the gospel? As message-bearers of Christ and the resurrection, let us always remember to give due prominence to these three great things [achieved by His resurrection: our justification, our sanctification, and our glorification]. Is there not a special satisfaction in being able to proclaim a gospel which so completely covers the needs of a sinful world? “If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching [would be] vain and vain [would be] the faith of all that hear us (1 Cor. 15:14)... But now that Christ has been raised from the dead” (1 Cor. 15:20a) and “has brought righteousness and life” and “heaven to light” (Rom. 5:21, 2 Tim. 1:10), now we can “be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that our labor is not in vain in the Lord” (1 Cor. 15:58).
1See the Auburn Affirmation of 1924, available at https://www.pcahistory.org/documents/auburn/index.html
2Vos’s original words were “Christ is the Lord of the Spirit.” When I was unable to find that phrase in the Bible, I amended it, based on Luke 4:18 (“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me…”), Acts 5:9 (“How is it that ye have agreed together to tempt the Spirit of the Lord?”), and Acts 8:39 (“...the Spirit of the Lord caught away Philip…”). (Citations are KJV)