Scripture Reading: 1 Corinthians 15:1-20.
Texts:
These are only a few scriptures that state definitely the object of Christ coming into the world and what He came to do for us. There are many others such as "except ye eat my flesh and drink my blood (that is except ye appropriate me by faith) ye have no life in you. Whoso eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood hath everlasting life and I will raise him up at the last day."
There is a great body of Christians who teach we are saved by the death of Christ instead of by His life. If any one doubts this, here are the words of C.I. Scoffield, D.D. in his Bible:
"And this (New Testament) record is so made as to testify that the death of Christ was the supreme business which brought him into the world; that all which preceded that death was but preparation for it; and from it, (from that death) flow all the blessings which God ever has or ever will bestow upon man."
We want you to think of this statement concerning the New Testament record, for we have just been giving you some of that record showing salvation flows from the given, imparted life of Christ. Can any man give an equal series of scriptures contrary to these showing that salvation flows from Christ's death? You know they cannot. Jesus said "I am come that ye might have life and that ye might have it more abundantly." But you say there are many scriptures that show salvation is by the blood. That is true but from this quotation of Scoffield he makes the blood mean Death. In this he contradicts the whole Bible. The Scripture says "the blood is the life". "The blood is for the life." "The blood is all one with the life." (Deu 12:23; Lev 17:11, 14)
When Christ died we are told there flowed two streams from Him, one of blood and one of water. He said too, “Father, into thy hands I commit my Spirit.” Three things went out of Him, water, spirit and blood. John says "There are three that bear witness: the water, the spirit and the blood, and these three agree in one!” (1 John 5:7). Is it the water of death? No, it is the water of life. Without water we have no life either on the physical or spiritual plane. Is the spirit death? No, for Jesus said "The words I speak unto you they are spirit and they are life." The very word "spirit" is also translated life.
Moreover, wherever the blood is spoken of in the New Testament it is spoken of as an active, cleansing power. "It purgeth your conscience from dead works to serve the living God." "It washes us white in the blood of the Lamb." Now death is not active but passive. Death is not cleansing it is corrupting. Death is not a power; it is absence of all power. Death does nothing, life does everything. Yet these teachers make death the source of every blessing that ever came from God. To them the whole Bible is a book of death, foretelling it, foreshadowing it. No wonder the old Trappist Monks who believed this never spoke unless they met face to face and then they saluted each other "Memento Mori" (Remember death).
Moreover, since death is a negative quantity, the absence of life, these Theologians of death can only explain salvation by death in an arbitrary, heathen way. God is supposed to be angry with us because of our sins and will not receive repentance until His anger is satisfied in the death of His Son.
But Jesus said "I am the Lord, I change not,” and “in me is no variableness, nor shadow of turning,” because “I have loved you with an everlasting love, therefore with loving kindness have I drawn you." "Because of the great love wherewith I loved you even when ye were dead in trespasses and sin He hath made us alive together with Christ."
The Bible is not a book of death, but from beginning to the end it is the Book of Life. All life is from God. He is the fountain of life, and His life manifests itself on all planes. The Bible is the Book of spiritual biology. In it we study the workings of the divine life on the spiritual plane. In it we study the inflowing of this life from God, one Man whose life is recorded here, tempted in all points as we are, perfectly lived the divine life in our sinful flesh here. Many others more or less imperfectly lived this life and the record is so given as to show why they succeeded and why they failed.
And all life on all planes is a living, growing, transforming, glorifying life. And the laws of life are the same on all planes. Paul clearly believed in salvation by life, for after the crucifixion of Christ, Paul says, "if Christ be not raised, if he be not alive, then your faith is vain, ye are yet in your sins, they that are fallen asleep in Christ are perished. But now is Christ risen and become the first fruits of them who slept. And that power that did this is declared to be the power of God to usward if we only believe.” “It was not possible that He could be holden of death.” “And if the spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in us He shall make us alive by His spirit that abideth in us,” and right here and now "the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus, makes us free from the law of sin and death.”
Christ never appealed to dead things to illustrate His kingdom, but always to living things. He spoke of the germinating seed, to the multiplying yeast, to the growth of the mustard seed, of the lily, to show how God grows righteousness in a human soul. Think of the power of this physical life around us, His life manifested on the physical plane. Consider also the persistence of this life.
Among the pyramids of Egypt, Lord Lindsay, an English traveler, came across a mummy, the inscription on which showed it to be over two thousand years old. In the closed hand of this mummy he found a little bulb. He planted it where the moisture and sun could reach it and it burst forth and grew and bloomed into a beautiful flower. There is the resurrection life.
Think of the transformation that life makes in this old earth during Spring-time. "If God so clothes the lilly of the field shall He not much more clothe you, o, ye of little faith. Only abide in Him by faith as the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, without the vine, no more can ye without me.” The life from God, the Root of all life, through the Christ, must flow out into us, the branches, then shall we bear much fruit, so shall we be His disciples, fruit of His life, of His Spirit. Love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, meekness, faith. These are the fruits that manifest the life of Christ in us.
Thank God for a LIVING Christ, which means that we may live spiritually here and, that if we do so live, he will raise us up to eternal life hereafter. Confucius is dead; Buddha is dead; Mohammed is dead. All the gods of the heathen are dead. Christianity is the only religion that even professes to have a LIVING GOD, and a LIVING SAVIOUR who waits and knocks at the door of our hearts and wants to come in and live His life in us.
George E. Fifield
Nothing is clearer than that the Bible teaches that a separation of true Christianity from the false, so-called Christianity will take place prior to Christ’s return to this earth. Some people believe this separation will take place over the day that will be observed as the Sabbath; and, so they go about devoting almost their entire effort to getting people to observe the right day, and necessarily paying little attention to getting people to experience the spiritual meaning of the Sabbath, since they have not had that experience themselves. In other words, they put the sign before the experience signified, just as the later Jews did with the sign of circumcision, and just the opposite from the way in which, it is clearly stated, God gave circumcision to Abraham. This inevitably puts the Sabbath into the Old Covenant, just as the Jews put circumcision there, and teaches the people to seek their righteousness through obedience, instead of seeking to be made righteous by the divine indwelling, so they can truly and spiritually obey.
