Behold!'--as if calling attention to a wonder--I am alive for evermore.' Again, I say, we have here a distinctly Divine prerogative claimed by the exalted Christ, as properly belonging to Himself. For that eternal life of which He speaks is by no means the communicated immortality which He imparts to them that in His love go down to death, but it is the inherent eternal life of the Divine nature.
But, mark, who is the I' that speaks? The seer has told us: One like unto the Son of Man'--which title, whether it repeats the name which our Lord habitually used, or whether, as some persons suppose, it should be read a Son of Man,' and merely declares that the vision of the glorified One was manlike, is equally relevant for my present purpose. For that is to ask you to mark that the I' of my text is the Divine-human Jesus. The manhood is so intertwined with the Deity that the absolute life of the latter has, as it were, flowed over and glorified the former; and it is a Man who lays His hand upon the Divine prerogative, and says, I live for evermore.'
Now why do I dwell upon thoughts like this? Not for the purpose merely of putting accurately what I believe to be the truth, but for the sake of opening out to you and to myself the infinite treasures of consolation and strength which lie in that thought that He who is alive for evermore' is not merely Divine in His absolute life, but, as Son of Man, lives for ever. And so, because I live, ye shall live also.' We cannot die as long as Christ is alive. And if we knit our hearts to Him, the Divine glory which flows over His Manhood will trickle down to ours, and we, too, though by derivation, shall possess as immortal--and, in its measure, as glorious--a life as that of the Brother who reigns in Heaven, the Man Christ Jesus.
His resurrection is not only the demonstration of what manhood is capable of, and so, as I believe, the one irrefragable and all-satisfying proof of immortality, but it is also the actual source of that immortal life to all of us, if we will trust ourselves to Him. For it is only because He both died and rose and revived' that He, in the truest and properest sense, becomes the gift of life to us men. The alabaster box was broken, and the house was filled with the odour of the ointment. Christ's death is the world's life. Christ's resurrection is the pledge and the source of eternal life for us.
