He is not here. Where is He? He is risen, the Firstborn from the dead. Peter’s witness in the early chapters of the Acts of the Apostles, to the Jews, was twofold. He pressed upon them again and again, “He went about doing good, but ye crucified Him.” That is your guilt. But “God has raised Him from the dead.” That is God’s seal upon His faithful life of witnessing. In that same wonderful Isaiah 50, it says, “He is near that justifieth Me.” Who has justified Him? God.
The chief Priests and the Scribes and the Pharisees thought they could keep Him in the sepulcher. They remembered that He had spoken of rising again from the dead. It was very remarkable they should have remembered it when the disciples had forgotten it. So they went to Pilate and asked his help. Pilate said, “Ye have a watch; go your way, make it as sure as ye can.” It seems to me there was a certain irony in that. So they sent a guard and sealed the stone, and I suppose the soldiers would be instructed as to how to deal with the rabble of Galilean fishermen if they came to rob the sepulcher. They were not told how to deal with an earthquake or an angel from heaven! The fishermen did not come, but the angel did, and the earthquake, and those Roman veterans for very fear fell down as dead men. What had happened? God had intervened; God had justified His Faithful Witness. God was FIRST at the sepulcher, and the stone was rolled away from the tomb, not to let Christ out but to let us look in.
He is the Firstborn from the dead; that means that others are to share His triumph. All they that sleep in Jesus will come out of their sepulchers according to the same blessed pattern, and we who are alive and remain at His coming shall be changed. We are looking for our Savior, “who shall transform our body of humiliation into conformity to His body of glory, according to the working of the power which He has even to subdue all things to Himself” (Phil. 3:22Beware of dogs, beware of evil workers, beware of the concision. (Philippians 3:2)1 JnD). He is the victorious One; He has come out of the grave. God has triumphed over all the power of death and the devil in the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. His resurrection is God’s answer to His faithfulness here upon the earth, and it is also God’s great victory over death. He is the Firstborn from the dead, and when He comes to take up things for God in this world, He will take them up in the power of resurrection, and in such a way that no voice in the universe will challenge His right to do it. The voice of death is silent; death challenges the work of every other man, but He has overthrown the power of death. He is the Victor, and He has taken us up in resurrection power to share His victory with us. Never doubt the ability of our Lord Jesus Christ to keep you. You may be a very weak Christian; the more you feel it the better, for then you will rely upon His strength the more, and He is able to keep all whom He saves.
J. T. Mawson