The Resurrection a Judgment
Dean Church. Acts 17:31 Because he has appointed a day, in the which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he has ordained… There are two moments in the history of this world in which the veil is drawn off from God's government, and it is seen, without any doubt or confusion, how He gives judgment clearly and decisively on the side of goodness and truth. One of these moments is of course to come, the other is past. God, indeed, is far from leaving His judgment without witness in the history of the world. God rewards and punishes now. But human life, as we look at it from the outside, is still full of darkness and perplexity. The perfect and final and manifest clearing up of God's judgment on what men think and do is not now. It is not till the end and time of mortality, when the Judge sits upon the throne, that this will be pronounced, so that none can doubt it. And in the course of the world there is but one other such occasion like it in its awfulness, like it in its clearness. It was when He who had been condemned as a sinner for the cause of truth and goodness, was raised again by the glory of the Father on the third day. Christ suffered for righteousness, and in Him righteousness was justified before the world, and in anticipation of that great day when righteousness shall finally triumph. Many men, before and after Him, have suffered for righteousness, but their righteousness was left to the varying and contradictory judgments of men. It seemed, as far as present experience went, as if they had found only evil, by keeping innocency and cleaving to the thing that was right. It was faith only that dared to trust against the melancholy resignation of experience. But in Christ the spectacle which had in others been only begun was shown also finished. The world had often looked on the sight of righteousness defeated and overthrown; it had seen the beginning of its course, but not how it was to end. But, for once, in Christ there was shown to men on earth both the beginning and the end. Never before had such righteousness suffered. On the other hand, never before had it been so unanswerably justified. "Now is the judgment of this world," said our Lord, when He was about to suffer. The world had doubted whether God did judge and rule the course of things on earth. "Where," it had asked, "was the God of judgment," and in the person of Jesus Christ, the representative of the human race, the challenge was answered; the world itself was to be judged. In Jesus Christ the boast of wickedness was made in all its insolence. But in Jesus Christ the proof of righteousness, of righteousness in man's real nature, was not put off till the world to come. In that tremendous breaking through the laws of mortality and death, we see the answer to the challenge of the world, and may be sure that it will be well with the righteous. Of this God hath given assurance unto all men, in that He hath raised "the crucified from the dead." I am not sure that we always adequately understand how strong a faith it must have needed before Christ rose to believe this in earnest. Good men did believe it. The Psalms are full of this belief; but they are full, too, of its difficulty. They trusted like children to their general confidence in the goodness of the Lord, in spite of death; they were sure that, somehow or other, they would "see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living." But to us the proof has been given. And I am not sure that we always understand how, even still, that faith needs all the support which God has given it. The power of sin is unabated. The righteous and the sinner seem left alike to find their way through life. But when our hearts fail us, when the world mocks us, let us go back as Christians did in the days of the apostles, to the open, empty grave of the Lord — let us rise up in thought and feeling to the unspeakable preciousness of that foundation stone of all human hopes — "but now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the first fruits of them that slept." No triumph of evil now can equal what happened when He suffered for us and was put to shame; "but now is Christ risen from the dead" — "now is the judgment of the world." (Dean Church.) Parallel Verses KJV: Because he hath appointed a day, in the which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained; whereof he hath given assurance unto all men, in that he hath raised him from the dead. WEB: because he has appointed a day in which he will judge the world in righteousness by the man whom he has ordained; of which he has given assurance to all men, in that he has raised him from the dead."