Divine weightlifting

Christ's resurrection & the power of God

Are you ever tempted to forget God’s power?

That’s a question I asked a room full of guys at the South West Men’s Convention a few weeks ago. As they chatted about it in twos and threes, some talked about things at work. A proportion shared about things in their family. Many mentioned issues in their local church. And others still highlighted challenges in our wider society.

Life is scary. There are lots of things that can lead us to forget God’s power. We can often find ourselves in situations where we are tempted to think that our circumstances are more powerful than God is. For me, I have felt like that in my parenting recently. I have two young boys, and the older one has started primary school this year. And, to be honest with you, it’s been pretty difficult. Our eldest is someone who tends to get quite anxious and there have been numerous mornings where I have had to wrestle him into his school uniform and walk him down the road shouting and screaming. And, I know he’s only four years old, but that’s hard to deal with. It’s hard to deal with emotionally. But I have also been finding it challenging spiritually. 

When it comes to circumstances that we are finding scary, we can often ask ourselves: ‘God, where are you in this?’ ‘God, where is your power here?’ ‘God, will you please just do something?’ If you’ve noticed yourself asking questions like that lately, you may find some of Charnock’s reflections on the resurrection of Christ particularly helpful. Let me share them with you.

Warm and spiritual

If you had heard of Stephen Charnock before this newsletter, you had probably heard of him because of his writings on the attributes of God. In the last years of his life, Charnock wrote a collection of discourses on 14 aspects of God’s character. And it's in this area of the doctrine of God that Charnock may be particularly helpful for evangelical Christians today.

Whether it’s in evangelical scholarship or ordinary discipleship, the doctrine of God has tended to be neglected in recent times. And one of the reasons for this seems to have been because people have started viewing many of the attributes that the church has long believed about God - things like God being unchangeable, independent, and infinite - as portraying God as cold and hard. In fact, some have even thought of them as unspiritual. 

But when you read Charnock’s reflections on God's character, they are anything but cold and hard. They are anything but unspiritual. And one of the key reasons for this is that Charnock's reflections on God's character are very Christ-focussed. I talked about this a bit in the series of newsletters I shared over the summer on God’s goodness. Time and time again in his writings, Charnock argued that the place that we see most clearly what God is like is in the person and work of Christ. More than in creation. More than in the giving of the Old Testament law. God’s character is most vividly revealed to us in Christ.

This makes sense, if you think about it. When God created the world, he started with a clean sheet of paper so to speak (even though of course he hadn’t actually created paper yet). But in redemption, God wasn’t starting with a blank slate. He was starting with something worse than that. He was starting with a broken world and a rebellious humanity. And through Christ’s redemption, he wasn’t going to just remake his people ‘very good’. He was going to remake them ‘perfect’. 

Divine weightlifting

The place that we see most clearly what God is like is in the person and work of Christ. And when Charnock came to consider Jesus’ resurrection, there was one attribute which he thought it particularly revealed about God. It wasn’t God’s justice. It wasn’t God’s glory. It wasn't even God’s grace. Those are probably the attributes that evangelical Christians might instinctively reach for. No, the characteristic that Charnock went for was God’s power.

This is what Charnock wrote about God’s power in Christ’s resurrection.

The unlocking the belly of the whale for the deliverance of Jonas [that’s who we know as Jonah], the rescue of Daniel from the den of lions, and the restraining the fire from burning the three children, were signal declarations of his power, and types of the resurrection of our Saviour. But what are those to that which was represented by them? That was a power over natural causes, a curbing of beasts and restraining of elements; but in the resurrection of Christ, God exercised a power over himself, and quenched the flames of his own wrath, hotter than millions of Nebuchadnezzar’s furnaces; unlocked the prison doors, wherein the curses of the law had lodged our Saviour stronger than the belly and ribs of a leviathan.

God displayed great power in rescuing Jonah from the belly of the fish and Daniel from the lion's den. But in Jesus’ resurrection, God didn’t just show his power over creatures, but over his own divine wrath for our sin.

Charnock continued to develop this point.

The work of resurrection, indeed, considered in itself, requires the efficacy of an almighty power. Neither man nor angel can create new dispositions in a dead body, to render it capable of lodging a spiritual soul, nor can they restore a dislodged soul by their own power to such a body. The restoring a dead body to life requires an infinite power, as well as the creation of the world. But there was in the resurrection of Christ something more difficult than this. While he lay in the grave he was under the curse of the law, under the execution of that dreadful sentence, ‘Thou shalt die the death.’ His resurrection was not only the re-tying the marriage knot between his soul and body, or the rolling the stone from the grave, but a taking off an infinite weight, the sin of mankind, which lay upon him.

For Charnock, Christ’s resurrection was chiefly a demonstration of God’s power. Because, in raising Christ from the dead, God did not just restart a human heart. God did not just reunite a body and soul. No, God overpowered the infinite weight of his own wrath upon his Son. And so, after quoting various passages by the Apostle Paul - including his remark in Ephesians 1:19-20 that the incomparably great power which God works for us who believe is the same as which he exerted when he raised Christ from the grave - Charnock concludes that God’s power in the resurrection ‘was an hyperbole of power, the excellency of the mightiness of his strength’. 

Casting our anchor

Life is scary. We can often find ourselves in situations where we are tempted to think that our circumstances are more powerful than God is. But this is where Charnock’s reflections on God’s power in the resurrection are so helpful. Because, when Charnock gets to the application section at the end of his discourse on God’s power, the first thing he applied it to was his congregation’s understanding of Christ and the assurance that this understanding gave them in their Christian life.

Charnock wrote, there is

No reason, therefore, to doubt his ability to save to the utmost, who hath the power of creation, preservation, and resurrection in his hands. His promises must be accomplished, since nothing can resist him. He hath power to fulfil his word, and bring all things to a final issue, because he is almighty; by his outstretched arm in the deliverance of his Israel from Egypt (for it was his arm, 1 Cor. 10), he shewed that he was able to deliver us from spiritual Egypt. The charge of mediator to expiate sin, vanquish hell, form a church, conduct and perfect it, are not to be effected by a person of less ability than infinite. Let this almightiness of his be the bottom, wherein to cast and fix the anchor of our hopes.

For Charnock, the secret to not fearing our circumstances lay in our appreciation of the power of God. And for Charnock, there was no greater display of God’s power than in the resurrection of Christ.

Look to Christ

This has profound implications for how we live our lives. For example, it means that when I am tempted to think that my son’s anxiety is more powerful than God is, the person I need to look to is not myself. It is not my wife. It is not even his teachers at school, a helpful as they may be. No, the person I need to ultimately look to is Christ.

And, as I look to Christ, his resurrection helps me to know that there is no parenting difficulty that can get in the way of his love for us. His resurrection helps me to know that there is no work redundancy that can get in the way of the work he is seeking to do in us. His resurrection helps me to know that there is no issues in church that can get in the way of his plan for us. His resurrection helps me to know that there is no challenge from society that can get in the way of the future he has for us.

Why? Because in Christ’s resurrection, God did not only restart a human heart. God did not just reunite a body and soul. No, in Christ’s resurrection God overpowered the infinite weight of his own wrath upon his Son for our sin.

Join me again next week as we continue to explore Charnock’s reflections on the resurrection of Christ.