Resurrected With Christ

A. B. Simpson was an author, hymn writer, conference speaker, evangelist to the urban masses of New York City, and a missionary statesman.  He founded The Christian and Missionary Alliance and Nyack College.

The following is from his book The Christ Life:

"There is a great difference between risen and resurrected.

"One may rise from one level to another; but when one is resurrected he is brought from nothing into existence, from death to life, and the transition is simply infinite.

"A true Christian is not raised but resurrected.

"The great objection to all the teachings of mere natural religion and human ethics is that we are taught to rise to higher planes. The glory of the Gospel is that it does not teach us to rise, but shows our inability to do anything good of ourselves, and lays us at once in the grave in utter helplessness and nothingness, and then raises us up into new life, born entirely from above and sustained alone from heavenly sources.

"The Christian life is not self-improving, but it is wholly supernatural and Divine. Now the resurrection cannot come until there has been the death. This is presupposed, and just as real as the death has been will be the measure of the resurrection life and power.  . . . If we be dead with Him, we shall also live with Him.

"But the passage Colossians 3:1 expresses the fact we have already died and risen, and that we are now to take the attitude of those for whom this is an accomplished fact. He does not call upon them here to die again with Christ and rise with Him anew, as those who have done it are expected to live on a corresponding plane. He tells them later, in the passage, 'For ye have died and your life is hid with Christ in God.'

"In the sixth chapter of Romans this thought is much more fully worked out. 'As many of us as were baptized into Christ,' the apostle says, 'were baptized into his death. Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death; that like as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life,' and then to emphasize more forcibly the finality of this fact, he says, 'Knowing that Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more; death hath no more dominion over him; for in that he died, he died unto sin once; but in that he liveth, he liveth unto God.'

"Therefore, and in like manner, the apostle bids us to 'reckon ourselves dead also unto sin but alive unto God through Jesus Christ, and to yield ourselves unto God as those that are alive from the dead and our members as instruments of righteousness unto God.'

"Now, much of the teaching of the day would bid us yield ourselves unto God to be crucified and to die afresh, or more fully, but the apostle says nothing of the kind here. On the contrary, we are to yield ourselves unto God as those who have already died and are alive from the dead, recognizing the cross as behind us; and for this very reason presenting ourselves to God, to be used for His service and glory.

". . . Perhaps, you say, 'How can I reckon myself dead when I find so many evidences that I am still alive, and how can I reckon myself risen when I find so many things that pull me back again to my lower plane?' It is your failure to reckon and abide that drags you back. It is the recognizing of the old life as still alive that makes it real and keeps you from overcoming it.

"This is the principle which underlies the whole Gospel system, that we receive according to the reckoning of our faith. The magic wand of faith will lay all the ghosts that can rise in the cemetery of your soul; and the spirit of doubt will bring them up from the grave to haunt you as long as you continue to question. The only way you can ever die [practically speaking], is by surrendering yourself to Christ and then reckoning yourself dead with Him.

". . . There is one thing Satan cannot stand and that is to be ignored and slighted. He lives on attention and dies of neglect.

". . . Now, here is a fine illustration of the principle of the Gospel. You surrender yourself unto Christ to be crucified with Him, and to have all your old life pass out, and henceforth to live as one born from heaven and animated by Him alone. Suddenly, some of your old traits of evil reappear, old thoughts, evil tendencies assert themselves and say loudly and clamorously, 'We are not dead.' Now if you recognize these things, fear them and obey them, you are sure to give them life and they will control you and drag you back into your former state. But if you refuse to recognize them, and say, 'These are Satan’s lies, I am dead indeed unto sin; these do not belong unto me, but are the children of the devil, I therefore repudiate them and rise above them,' God will detach you from them and make them utterly dead. You will find they were no part of you, but simply temptations which Satan tried to throw over you, and to weave around you that which seemed part of yourself.

"This is the true remedy for all the workings of temptation and sin.

". . . Beloved, shall we let the Master teach us not so much to rise as to remember we are risen; that we have been raised with Christ from the dead, resurrected from the grave of our nothingness, and worse than nothingness, and that we are sitting with Him in heavenly places, recognized by the Father and permitted to reckon ourselves as being, 'even as He.'