to come back to life? Or does one write off the story as an invention or forgery, when it is told in such graphic detail?
Suppose the story is true, where did the confidence come from? From what belief did it stem? From what experience was that belief formed? My own instinct tells me that Christ knew that if he was not the Redeemer, no-one else was, and the world would have to do without one. It looks as though he was right, because his like has never been seen again. And he knew that the Redeemer would have on occasions to be able to raise from the dead, or he would cease to be the Redeemer, and sink back into becoming just a good man like countless others. What a moment for him! He must have known that everything was at stake; yet he knew he must go on, and God must justify him. If he failed to act, he failed as Redeemer; if God failed him, he was disowned, and what could he do then? He would have become a laughing stock. A man acts as he did, only if he is compelled to do so; no-one hazards everything unless he has to. Is it not a mercy that he did what he is reported to have done with the supreme confidence of compassion, and not with a tense anxiety that all might not go well?
He leaves the rest of us standing. I say this because a man must not allow his hopes to rise, without some reasonable justification for expecting them to be fulfilled. It would be folly for most people, never mind most christians, to attempt what Christ attempted; the crash which would follow in a man's own mind, if his hopes were not fulfilled, would be likely to be catastrophic. In a sense the only answer to the question, “Is death inevitably just round the corner?”, is for an individual to try and see. But a man must be realistic about the way he tries. He must make a shrewd appraisal of what he is thinking of attempting, to see what the chances are; and he must remember that there is nothing dishonourable about making a reconnaissance, and deciding that…