Sentenced to Immortality
Man sentenced God to death; by His
Resurrection, He sentenced man to immortality. In
return for a beating, He gives an embrace; for abuse, a
blessing; for death, immortality. Man never showed so
much hate for God as when he crucified Him; and God
never showed more love for man than when He arose. Man
even wanted to reduce God to a mortal, but God by His
Resurrection made man immortal. The crucified God is
Risen and has killed death. Death is no more.
Immortality has surrounded man and all the world.
By the Resurrection of the God-Man, human nature has been
led irreversibly onto the path of immortality, and has
become dreadful to death itself. For before the
Resurrection of Christ, death was dreadful to man, but
after the Resurrection of Christ, man has become more
dreadful to death. When man lives by faith in the Risen
God-Man, he lives above death, out of its reach; it is a
footstool for his feet:
“O Death, where is thy sting? O Hades, where is thy
victory?” (I Cor. 15:55).
When a man belonging to Christ dies, he simply sets aside
his body like clothing, in which he will again be vested
on the day of Dread Judgement.
Before the Resurrection of the God-Man, death was the
second nature of man: life first, death second. But by His
Resurrection, the Lord has changed everything: immortality
has become the second nature of man, it has become natural
for man; and death – unnatural. As before the
Resurrection of Christ, it was natural for men to be
mortal, so after the Resurrection of Christ, it was
natural for men to be immortal.
By sin, man became mortal and transient; by the
Resurrection of the God-Man, he became immortal and
perpetual. In this is the power, the might, the
all-mightiness of the Resurrection of Christ. Without it,
there would have been no Christianity. Of all miracles,
this is the greatest miracle. All other miracles have it
as their source and lead to it. From it grow faith, love,
hope, prayer, and love for God. Behold: the fugitive
disciples, having run away from Jesus when He died, return
to Him because He is risen. Behold: the Centurion
confessed Christ as the Son of God when he saw the
Resurrection from the grave. Behold: all the first
Christians became Christian because the Lord Jesus is
risen, because death was vanquished. This is what no other
faith has; this is what lifts the Lord Christ above all
other gods and men; this is what, in the most undoubted
manner, shows and demonstrates that Jesus Christ is the
One True God and Lord in all the world.
Because of the Resurrection of Christ, because of His
victory over death, men have become, continue to become,
and will continue becoming Christians. The entire history
of Christianity is nothing other than the history of a
unique miracle, namely, the Resurrection of Christ, which
is unbrokenly threaded through the hearts of Christians
form one day to the next, from year to year, across the
centuries, until the Dread Judgment.
Man is born, in fact, not when his mother bring him into
the world, but when he comes to believe in the Risen
Christ, for then he is born to life eternal, whereas a
mother bears children for death, for the grave. The
Resurrection of Christ is the mother of us all, all
Christians, the mother of immortals. By faith in the
Resurrection, man is born anew, born for eternity.
“That is impossible!” says the skeptic. But
you listen to what the Risen God-Man says:
“All things are possible to him that
believeth!” (Mark 9:23).
The believer is he who lives, with all his heart, with all
his soul, with all his being, according to the Gospel of
the Risen Lord Jesus.
Faith is our victory, by which we conquer death; faith in
the Risen Lord Jesus. Death, where is your sting? The
sting of death is sin. The Lord “has removed the
sting of death.” Death is a serpent; sin is its
fangs. By sin, death puts its poison into the soul and
into the body of man. The more sins a man has, the more
bites, through which death puts its poison in him.
When a wasp stings a man, he uses all his strength to
remove the sting. But when sin wounds him, this sting of
death, what should be done? One must call upon the Risen
Lord Jesus in faith and prayer, that He may remove the
sting of death from the soul. He, in His great
loving-kindness, will do this, for He is overflowing with
mercy and love. When many wasps attack a man’s body
and wound it with many stings, that man is poisoned and
dies. The same happens with a man’s soul, when many
sins wound it with their stings: it is poisoned and dies a
death with no resurrection.
Conquering sin in himself through Christ, man overcomes
death. If you have lived the day without vanquishing a
single sin of yours, know that you have become deadened.
Vanquish one, two, or three of your sins, and behold: you
have become younger than the youth which does not age,
young in immortality and eternity. Never forget that to
believe in the Resurrection of the Lord Christ means to
carry out a continuous fight with sins, with evil, with
death.
If a man fights with sins and passions, this demonstrates
that he indeed believes in the Risen Lord; if the fights
with them, he fights for life eternal. If he does not
fight, his faith is in vain. If man’s faith is not a
fight for immortality and eternity, than tell me, what is
it? If faith in Christ does not bring us to resurrection
and life eternal, than what use is it to us? If Christ is
not risen, that meant that neither sin nor death has been
vanquished, than why believe in Christ?
For the one who by faith in the Risen Lord fights with
each of his sins there will be affirmed in him gradually
the feeling that Christ is indeed risen, has indeed
vanquished the sting of sin, has indeed vanquished death
on all the fronts of combat. Sin gradually diminishes the
soul in man, driving it into death, transforming it from
immortality to mortality, from incorruption to corruption.
The more the sins, the more the mortal man. If man does
not feel immortality in himself, know that he is in sins,
in bad thoughts, in languid feelings. Christianity is an
appeal: Fight with death until the last breath, fight
until a final victory has been reached. Every sin is a
desertion; every passion is a retreat; every vice is a
defeat.
One need not be surprised that Christians also die bodily.
This is because the death of the body is sowing. The
mortal body is sown, says the Apostle Paul, and it grows,
and is raised in an immortal body (I Corinthians
15:42-44). The body dissolves, like a sown seed, that the
Holy Spirit may quicken and perfect it. If the Lord Christ
had not been risen in body, what use would it have for
Him? He would not have saved the entire man. If His body
did not rise, then why was He incarnate?
Why did He take on Himself flesh, if He gave it nothing of
His Divinity?
If Christ is not risen, then why believe in Him? To be
honest, I would never have believed in Him had He not
risen and had not therefore vanquished death. Our greatest
enemy was killed and we were given immortality. Without
this, our world is a noisy display of revolting stupidity
and despair, for neither in Heaven nor under Heaven is
there a greater stupidity than this world without the
Resurrection; and there is not a greater despair than this
life without immortality. There is no being in a single
world more miserable than man who does not believe in the
resurrection of the dead. It would have been better for
such a man never to have been born.
In our human world, death is the greatest torment and
inhumane horror. Freedom from this torment and horror is
salvation. Such a salvation was given the race of man by
the Vanquisher of death – the Risen God-Man. He
related to us all the mystery of salvation by His
Resurrection. To be saved means to assure our body and
soul of immortality and life eternal. How do we attain
this? By no other way than by a theanthropic life, a new
life, a life in the Risen Lord, in and by the Lord’s
Resurrection.
For us Christians, our life on earth is a school in which
we learn how to assure ourselves of resurrection and life
eternal. For what use is this life if we cannot acquire by
it life eternal? But, in order to be resurrected with the
Lord Christ, man must first suffer with Him, and live His
life as his own. If he does this, then on Pascha he can
say with Saint Gregory the Theologian:
“Yesterday I was crucified with Him, today I live with Him; yesterday I was buried with Him, today I rise with Him” (Troparion 2, Ode 3, Matins, Pascha).
Christ’s Four Gospels are summed up in only four
words. They are:
“Christ is Risen! Indeed He is risen!”
In each of these words is a Gospel, and in the Four
Gospels is all the meaning of all God’s world,
visible and invisible. When all knowledge and all the
thoughts of men are concentrated in the cry of the Paschal
salutation, “Christ is Risen!”, then immortal
joy embraces all beings and in joy responds: “Indeed
He is risen!”
Source- pravoslavie.ru
