Do you not know this is the key to the Christian life? You trust in the shed blood of Christ, you repent of your sin, you seek him and the new birth, you come to know him, and then forever after throughout life’s journey you regard him as near you and alive. You are not called upon to try to visualise him or to make out his form or to imagine evidences of his presence. It is all by faith. But you must believe he is there. The purpose of the resurrection is to not only prove that the Lord Jesus Christ is divine and to prove the success of Calvary and the atonement, but it is also to establish that he is alive and he is near. When you succeed, ascribe it to Christ, he is near, thank you Lord. When you fail, remember he is near, look to him, pray to him. In temptation, remember he is near; almost with the eye of faith see him there. You cannot sin, ‘He sees what I do, he knows what I think, I cannot utter this wicked response, I cannot do this thing, my Lord is near.’ In trouble, in temptation, when the devil says, you are not saved or starts reminding you of all the horrible things that have happened or that people have done so that you begin to go round in a giddy circle of self-pity, remember he is near. See him there in all circumstances. And in the moment of death, see him there. Blessed are those that see him there. That is the meaning of the resurrection.
Perhaps you know the truth of the Gospel. You understand the way of salvation, you grasp the atoning death of Christ and by believing in him and him alone, and repenting of sin and yielding to him, you can have new life. You have seen it. You have understood it. But you haven’t personally, consciously believed, embraced it, gone to Christ – ‘I believe. I believe in thee as Saviour. I believe in that amazing love that brought you to suffer and to die for sinners. I believe I shall be condemned without salvation, without conversion. I come and I believe.’ Believe with your whole heart. ‘Be not faithless,’ is the command of Christ, ‘but believing.’