As the
resurrection of the Lord was no new creation, but the same man, Jesus,
who had gone down into the grave, come forth again from it; so in the
soul before it died the death which leads to life in God, there must
have lain the capability of receiving that life when the body of sin
should die and perish; and that life is developed in the same human
soul amid the same outward circumstances as before, and with its other
powers and faculties remaining unchanged. We are entirely the same
persons, only that the fire of the higher life is kindled in us, and
also that we all bear the signs of death, and that the remembrance
of our former state is present with us. Yes, in manifold ways we are
often reminded of what we were and what we did before the call to new
life sounded in our hearts; and it is not so easy to efface the scars
of the wounds, and the numberless traces of the pains under which the
old man had to die that the new man might live. And as the glad faith
of the disciples rested on the very fact that they recognized the Lord
as being, in the glory of His resurrection, the same person that He
was before; so also in us, the confidence in this new life, as a
permanent and now natural state with us, rests only on this--that we
recognize ourselves in it as the same persons that we were before;
that there are the same faculties, lower and higher, of the human
soul, which formerly served sin, but are now created anew as
instruments of righteousness.
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