They slew Him, God raised Him. And why? Because of the Lord’s high personal glory. He loosed the pains of death because it was not possible that He should be held by it. The hindrance to death’s power, as here assigned, is the personal glory and dignity ascribed to Him by the counsel of God, as the one witnessed to by the Spirit through David.

And not in David only, but in all the Scriptures. There is no truth more manifest to the spiritual mind, or more important to the student of Scripture than this: that Jesus is the sum and substance of the Spirit’s testimony in Scripture (Rev. 19:10). His name is the clue and thread to what might seem to our poor foolish minds the mazes and obscurities of Scripture.

When you study Scripture, what do you look for in it? Testimony to Jesus, or something about yourself? If the latter, the Book will be a dark book to you, for the saint’s portion all flows through Jesus. No Scripture touches the saint save immediately through Jesus, and if you thrust self forward—to see how much can be forced to apply to self, and so lose sight of Jesus as the center of it all—you will find a poor, poor portion.

What I learn here is that death is powerless to the Lord, because it is represented in Scripture as His appointed passage into conferred blessing. May we adore the grace which in God counseled, and which in Christ undertook, and which in the Spirit revealed such a path for Him to obtain a glory He could share with us.