'The adoption, to wit, the redemption of our
body.'--ROMANS viii. 23.
In a previous verse Paul has said that all true Christians have
received 'the Spirit of adoption.' They become sons of God through
Christ the Son. They receive a new spiritual and divine life from God
through Christ, and that life is like its source. In so far as that
new life vitalises and dominates their nature, believers have
received 'the Spirit of adoption,' and by it they cry 'Abba, Father.'
But the body still remains a source of weakness, the seat of sin. It
is sluggish and inapt for high purposes; it still remains subject to
'the law of sin and death'; and so is not like the Father who
breathed into it the breath of life. It remains in bondage, and has
not yet received the adoption. This text, in harmony with the
Apostle's whole teaching, looks forward to a change in the body and
in its relations to the renewed spirit, as the crown and climax of
the work of redemption, and declares that till that change is
effected, the condition of Christian men is imperfect, and is a
waiting, and often a groaning.
In dealing with some of the thoughts that arise from this text, we
note--
I. That a future bodily life is needed in order to give definiteness
and solidity to the conception of immortality.
Before the Gospel came men's belief in a future life was vague and
powerless, mainly because it had no Gospel of the Resurrection, and
so nothing tangible to lay hold on. The Gospel has made the belief in
a future state infinitely easier and more powerful, mainly because of
the emphasis with which it has proclaimed an actual resurrection and
a future bodily life. Its great proof of immortality is drawn, not
merely from ethical considerations of the manifest futility of
earthly life which has no sequel beyond the grave, nor from the
intuitions and longings of men's souls, but from the historical fact
of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, and of His Ascension in bodily
form into heaven. It proclaims these two facts as parts of His
experience, and asserts that when He rose from the dead and ascended
up on high, He did so as 'the first-born among many brethren,' their
forerunner and their pattern. It is this which gives the Gospel its
power, and thus transforms a vague and shadowy conception of
immortality into a solid faith, for which we have already an
historical guarantee. Stupendous mysteries still veil the nature of
the resurrection process, though these are exaggerated into
inconceivabilities by false notions of what constitutes personal
identity; but if the choice lies between accepting the Christian
doctrine of a resurrection and the conception of a finite spirit
disembodied and yet active, there can be no doubt as to which of
these two is the more reasonable and thinkable. Body, soul, and
spirit make the complete triune man.
The thought of the future life as a bodily life satisfies the
longings of the heart. Much natural shrinking from death comes from
unwillingness to part company with an old companion and friend. As
Paul puts it in 2nd Corinthians, 'Not for that we would be unclothed,
but clothed upon.' All thoughts of the future which do not give
prominence to the idea of a bodily life open up but a ghastly and
uninviting mode of existence, which cannot but repel those who are
accustomed to the fellowship of their bodies, and they feel that they
cannot think of themselves as deprived of that which was their
servant and instrument, through all the years of their earthly
consciousness.