"God is not the God of the dead, but of the living."--Matt. xxii. 32
We hear these words as a part of our Lord's answer to the Sadducees;
and, as their question was put in evident profaneness, and the
answer to it is one which to our minds is quite obvious and natural,
so we are apt to think that in this particular story there is less
than usual that particularly concerns us. But it so happens, that
our Lord, in answering the Sadducees, has brought in one of the most
universal and most solemn of all truths,--which is indeed implied
in many parts of the Old Testament, but which the Gospel has
revealed to us in all its fullness,--the truth contained in the
words of the text, that "God is not the God of the dead, but of the
living."
I would wish to unfold a little what is contained in these words,
which we often hear even, perhaps, without quite understanding them;
and many times oftener without fully entering into them. And we may
take them, first, in their first part, where they say that "God is
not the God of the dead."
The word "dead," we know, is constantly used in Scripture in a
double sense, as meaning those who are dead spiritually, as well as
those who are dead naturally. And, in either sense, the words are
alike applicable: "God is not the God of the dead."
God's not being the God of the dead signifies two things: that they
who are without him are dead, as well as that they who are dead are
also without him. So far as our knowledge goes respecting inferior
animals, they appear to be examples of this truth. They appear to
us to have no knowledge of God; and we are not told that they have
any other life than the short one of which our senses inform us. I
am well aware that our ignorance of their condition is so great that
we may not dare to say anything of them positively; there may be a
hundred things true respecting them which we neither know nor
imagine. I would only say that, according to that most imperfect
light in which we see them, the two points of which I have been
speaking appear to meet in them: we believe that they have no
consciousness of God, and we believe that they will die. And so
far, therefore, they afford an example of the agreement, if I may so
speak, between these two points; and were intended, perhaps, to be
to our view a continual image of it. But we had far better speak of
ourselves. And here, too, it is the case that "God is not the God
of the dead." If we are without him we are dead; and if we are dead
we are without him: in other words, the two ideas of death and
absence from God are in fact synonymous.
Thus, in the account given of the fall of man, the sentence of death
and of being cast out of Eden go together; and if any one compares
the description of the second Eden in the Revelation, and recollects
how especially it is there said, that God dwells in the midst of it,
and is its light by day and night, he will see that the banishment
from the first Eden means a banishment from the presence of God.
And thus, in the day that Adam sinned, he died; for he was cast out
of Eden immediately, however long he may have moved about afterwards
upon the earth where God was not. And how very strong to the same
point are the words of Hezekiah's prayer, "The grave cannot praise
thee, Death cannot celebrate thee; they that go down into the pit
cannot hope for thy truth"; words which express completely the
feeling that God is not the God of the dead. This, too, appears to
be the sense generally of the expression used in various parts of
the Old Testament, "Thou shalt surely die." It is, no doubt, left
purposely obscure; nor are we ever told, in so many words, all that
is meant by death; but, surely, it always implies a separation from
God, and the being--whatever the notion may extend to--the being
dead to him. Thus, when David had committed his great sin, and had
expressed his repentance for it, Nathan tells him, "The Lord also
hath put away thy sin; thou shalt not die": which means, most
expressively, thou shalt not die to God. In one sense David died,
as all men die; nor was he by any means freed from the punishment of
his sin: he was not, in that sense, forgiven; but he was allowed
still to regard God as his God; and, therefore, his punishments were
but fatherly chastisements from God's hand, designed for his profit,
that he might be partaker of God's holiness. And thus, although
Saul was sentenced to lose his kingdom, and although he was killed
with his sons on Mount Gilboa, yet I do not think that we find the
sentence passed upon him, "Thou shalt surely die;" and, therefore,
we have no right to say that God had ceased to be his God, although
he visited him with severe chastisements, and would not allow him to
hand down to his sons the crown of Israel. Observe, also, the
language of the eighteenth chapter of Ezekiel, where the expressions
occur so often, "He shall surely live," and "He shall surely die."
We have no right to refer these to a mere extension on the one hand,
or a cutting short on the other, of the term of earthly existence.
The promise of living long in the land, or, as in Hezekiah's case,
of adding to his days fifteen years, is very different from the full
and unreserved blessing, "Thou shalt surely live." And we know,
undoubtedly, that both the good and the bad to whom Ezekiel spoke
died alike the natural death of the body. But the peculiar force of
the promise, and of the threat, was, in the one case, Thou shalt
belong to God; in the other, Thou shalt cease to belong to him;
although the veil was not yet drawn up which concealed the full
import of those terms, "belonging to God," and "ceasing to belong to
him": nay, can we venture to affirm that it is fully drawn aside
even now?
I have dwelt on this at some length, because it really seems to
place the common state of the minds of too many amongst us in a
light which is exceedingly awful; for if it be true, as I think the
Scripture implies, that to be dead, and to be without God, are
precisely the same thing, then can it be denied that the symptoms of
death are strongly marked upon many of us? Are there not many who
never think of God or care about his service? Are there not many who
live, to all appearances, as unconscious of his existence as we
fancy the inferior animals to be? And is it not quite clear, that to
such persons, God cannot be said to be their God? He may be the God
of heaven and earth, the God of the universe, the God of Christ's
Church; but he is not their God, for they feel to have nothing at
all to do with him; and, therefore, as he is not their God, they
are, and must be, according to the Scripture, reckoned among the
dead.
But God is the God "of the living." That is, as before, all who are
alive, live unto him; all who live unto him are alive. "God said, I
am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob;"
and, therefore, says our Lord, "Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob are
not and cannot be dead." They cannot be dead because God owns them;
he is not ashamed to be called their God; therefore, they are not
cast out from him; therefore, by necessity, they live. Wonderful,
indeed, is the truth here implied, in exact agreement, as we have
seen, with the general language of Scripture; that, as she who but
touched the hem of Christ's garment was, in a moment, relieved from
her infirmity, so great was the virtue which went out from him; so
they who are not cast out from God, but have anything: whatever to
do with him, feel the virtue of his gracious presence penetrating
their whole nature; because he lives, they must live also.
Behold, then, life and death set before us; not remote (if a few
years be, indeed, to be called remote), but even now present before
us; even now suffered or enjoyed. Even now we are alive unto God or
dead unto God; and, as we are either the one or the other, so we
are, in the highest possible sense of the terms, alive or dead. In
the highest possible sense of the terms; but who can tell what that
highest possible sense of the terms is? So much has, indeed, been
revealed to us, that we know now that death means a conscious and
perpetual death, as life means a conscious and perpetual life. But
greatly, indeed, do we deceive ourselves, if we fancy that, by
having thus much told us, we have also risen to the infinite
heights, or descended to the infinite depths, contained in those
little words, life and death. They are far higher, and far deeper,
than ever thought or fancy of man has reached to. But, even on the
first edge of either, at the visible beginnings of that infinite
ascent or descent, there is surely something which may give us a
foretaste of what is beyond. Even to us in this mortal state, even
to you advanced but so short a way on your very earthly journey,
life and death have a meaning: to be dead unto God or to be alive to
him, are things perceptibly different.
For, let me ask of those who think least of God, who are most
separate from him, and most without him, whether there is not now
actually, perceptibly, in their state, something of the coldness,
the loneliness, the fearfulness of death? I do not ask them whether
they are made unhappy by the fear of God's anger; of course they are
not: for they who fear God are not dead to him, nor he to them. The
thought of him gives them no disquiet at all; this is the very point
we start from. But I would ask them whether they know what it is to
feel God's blessing, For instance: we all of us have our troubles of
some sort or other, our disappointments, if not our sorrows. In
these troubles, in these disappointments,--I care not how small they
may be,--have they known what it is to feel that God's hand is over
them; that these little annoyances are but his fatherly correction;
that he is all the time loving us, and supporting us? In seasons of
joy, such as they taste very often, have they known what it is to
feel that they are tasting the kindness of their heavenly Father,
that their good things come from his hand, and are but an infinitely
slight foretaste of his love? Sickness, danger,--I know that they
come to many of us but rarely; but if we have known them, or at
least sickness, even in its lighter form, if not in its graver,--
have we felt what it is to know that we are in our Father's hands,
that he is with us, and will be with us to the end; that nothing can
hurt those whom he loves? Surely, then, if we have never tasted
anything of this: if in trouble, or in joy, or in sickness, we are
left wholly to ourselves, to bear as we can, and enjoy as we can; if
there is no voice that ever speaks out of the heights and the depths
around us, to give any answer to our own; if we are thus left to
ourselves in this vast world,--there is in this a coldness and a
loneliness; and whenever we come to be, of necessity, driven to be
with our own hearts alone, the coldness and the loneliness must be
felt. But consider that the things which we see around us cannot
remain with us, nor we with them. The coldness and loneliness of the
world, without God, must be felt more and more as life wears on: in
every change of our own state, in every separation from or loss of a
friend, in every more sensible weakness of our own bodies, in every
additional experience of the uncertainty of our own counsels,--the
deathlike feeling will come upon us more and more strongly: we shall
gain more of that fearful knowledge which tells us that "God is not
the God of the dead."
And so, also, the blessed knowledge that he is the God "of the
living" grows upon those who are truly alive. Surely he "is not far
from every one of us." No occasion of life fails to remind those who
live unto him, that he is their God, and that they are his children.
On light occasions or on grave ones, in sorrow and in joy, still the
warmth of his love is spread, as it were, all through the atmosphere
of their lives: they for ever feel his blessing. And if it fills
them with joy unspeakable even now, when they so often feel how
little they deserve it; if they delight still in being with God, and
in living to him, let them be sure that they have in themselves the
unerring witness of life eternal:--God is the God of the living,
and all who are with him must live.
Hard it is, I well know, to bring this home, in any degree, to the
minds of those who are dead: for it is of the very nature of the
dead that they can hear no words of life. But it has happened that,
even whilst writing what I have just been uttering to you, the news
reached me that one, who two months ago was one of your number, who
this very half-year has shared in all the business and amusements of
this place, is passed already into that state where the meanings of
the terms life and death are become fully revealed. He knows what
it is to live unto God and what it is to die to him. Those things
which are to us unfathomable mysteries, are to him all plain: and
yet but two months ago he might have thought himself as far from
attaining this knowledge as any of us can do. Wherefore it is
clear, that these things, life and death, may hurry their lesson
upon us sooner than we deem of, sooner than we are prepared to
receive it. And that were indeed awful, if, being dead to God, and
yet little feeling it, because of the enjoyments of our worldly life
these enjoyments were of a sudden to be struck away from us, and we
should find then that to be dead to God is death indeed, a death
from which there is no waking and in which there is no sleeping
forever.