THE SECOND IMAGE
THE FUTURE BLESSING, OR THE BLESSING BEFORE US
Those who are not Christians will find small comfort, amid their
evils, in the contemplation of future blessings; since for them
all these things are uncertain. Although much ado is made here by
that famous emotion called hope, by which we call on each other,
in words of human comfort, to look for better times, and
continually plan greater things for the uncertain future, yet are
always deceived. Even as Christ teaches concerning the man in
the Gospel, Luke xii, who said to his soul, "I will pull down my
barns, and build greater; and will say to my soul, Soul, thou
hast much goods laid up for many years; take thine ease, eat,
drink, and be merry. But God said unto him, Thou fool, this night
thy soul shall be required of thee; and then whose shall those
things be which thou hast provided? So is he that layeth up
treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God." [Luke 12:18
ff.]
Nevertheless, God has not so utterly forsaken the sons of men
that He will not grant them some measure of comfort in this hope
of the passing of evil and the coming of good things. Though they
are uncertain of the future, yet they hope with certain hope, and
hereby they are meanwhile buoyed up, lest falling into the
further evil of despair, they should break down under their
present evil, and do some worse thing.[43] Hence, even this sort
of hope is the gift of God; not that He would have them lean on
it, but that He would turn their attention to that firm hope,
which is in Him alone. For He is so long-suffering that He
leadeth them to repentance, as it is said in Romans ii, and
suffers none to be straightway deceived by this deceitful hope,
if haply they may "return to the heart," [44] and come to the true
hope.
But Christians have, beside this twofold blessing,[45] the very
greatest future blessings certainly awaiting them; yet only
through death and suffering. Although they, too, rejoice in that
common and uncertain hope that the evil of the present will come
to an end, and that its opposite, the blessing, will increase;
still, that is not their chief concern, but rather this, that
their own particular blessing should increase, which is the truth
as it is in Christ, in which they grow from day to day, and for
which they both live and hope. But beside this they have, as I
have said, the two greatest future blessings in their death. The
first, in that through death the whole tragedy of this world's
ills is brought to a close; as it is written, "Precious in the
sight of the Lord is the death of His saints"; [Ps. 116:15] and
again, "I will lay me down in peace and sleep"; [Ps. 4:8] and
"Though the righteous be prevented with death, yet shall he be at
rest." [Wisd. 4:7] But to the ungodly death is the beginning of
evils; as it is said, "The death of the wicked is very evil,"
[Ps. 34:21] and, "Evil shall catch the unjust man unto
destruction." [46] [Ps. 140:11] Even so Lazarus, who received his
evil things in his lifetime, is comforted, while the rich glutton
is tormented, because he received his good things here. [Luke
16:25] So that it is always well with the Christian, whether he
die or live; so blessed a thing is it to be a Christian and to
believe in Christ. Wherefore Paul says, "To me to live is Christ,
and to die is gain," [Phil. 1:21] and, in Romans xiv, "Whether we
live, we live unto the Lord; and whether we die, we die unto the
Lord; whether we live therefore, or die, we are the Lord's."
[Rom. 14:8 f.] This security Christ hath won for us by His death
and rising again, that He might be Lord of both the living and
dead, able to keep us safe in life and in death; as Psalm xxii.
saith, "Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me." [Ps. 23:4] If this
gain of death move us but little, it is proof that our faith in
Christ is feeble, and does not prize highly enough the reward and
gain of a blessed death, or does not yet believe that death is a
blessing; because the old man is still too much alive in us, and
the wisdom of the flesh too strong. We should, therefore,
endeavor to attain to the knowledge and the love of this blessing
of death. It is a great thing that death, which is to others the
greatest of evils, is made to us the greatest gain. And unless
Christ had obtained this for us, what bad He done that was worthy
of the great price He paid, namely, His own self? It is indeed a
divine work that He wrought, and none need wonder, therefore,
that He made the evil of death to be something that is very good.
[Gen. 1:31]
Death, then, to believers is already dead, and hath nothing
terrible behind its grinning mask. Like unto a slain serpent, it
hath indeed its former terrifying appearance, but it is only the
appearance; in truth it is a dead evil, and harmless enough. Nay,
as God commanded Moses to lift up a serpent of brass, at sight of
which the living serpents perished, [Num. 21:8 f.] even so our
death dies in the believing contemplation of the death of Christ,
and now hath but the outward appearance of death. With such fine
similitudes the mercy of God prefigures to us, in our infirmity,
this truth, that though death would not be taken away, He yet has
reduced its power to a mere shadow. [Matt. 9:24] For this reason
it is called in the Scriptures a "sleep" rather than death. [1
Thess. 4:13 ff.]
The other blessing of death is this, that it not only concludes
the pains and evils of this life, but (which is more excellent)
makes an end of sins and vices. And this renders death far more
desirable to believing souls, as I have said above,[47] than the
former blessing; since the evils of the soul, which are its sins,
are beyond comparison worse evils than those of the body. This
alone, did we but know it, should make death most desirable. But
if it does not, it is a sign that we neither feel nor hate our
sin as we should. For this our life is so full of perils--sin,
like a serpent, besetting us on every side--and it is impossible
for us to live without sinning; but fairest death delivers us
from these perils, and cuts our sin clean away from us.
Therefore, the praise of the just man, in Wisdom iv, concludes on
this wise: "He pleased God, and was taken away, and was beloved
of Him: so that living among sinners he was translated. Yea,
speedily was he taken away, lest that wickedness should alter his
understanding, or deceit beguile his soul. For the bewitching of
naughtiness doth obscure things that are honest; and the
wandering of concupiscence doth undermine the simple mind (O how
constantly true is this!). He, being made perfect in a short
time, fulfilled a long time; for his soul pleased the Lord:
therefore hasted He to take him away from the wicked." [Wisd.
4:10-14]
Thus, by the mercy of God, death, which was to man the punishment
for his sin, is made unto the Christian the end of sin, and the
beginning of life and righteousness. Wherefore, he that loves
life and righteousness must not hate, but love sin, their
minister and workshop; else he will never attain to either life
or righteousness. But he that is not able to do this, let him
pray God to enable him. For to this end are we taught to pray,
"Thy will be done," [Matt. 6:10] because we cannot do it of
ourselves, since through fear of death we love death and sin
rather than life and righteousness. And that God appointed death
for the putting to death of sin, may be gathered also from the
fact that He imposed death upon Adam immediately after his sin;
and that before He drove him out of paradise; in order to show us
that death should bring us no evil, but every blessing, since it
was imposed in paradise, as a penance and satisfaction.[48] For
it is true that, through the envy of the devil, death altered
into the world; [Wisd. 2:24] but it is of the Lord's surpassing
goodness that, after having thus entered in, it is not permitted
to harm us very much, but is taken captive from the very
beginning, and set to be the punishment and death of sin.
This He signified when, after having in His commandment foretold
the death of Adam, [Gen. 2:17] He did not afterward hold His
peace, but imposed death anew, and tempered the severity of His
commandment, nay. He did not so much as mention death with a
single syllable, but said only, "Dust thou art, and unto dust
shalt thou return" [Gen. 3:19]; and, "Until thou return unto the
ground, from whence thou wast taken"--as if He then so bitterly
hated death that He would not deign to call it by its name,
according to the word, "Wrath is in His indignation; and life in
His good will." [49] [Ps. 30:5] Thus He seemed to say that, unless
death had been necessary to the abolishing of sin, He would not
have been willing to know it nor to name it, much less to impose
it. And so, against sin, which wrought death, the zeal of God
arms none other than this very death again; so that you may here
see exemplified the poet's line,[50]
By his own art the artist perisheth.
Even so sin is destroyed by its own fruit, and is slain by the
death which it brought forth;[51] as a viper is slain by its own
offering. This is a brave spectacle, to see how death is
destroyed, not by another's work, but by its own; is stabbed with
its own weapon, and, like Goliath, is beheaded with its own
sword. [1 Sam. 17:51] For Goliath also was a type of sin, a giant
terrible to all save the young lad David--that is Christ,--who
single-handed laid him low, and having cut off his head with his
own sword, said afterward that there was no better sword than the
sword of Goliath (I. Samuel xxi). [1 Sam. 21:9]
Therefore, if we meditate on these joys of the power Christ, and
these gifts of His grace, how can any small evil distress us, the
while we see such blessings in this great evil that is to come!