ask: "Is it worth while to toil, to labor, to accumulate, to make
great advance in knowledge, to build higher every day the conning
towers of science, and then leaving these high points of
achievement, enter into that realm where no surveyor's chain has
ever measured the extent, where no geographer has ever named a
headland, and where the one supreme fact that meets us on the
threshold is ignorance--a black, blinding, all-pervading ignorance
as to the next moment after death; so that at the end of our
reasoning, deduction and amplification, the one thing remaining to
the scholar and the fool alike concerning death is a guess, a guess
in which the wish of existence is father to the thought, but where
the hope of to-morrow is, easily, the despair of to-day."
With life so brief, so uncertain, and ending in the starless night
of silence, men in one form of utterance or another are, in
substance, calling to each other and saying, "Let us eat and drink--
for to-morrow we die."
Thus the contemplation of death and its impartial and unprejudiced
analysis leads to a belief in materialism and a greater or less
surrender to mere sensualism; for, if men cannot go up they will go
down; if they cannot live in the spirit, they will grovel in the
flesh.
What then shall we say concerning this fact of death?
Shall we say it is a part of nature's economy--as legitimate as
birth? Because we know nothing of any pre-existent state and are
content to go forward in life, shall we now balk and hesitate to
discharge our functions or meet our opportunities, because we have
no evidence of an after existence?
Is death really natural?
Absolutely it is not!
The whole being of man revolts against it, morally, intellectually
and organically. Every law of nature in man is against it. Pain and
suffering are its protest. To say that it is as natural as birth is
to be guilty of pure bathos; even the worm crushed and quivering
denies the sentiment. Schwann, the author of the cellular theory,
says: "I really do not know why we die."
There is no reason in nature.
The process which renews the body every seven years--so far as any
law in nature shows--might go on indefinitely; there is no reason in
itself why it should cease, and the soul within is never conscious
of the added years. No one ever thinks of asking, "Why do we live?"
Always, and involuntarily, we ask, "Why do we die?" Always we are
seeking to continue life, inventing something to make it immune from
death. To live, therefore, is natural. Not to live is unnatural.
Being unnatural, it is an interference with nature. An interference
with nature is superior to nature. That which is an interference of
and superior to nature is a direct imposition upon nature. An
imposition upon nature could not be possible without the permission
and will of God. If God allows and wills it, then the imposition is
for cause; being such, it is a judicial act, a judgment, and
becomes, necessarily, a penalty. Penalty stands for violated law.
Violated law is transgression. Transgression is sin. Sin, in final
analysis, is lawlessness, and lawlessness is treason against
Jehovah. Death is, therefore, an imposition of God, and is his
penalty against the treason of sin.
This, then, is the explanation of death--it is the penalty of sin.
This is the definition which Christianity gives--as it is written:
"By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so
death passed upon all men." (Romans 5:12.)
Again it is written:
"It is _appointed_ unto men once to die." (Hebrews 9:27.)
In thus determining and defining death, Christianity reveals both
its essence and its mission; for, through its Gospel, Christianity
brings the good news that the issue of sin and death as between God
and man has been settled by our Lord Jesus Christ; that he has
settled it perfectly and forever according to the terms of divine
righteousness by dying as a sacrifice for sin and as a substitute
for sinners.
In order to be a substitute it was necessary that our Lord Jesus
Christ should be a sinless man; otherwise, his death would be only
his own execution under the penalty of sin, and could not avail
either for himself or others. None of Adam's race is sinless; a
sinless person must be of another race. To be of another race and be
human would require a new creation and would be a new and distinct
humanity.
Our Lord Jesus Christ was sinless. He was, therefore, of a new and
distinct humanity. In incarnation, God did not take the humanity of
Adam into union with himself, the humanity of our Lord Jesus Christ
was the repudiation of the humanity of Adam. By that incarnation God
was saying: "I have tried the old humanity. I find nothing in it
that responds to my claims. At its best it is sinful, only sinful
and fit for judgment--the end of all flesh is come before me--and
that end is death."
The humanity of Christ is, therefore, not an evolution, but a new
creation; it is not an invitation to the natural man, but a
condemnation of him. It does not say to him, "Follow me, imitate me
and you will be like me"; it says: "I am from above, ye are from
below. I am from heaven and God--ye are from the earth. My humanity
is as distinct from yours as the heavens are from the earth."
Such a man is not an example, a copy to be set before men.
And never, not once, do the apostles so set him before the natural
man. Always they set him before the natural man as the man who came
into the world--not to live as an example--but to die as a sacrifice
for men; as one who was fit to die because he was free from the
stain and penalty of sin.
But in order that the death of Christ should be of infinite value,
he must himself be an infinite person. The value of a deed depends
upon the person who does it. The quality resides not alone in the
act, but in the actor. The value of the death of our Lord Jesus
Christ is not to be measured by its duration, but by himself--by
what he was in himself; it does not depend upon the length of time
in which as a substitute he suffered the punishment of those whose
place he was taking, but the essential quality of his person. Did
our Lord suffer but a moment of time on the cross, the value of his
suffering as a satisfaction to the law, government and being of God
would be infinite.
An infinite person is God.
Always as such do the apostles present our Lord Jesus Christ. Their
testimony to his deity rings out like the blast of far-sounding
trumpets. In terms that are precise, and so strong and clear that he
who runs may read, they proclaim that he is God of God, very God of
very God.
As God the Son, in co-operation with God the Father and God the
Spirit, he who is presented to us as the Lord Jesus Christ, took a
cell from the substance of the virgin Mary, made it a mould and with
generating power wrought from it a real humanity--a new and distinct
humanity--and united it to his eternal personality; so that he
stands forth as the eternal God endowed with a human nature--with
two natures, human and divine, in one body and one person forever--
the infinite God-man.
Never do the apostles present him as a mere man. They present his
humanity as the background for his deity. His humanity in its most
literal revelation is always declared by them to be the revelation
and the manifestation of God. Never do the apostles attempt to
reason about the incarnation, with superb affirmation and sublime
dignity they declare, "Without controversy, great is the mystery of
godliness; God was manifest in the flesh."
And it is this God whom Christianity presents as coming down from
the heaven of glory, and clothing himself with a new, a distinct,
but a mortal humanity in which to die as an infinite substitute for
guilty men, that through death, he might abolish death for men.
Having died as a sacrificial substitute, death considered as a
penalty, and the guilt and demerit of sin which induced the penalty,
have been set aside for all for whom his substitution avails.
Nor does Christianity leave us long in doubt as to those for whom
the substitution obtains. In full and precise statement of doctrine
it tells us that this substitution is on the behalf of, and for, all
who individually claim our Lord Jesus Christ on the cross as a
personal sacrifice for sin, and who by faith offer him to God as the
sacrifice and sin offering which God himself has provided.
Thus it follows, that for every believer--death as a penalty has
been abolished, brought to nought.
This is the first great and joyous proclamation of Christianity,
_Death has been abolished as a penalty for every believer_.
It has been abolished _de jure_, not yet _de facto_.
The Christian still dies, but his death is no longer penal, it is
providential and provisional.
In the hour of death the Christian is not seized as a culprit and
hurried away to execution. On the contrary, when the hour of death
sounds for him, a voice inspired from heaven assures him that he has
reached the threshold of the "far better"; he arises and "departs,"
that he may be "absent from his home in this body and present at his
home with the Lord." His death is not a defeat, but a begun victory,
and, inasmuch as both soul and spirit are delivered from the
underworld and the shades of death, he has the assurance that the
penalty will yet be completely abolished concerning his body: it is
both the assurance and the prophecy of it.
Christianity is, then, primarily, the good news, and the doctrinal
demonstration, that death as a judicial sentence has been abolished
for the Christian.
But Christianity is something more than the abolition of death--it
is--
Second--The bringing in and revelation of life.
Through the Gospel, we are told, life has been brought to light.
In the nature of the case this cannot mean natural life.
There was no necessity that it should be brought into light.
It has never been in darkness.
It is manifest everywhere. Light and life are synonymous.
There is not a condition in which in some form or other it does not
exist. While one class of life may not live in a certain
environment, there are other forms to which this environment would
be as a hotbed for their production. Life is, indeed, universal, and
may be said to be omnipresent. You will find it in the deepest
depths of earth, and in the highest reaches of air. It expands on
the mountain top, it dwells in the sea; it is organized in the
infusoria, it exists in the infinitesimal, and reveals itself at
last, in the beauty of woman and the strength of man.
As natural life has always thus been in evidence; as it has never
been in the dark at all, then the life which our Lord Jesus Christ
has brought to light is not natural life--it is new life--a life
unknown to the world before.
It does not come from the natural man. It is not produced by natural
generation. It comes from our Lord Jesus Christ and by supernatural
generation. It did not come from him while he walked the earth. At
no time during his earthly career did a human being receive it. The
disciples who followed him--he who leaned upon his breast at supper
and was the disciple whom Jesus loved--knew nothing of it. This new
and unique life was brought into the light only when that light
shone from his empty grave. He gave it forth and communicated it to
men only when, as the risen man, he ascended up on high. It comes
from him as the second man, as the last Adam, that Adam to whom the
first was only as the clay model to the completed statue, as concept
is to consummation. It comes from him who is both God and man, in
one body and one person forever; and who, as such, is the head and
beginning of the new creation of God.
By him it is communicated to those who own him as their atoning
sacrifice.
The instrument is the word of the Gospel.
The agent is the Holy Spirit.
The Word is preached--it falls into the heart of the believer as
seed into the ground.
The Spirit quickens it--the new life is germinated.
That new life is the life and nature of the risen one, our great God
and Saviour Jesus Christ, the man in the glory; it is the mind of
him who is called Christ, and it is, therefore, in final term--"the
mind of Christ."
It is wrought, not in the soul, but in the spirit of the believer.
By no slow process does it enter--this life of the risen Lord--but
by absolute fiat--the fiat of him who said--"Lazarus, come forth."
It is fiat life.
Its entrance into a human being is as light flashes into darkness.
It is as instantaneous as when God of old said, "Let there be
light," and light burst over a world cataclysmically fallen into
chaos.
It is as transforming as when morning awakens the sleeping earth and
hill and dale, river and sea, shine forth in their beauty.
It is as startling as when Lazarus himself, obeying the voice of his
Lord, rose from the dead and came forth.
Behold the illustration of it.
Here is a man who grovelled in the lowest animalism.
He was a husband and father. What a husband! and what a father!
She who was his wife fled oftentimes at the very sound of his
footsteps, shivering with the same fear, as though he who had
solemnly sworn to love and protect her, were a mad brute intent on
gratifying his own fierce lust, and ready with unchecked sensualism
to trample her in the mire of his bestiality. A father, whose very
name made the cheeks of the children grow white and their pulses
almost to cease with terror. A drunkard, who drowned in his cup, not
only wife and children and home and all outward decency, but every
characteristic of truth and honesty and manhood of his own soul. A
man, who through self-indulgence and the incessant yielding to
unspeakable desires, had become little better than a human sewer,
through whom the slime and indescribable filth of fallen and
degraded humanity found its unhindered course. A human being, who
had become a lazar spot, a walking pest, whose inmost thought rotted
and putrified his own mind; and whose words without license were a
poison and contagion to every one whose ears caught their unwelcome
sound.
Mark the change in that man!
The wife now watches at the door with a gladsome smile to greet his
return. The children, who once in their rags trembled with fear, now
clean and wholesomely clad, and gay with laughter, gather at his
knee, the moment he enters his home. He is himself well dressed. He
holds his head erect, his eyes, no longer bloodshot, meet your gaze
with frank and open glance. His tones are soft and modulated, his
speech gentle. The Bible, the one book he always hated, is his
constant study. His mouth once filled with cursings that might well
have chilled the blood to hear, now give utterance to the voice of
prayer and earnest thanksgiving. The church he never entered and
always avoided has become the centre around which the best
activities of his life are continuously moving. He who was once
shunned, despised and feared, is now honored and respected of all.
The man has been transformed.
Those who saw him in former days and see him now might in all reason
ask, "Is this he, or some other man?"
It is both he and yet another man. The same person, but possessing
another character.
What is the secret of it all?
Let the answer be graven on every heart. He has received a new life,
a new, a pure, a holy and spiritual life. He has received that life
from above, from the second Adam, the Lord in heaven. He is now a
twice-begotten man.
And herein is the glorious, distinctive feature of Christianity in
so far as it touches a human soul.
To that soul it brings the good news that a new generation is
possible; the good news that any human being may start over. The
good news that, no matter how much you may be handicapped by your
original genesis; no matter what the terrific law of heredity may
have transmitted to you, you may be generated again. In a moment, in
the twinkling of an eye, you may have a genealogy that shall carry
your name above the proudest of earth; a genealogy by the side of
which the bluest blood of most ancient kings shall be as the palest
and poorest of plebeian stuff. This Gospel of Christianity brings
the good news that you may receive from the throne of God life from
God, as directly as did Adam when God breathed into his nostrils the
breath of life and man became a living soul. In an instant you may
be recreated morally and spiritually, and have in you all the assets
which, when fully capitalized by the grace of God, shall insure your
sonship with God here, making you master over every disturbing and
disquieting passion, and guaranteeing to you an eternal entrance
into the endless inheritance of God, wherein you shall be, indeed,
the heir of God and joint heir with our Lord Jesus Christ. In short,
you may have the bequeathed ability to glorify God and enjoy him
forever.
This is the life which our Lord Jesus Christ has brought to light.
The Gospel is the good news of this life of which the life giver
himself has said, "I came that ye might have life, and that ye might
have it more abundantly." That is to say: "I came that ye might have
this spiritual life and have it without limit here."
And this Gospel of the new life brought to light by and through the
death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ is one of the
elemental facts and forces which definitely answers the question--
"What is Christianity?"
But Christianity is something more than the abolition of death as a
penalty and the bringing in of a new and spiritual life.
Christianity is through its Gospel--the good news that--
Third--Immortality has been brought to light.
The word here translated "immortality" is "incorruption"; but it
signifies in final terms the fact of immortality; for, as mortality
is identified with corruption and is its consequent, so immortality,
which is the opposite of mortality, is the consequence of
incorruption and is inseparable from it.
This word "immortality" is greatly misunderstood, and almost always
misapplied.
It is continually applied to the soul. It is a common thing to hear
or read the expression, "immortal soul."
The truth is, that phrase cannot be found in Holy Scripture. The
terms are misleading--their conjunction is false. Applied to the
soul, the word "immortal" is a misnomer. Throughout Scripture the
original word and idea relate to the body--never otherwise. The word
"mortal" is never used of the soul; you never read in Scripture the
expression, "mortal soul." You will find the words "mortal body." A
mortal body has for its opposite an "immortal body." A mortal body
is subject to corruption and death. An immortal body is
incorruptible and not subject to death--an immortal body can never
die.
The mortal body is the scandal of the race and the open label of
sin. A mortal body puts us in the category of condemned criminals
awaiting execution. The scandal is not only moral, but organic. To
be filled with disease, with pestilence, with fever, and then die
and the body turned back to its component parts--this is a scandal
in construction; as much a scandal as when a house not properly
built falls down; a dead body, whether of man or dog, is the most
shameful blot on the face of the earth, and with the gaping mouth of
the graveyard, justifies the estimate and the declaration of the
living God, that death is an "_enemy_," not a welcome thing like
birth and life--_but an enemy_. Such a scandal is it, indeed, that
when our Lord Jesus Christ came to the grave of Lazarus, he was
himself moved with indignation; for the words, "groaning within
himself," miss the true force. The Greek verb used signifies that he
was inwardly filled with indignation and a sense of outrage at the
sight of the grave and the announcement that the body of Lazarus was
already corrupt. Whatever groaning came from his lips and whatever
tears fell from his eyes as he wept--these were his protests against
death and the grave; for he recognized this dead body not only as
due to the penalty of sin, but as the work of him "who had the power
of death, that is, the devil." (Hebrews 2:14.)
Even though the Christian as to soul and spirit be delivered from
death; even though he does not go down to Hades, but at death is
safely housed and at home with God in heaven--yet the fact that this
body, which was not only the dwelling place of his soul, but the
temple and shrine of the Holy Spirit, should become a banquet for
worms, a thing of repulsive decay, a residuum of forgotten dust, is
a scandal, even to the Christian, and gives emphasis to the shame of
death.
The Son of God came into the world to remove this scandal.
He died and rose again, not only that he might have power and
authority to give a new and spiritual life to men, a character
befitting them for the high things of God, he died and rose again
that he might have power and authority to give an immortal body to
all who would receive from him this new and spiritual life.
He brought this immortality to light when he rose from the dead.
He brought it to light by rising from the dead in the body in which
he had died.
If our Lord Jesus Christ did not rise from the dead in the body in
which he died, then immortality in the New Testament sense of the
word has never been brought to light.
But he did so rise.
He made that clear on the first Sunday night after his resurrection.
The disciples were gathered together in the room.
The supper table was spread.
No one cared to eat.
The story had been going all day that Jesus had risen.
The women said so. They persisted that they had seen and talked with
him.
Two men claimed, also, to have seen him, walked, talked and broken
bread with him, that very afternoon.
The disciples did not believe it.
They were afraid to believe it lest it should prove to be untrue.
Then, suddenly, he stood in the midst.
They thought it was his ghost.
This was a proof to them that he had not risen; for a ghost is a
disembodied thing.
He was a ghost--he was disembodied--therefore he had not risen.
So they felt--each one of them.
They did not say it--but they thought it.
He knew their thoughts.
He asks them why these thoughts arise in their hearts. He upbraids
them for their unbelief.
He tells them plainly, a ghost does not have flesh and bones.
He says, "I have flesh and bones."
They are still silent.
Then he stretches out his hands towards them. He shows them his
feet.
There are great marks in them--there is around these marks as the
stain of blood, or of wounds whence blood had flowed.
Still they do not speak. They are afraid to believe; it is too good
to be true.
He says to them, "Handle me and see--take hold of my feet--feel me--
examine me for yourselves."
They are as immovable and speechless as men changed into stone.
He turns upon them quickly and says, "Have you anything to eat?"
They point to the untasted supper.
Then comes the climax.
He goes to the table.
He sits down.
He eats before them.
It is of record that he did eat _broiled fish_ and an _honeycomb_.
Either this is the worst fable ever palmed off on the church of
Christ--on the credulity of aching human hearts--or it is the truth
of God.
Call it the truth of God--then the body in which our Lord Jesus
Christ rose was the body in which he died.
That body, stamped and sealed with the stigmata of the cross, is the
living, quivering definition, and indisputable demonstration of
immortality. Immortality is the living again in a body which was
dead and dieth no more; or, it is the change of the body in which we
now live into an incorruptible, glorious body which shall never die.
In that body which he raised from the dead, and which never saw
corruption, our Lord Jesus Christ now sitteth at the right hand of
God.
He is there as the vision and standard of immortality.
He is there as the forerunner, the prototype, the sample and
prophecy of immortality for the Christian.
Until the Christian is made immortal his redemption is not complete.
The Christian who dies is transported to heaven.
His estate there as compared to this is "far better."
But "far better" is not the "best." It is only a comparative.
The superlative requires that the Christian shall have a body.
Without a body the Christian is neither a complete human being nor a
perfect son of God.
The divine ordination is "_spirit, soul, and body_."
Unless the Christian receives an immortal body the victory of our
Lord Jesus Christ over death and over him who has the power of death
(that is the Devil) is not complete.
Satan as the strong man armed holds the goods and keeps them secure
within his house.
The instrument with which he is armed is the law. That law which
requires that it shall be "appointed unto men once to die." The
goods are the bodies of the saints, and the house is the dark and
dismal grave.