They 'sleep through Him.' It is by reason of Christ and His work, and by
reason of that alone, that death's darkness is made beautiful, and
death's grimness is softened down to this. Now, in order to grasp the
full meaning of such words as these of the Apostle, we must draw a broad
distinction between the physical fact of the ending of corporeal life
and the mental condition which is associated with it by us. What we call
death, if I may so say, is a complex thing--a bodily phenomenon _plus_
conscience, the sense of sin, the certainty of retribution in the dim
beyond. And you have to take these elements apart. The former remains,
but if the others are removed, the whole has changed its character and
is become another thing, and a very little thing.
The mere physical fact is a trifle. Look at it as you see it in the
animals; look at it as you see it in men when they actually come to it.
In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred it is painless and easy, and men
sink into slumber. Strange, is it not, that so small a reality should
have power to cast over human life so immense and obscuring a shadow!
Why? Because, as the Apostle says, 'the sting of death is sin,' and if
you can take the sting out of it, then there is very little to fear, and
it comes down to be an insignificant and transient element in our
experience.
Now, the death of Jesus Christ takes away, if I may so say, the _nimbus_
of apprehension and dread arising from conscience and sin, and the
forecast of retribution. There is nothing left for us to face except the
physical fact, and any rough soldier, with a coarse, red coat upon him,
will face that for eighteenpence a day, and think himself well paid.
Jesus Christ has abolished death, leaving the mere shell, but taking all
the substance out of it. It has become a different thing to men, because
in that death of His He has exhausted the bitterness, and has made it
possible that we should pass into the shadow, and not fear either
conscience or sin or judgment.
In this connection I cannot but notice with what a profound meaning the
Apostle, in this very verse, uses the bare, naked word in reference to
Him, and the softened one in reference to us. 'If we believe that Jesus
Christ _died_ and rose again, even so them also which sleep.' Ah! yes!
He died indeed, bearing all that terror with which men's consciences
have invested death. He died indeed, bearing on Himself the sins of the
world. He died that no man henceforward need ever die in that same
fashion. His death makes our deaths sleep, and His Resurrection makes
our sleep calmly certain of a waking.
So, dear 'brethren, I would not have you ignorant concerning them which
are asleep, that ye sorrow not even as others which have no hope.' And I
would have you to remember that, whilst Christ by His work has made it
possible that the terror may pass away, and death may be softened and
minimised into slumber, it will not be so with you--unless you are
joined to Him, and by trust in the power of His death and the
overflowing might of His Resurrection, have made sure that what He has
passed through, you will pass through, and where He is, and what He is,
you will be also.
Two men die by one railway accident, sitting side by side upon one seat,
smashed in one collision. But though the outward fact is the same about
each, the reality of their deaths is infinitely different. The one falls
asleep through Jesus, in Jesus; the other dies indeed, and the death of
his body is only a feeble shadow of the death of his spirit. Do you knit
yourself to the Life, which is Christ, and then 'he that believeth on Me
shall never die.'