Christ's gift to men is the gift of life in all senses of that word,
from the lowest to the highest. That life, as our text tells us, is
altogether unaffected by death. We cannot see round the sharp angle
where the valley turns, but we know that the path runs straight on
through the gorge up to the throat of the pass--and so on to the
'shining table-lands whereof our God Himself is Sun and Moon.' There are
some rivers that run through stagnant lakes, keeping the tinge of their
waters, and holding together the body of their stream undiverted from
its course, and issuing undiminished and untarnished from the lower end
of the lake. And so the stream of our lives may run through the Dead
Sea, and come out below none the worse for the black waters through
which it has forced its way. The life that Christ gives is unaffected by
death. Our creed is a risen Saviour, and the corollary of that creed is,
that death touches the circumference, but never gets near the man. It is
hard to believe, in the face of the foolish senses; it is hard to
believe, in the face of aching sorrow. It is hard to-day to believe, in
the face of passionate and ingenious denial, but it is true all the
same. Death is sleep, and sleep is life.
And so, further, my text tells us that this life is life with Christ. We
know not details, we need not know them. Here we have the presence of
Jesus Christ, if we love Him, as really as when He walked the earth. Ay!
more really, for Jesus Christ is nearer to us who, having not seen Him,
love Him, and somewhat know His divinity and His sacrifice, than He was
to the men who companied with Him all the time that He went in and out
amongst them, whilst they were ignorant of who dwelt with them, and
entertained the Lord of angels and men unawares. He is with us, and it
is the power and the privilege and the joy of our lives to realise His
presence. That Lord who, whilst He was on earth, was the Son of Man
which is in heaven, now that He is in heaven in His corporeal humanity
is the Son of God who dwells with us. And as He dwells with us, if we
love Him and trust Him, so, but in fashion incapable of being revealed
to us, now does He dwell with those of whose condition this is the only
and all-sufficing positive knowledge which we have, that they are
'absent from the body; present with the Lord.'
Further, that united life is a social life. The whole force of my text
is often missed by English readers, who run into one idea the two words
'together with.' But if you would put a comma after 'together,' you
would understand better what Paul meant. He refers to two forms of
union. Whether we wake or sleep we shall live all aggregated together,
and all aggregated 'together' because each is 'with Him.' That is to
say, union with Jesus Christ makes all who partake of that union,
whether they belong to the one side of the river or the other, into a
mighty whole. They are together because they are with the Lord.
Suppose a great city, and a stream flowing through its centre. The
palace and all pertaining to the court are on one side of the water;
there is an outlying suburb on the other, of meaner houses, inhabited by
poor and humble people. But yet it is one city. 'Ye are come unto the
heavenly Jerusalem, the city of the living God, and to the spirits of
just men made perfect.' We are knit together by one life, one love, one
thought; and the more we fix our hearts on the things which those above
live among and by, the more truly are we knit to them. As a quaint old
English writer says, 'They are gone but into another pew in the same
church.'
We are one in Him, and so there will be a perfecting of union in
reunion; and the inference so craved for by our hearts seems to be
warranted to our understandings, that that society above, which is the
perfection of society, shall not be lacking in the elements of mutual
recognition and companionship, without which we cannot conceive of
society at all. 'And so we shall ever be with the Lord.'
Dear friends, I beseech you to trust your sinful souls to that dear Lord
who bore you in His heart and mind when He bore His cross to Calvary and
completed the work of your redemption. If you will accept Him as your
sacrifice and Saviour, when He cried 'It is finished,' united to Him
your lives will be quickened into intense activity and joyful vigilance
and expectation, and death will be smoothed into a quiet falling asleep.
'The shadow feared of man,' that strikes threateningly across every
path, will change as we approach it, if our hearts are anchored on Him
who died for us, into the Angel of Light to whom God has given charge
concerning us to bear up our feet upon His hands, and land us in the
presence of the Lord and in the perfect society of those who love Him.
And so shall we live together, and all together, with Him.