Facts and
Theories as to a Future State
CHAPTER XXII
THE PROVISIONAL CHARACTER OP DEATH
WE now come to look at a point of great importance in many
respects, and which has been indeed already spoken of, but not fully proved or
dwelt upon as it deserves. I mean the provisional and temporary character of
the first death.
We have already argued that the penalty attaching to
the eating of the forbidden tree was simply this, and did not at all (as so
many beside Mr. Constable assume) include in, it "all that God purposed to
inflict upon Adam and his posterity in case of transgression"! Where is the
least warrant for this? The actual result to us of that primal sin we have had
the apostle state to us, and that is (so far as infliction from God is
concerned) physical death as His stamp upon a fallen condition, His judgment of
a race corrupted from its beginning.
Herein lay of course the
possibility, nay, probability, of a final sentence But God is in no haste with
judgment; and this was the beginning of the world’s history, not the close
of it. Who, save for the need of making a system, could imagine the beneficent
Creator of man, at once, and for the personal offence of our first parents,
adjudging all their descendants to eternal death? Scripture at any rate has
naught of it, and we are seeking to follow Scripture in its simplest - facts
and statements.
It may be urged, however, that death followed as one of
these facts and that that shows that Adam’s posterity shared in
Adam’s judgment.
But that is a very different thing, as a little
consideration will assure us. Death was indeed God’s judgment upon the
race as vitiated and corrupt, but - inasmuch as it was corrupted by
another’s sin and not its own, - a judgment which was a merciful
discipline for it, a witness to the fallen creature of its own condition, an
appeal to it by its own frailty and helplessness to look higher than itself for
help, an admonition so to number its days that its heart might be applied to
wisdom. What should we do without the thorns and thistles which grow out of the
ground cursed for man’s sake? What should we do without the need of the
sweat of the brow? What, without the ministry of death itself. Surely a
blessing is in this curse; it is an evil which is good; the discipline of the
Father of spirits for our profit, chastening of a holy hand that we may be
partakers of His holiness, and in its own nature contrasted with that final
sentence which is "Depart from, me, ye cursed." The first death and the second
death are contrasts and not the same.
Such is its nature, if we
consider it as the fruit simply of Adam’s sin, its legacy to his
descendants. It was the wish and tender foresight of Him who saw the floodgates
of evil pierced, and the awful outburst of iniquity before it came and ordained
this as its corrective, as One who did not intend to give up His creatures to
it, to perish through helplessness alone. If by one man sin was entering into
the world, then "death by sin" was the Divine ordinance. And right and good
every prodigal proclaims it whom the pressure of hunger causes to think of a
Father’s house: - very psalmist that ever was, with Israel’s sweet
Psalmist when he owns, " Before I was afflicted I went astray, now I have kept
Thy words."
This is death as an appendage to a fallen condition; but if
we left it there, there would be manifest incongruity with much of Scripture
and of fact as well. In order to have the whole statement and the full
harmonious truth, we must look further. We must distinguish between death as we
should rightly consider it, as introduced into the world through another’s
sin, and, on the other hand, as brought upon us through. our own, personal
transgression. The Old Testament is full of this last subject, which is found
also in the New. At Corinth, where they were profaning the Lord’s supper
many were weak and sickly among them, and many slept (1 Cor. xi. 80). And the
apostle John tells us of a "sin unto death" for which he does not say that one
should pray (1 John v. 16).
But the Old Testament it is that insists
ever upon death as the penalty of personal transgression, and this is just what
the text means on all sides so little understood, "the soul that sinneth it
shall die." Even this is not the second death which the Old Testament knows
nothing of. It is a sinner dying in his sins and under judgment, and which
leaves its boding shadow upon the future beyond death. But we must reserve this
subject for another chapter.
Death is then a provisional, not a final,
sentence. It is a corrective discipline from the Father of spirits in view of
the entrance of sin into the world. It is in its own nature temporary and to
pass away, as Scripture declares it will. As the separation of soul and body,
it is a necessary hindrance to the full blessing of the righteous, and a
hindrance also to the full judgment of the wicked. For the righteous and for
the wicked alike, although with opposite effect, it is at the resurrection
finally done away.
Let us look at some Scriptures which in this way get
their proper significance, and in this way only.
First, the Lord’s
answer to the Sadducees touching the resurrection (Luke xx. 27-38). These
Sadducees were consistent in their unbelief; and, as they denied resurrection,
they denied the existence also of the spirit in the separate state; and it is
this last that the Lord takes up and proves, in order by it to prove the
resurrection.
God says at the bush, "I am the God of Abraham, and the
God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob." But, if He were then in that relationship
to them, they must be existent for Him to be so. He could not be the God of the
dead (in the Sadducees sense of death, the non-existent), they must be sense
alive: alive to Him, and so they are.
But then this apparently proves
but a separate existence of the spirit in death, and that has ever been the
difficulty about it. How does proving the existence of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob
in the separate state prove resurrection? Very simply after all. For what is
death upon this view of it? Manifestly the infringement of God’s creative
plan. HE had not made man a spirit merely, but a spirit embodied. A spirit
disembodied could not be God’s intention, for His. gifts and calling are
without repentance. The body therefore must rise again.
And this is no
forced argument. I doubt not it was one well understood in that day, when men
were accustomed to a sort of reasoning which the clear light of the New
Testament (wherein life and incorruption have been brought to light) has set
aside as unnecessary to those who have it. But that this is no forced argument
we have the best possible evidence; for it is Mr. Constable’s own
conclusion (perfect Sadducee as he is as to the separate state) as to what the
separate existence of the spirit might imply. We have quoted his words already,
but will cite them again to show how he considers this linked by implication
with resurrection of the dead. "If the first death," he says, "is consistent.
with man’s in fact not dying, but continuing to live in regard to his most
important part, whose survival may again be supposed to imply the restoration
of the body to life," etc. That is what it really does, and we may well believe
it no forced or unnatural conclusion, when we find from such a quarter so
decided a testimony as to its naturalness.
Take an. illustration from a
fact before our eyes. The preservation of the Jews as a nation after near
eighteen hundred years of dispersion into all lands is one of the standing
miracles whereby God rebukes the unbelief of His prophetic word. But what does
it argue to those who believe in His hand as guiding surely and not doubtfully,
all things according to his resistless counsels? If we must say, this is the
finger of God, to what does it point ? Surely to that national resurrection
from the dead, which yet in His own time He will accomplish. This is the simply
prompt conclusion of faith. It may serve to illustrate the connection of
thought between the belief in the separate spirit and the resurrection of the
body.
And we may note that the inspired historian seems in some way to
connect them, when, Paul having proclaimed himself in the council a Pharisee
and the son of a Pharisee, he adds in explanation: "for the Sadducees say that
there is no resurrection, neither angel, nor spirit, but the Pharisees confess
both."
But we must not forget that there is another way in which the
words of our Lord are attempted to be explained. Indeed, we have already heard
Mr. Roberts upon the subject. Let us now listen to Mr. Dobney. He has taken
particular pains to establish the sense in which the passage is to be
understood. He says of the explanation of it in the way we have given: "With us
it would be a striking and satisfactory proof of a continuance of conscious
existence after death - but no proof whatever of a resurrection; and yet it is
to prove this last exclusively that our Lord, who could not have reasoned
inaccurately or sophistically, adduces it." He paraphrases therefore the
Lord’s argument thus: -
"God is not the God of the dead [utterly and
eternally perished, which was the sense in which the Sadducees used it, with
whom He was disputing] but of the living.
"But he calls himself the God of
the Patriarchs.
"Therefore these still live - or ‘will live again
[which is the same thing with Him to whom the future is the present, and
‘who calls the things that are not, but shall be, as though they already
Were].
But then, as already intimated, since it was a resurrection our
Lord undertook to establish, which He establishes only by proving a life after
death, the life which carries with it a proof of resurrection must either be
itself identical therewith, or else dependent thereupon."
The
patriarchs "live" then in the purpose of .God as to them, not actually, but God
calling that which is not as though it were - that is how Mr. Dobney
understands it.
But then, when God says, "I am the God of Abraham," the
present actually is everything. If otherwise, then as the past is the present
also to Divine Omniscience, no less than the future, He might be Abraham’s
God in that sense, and no resurrection be involved at all.
But it is
not true that, in the way Mr. Dobney understands .it, God calls the things that
are not as though they were. In the passage he quotes God does indeed speak of
the "many nations" of which he had made Abraham father, with divine certainty,
as being, although they were not yet. But He does not speak of their present
existence, while they do not exist. So He could not assert, "I am the God of
Abraham" as a matter of present relationship, when none existed. To say so is
to speak deceitfully for Him. "I am the God of Abraham" to human ears
necessarily inferred what God was then at the time He spoke. Nor was there here
prophecy at all; no announcement of the future, nothing that could involve the
thought of the future. God could no more say He was the God of Abraham while
there was no Abraham to be God to, than He could say I am raising the dead, a
thousand years before the resurrection. "The Lord which is, and which was, and
which is to come," distinguishes between the present and the future, which Mr.
Dobney would confound. But God says, "I will be" as well as "I am," and in this
distinguishes, that we may understand Him; binding Himself to the forms of
human speech which He adopts; speaking like one of ourselves, however little He
be that, instead of hiding Himself from us in His own perfections.
"I
am the God of Abraham" then involved the fact of Abraham’s existence when
He spoke. He could not be the God of one who had no existence, could not be in
relationship to a nonentity, could not be (in the Sadducees’ thought of
what the dead were) "the God of the dead." The survival thus of Abraham in his
most important part implied (as Mr. Constable allows) "the restoration of the
body to life."
Death is then in its own nature temporary. As the
derangement of God’s thought of man in his creation, it must of necessity
be set aside. It is. the provisional appendage of a scene into which sin has
entered, but where God’s mercy also abounds. In its nature it could not be
final. In fact it is to be done away.
Death does not enter then into
the final judgment. That is expressly stated to be "AFTER death." "It is
appointed unto men ONCE to die, but AFTER this the judgment." There are men we
wot of who say it is appointed unto men twice to die, - that the second death
is of the same nature as the first, - and that death thus is the judgment. Let
us examine carefully then this text also.
There is one fruitful cause
of misapprehension of it on all sides. The sentence produced is not understood
to be, what upon the face of it it is, part of a larger sentence in which the
portion of the saved is distinguished from the general lot of men. "Now once in
the end of the world hath He [Christ] appeared, to put away sin by the
sacrifice of Himself. And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after
this the judgment, so Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many; and
unto them that look for Him shall He appear the second time without sin unto
salvation’: (Heb. ix. 26-28).
There is a manifest contrast here -
a designed one. The express object of the passage is to display the efficacy of
the work of Christ. He had appeared to put away sin by His sacrifice. Sin had
brought in death, had created a necessity of judgment. How then did
Christ’s work meet these effects of sin for those who believed? Were death
and judgment their common portion still? Alas, the general answer has been in
the affirmative, and thus the meaning has been almost taken away from this
pregnant and wonderful statement. Men say still, with the woman of Tekoa of old
"We must needs die," and as for judgment, to deny that a saint shall be judged
would be by the mass considered heresy, if it were not lunacy. Let us seek to
get "full assurance of understanding" as to this.
First, as to death,
is it a "must needs" that the believer die? Did Enoch die? Did Elijah? Will the
saints that are "alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord"? "We shall not
all sleep," says the apostle, "but we shall all be changed." Thus death, with
the apostle, is no necessity for the believer. We may die, not must. We may
meet it as the providential dispensation of an infinitely wise God, - not as
wrath, not as penalty, nor necessarily even as judgment, in that sense in which
the Father judgeth His own children.* It is "to depart and be with Christ,
which is far better," - to be "absent from the body and present with the Lord."
Thus has Christ "abolished death, and brought life and incorruption to light by
the gospel."
*For of course I do not speak of such cases as those of the
Corinthians, or of a "sin unto death."
This, let me trust, is. simple,
though only to the one who refuses the unbelief of the Sadducees as to death.
If it be nonentity, the blotting out of existence, no fair words about it will
ever make it other than it is confessedly to Mr. Constable. But we have not now
to do with him. In Scripture and for faith (but oh how little alas, faith is
with us) death is no more the portion of the saint. It is abolished. And, if
alive and remaining to that coming of the Lord for which we are taught daily to
wait, shall never even "sleep" at all.
And now as to judgment after
death. The plain unequivocal statement of our Lord has been obscured to us by
an unhappy translation; but there is no question as to the, simple fact, that
in John v. 24-29 the word used both for "condemnation" and "damnation" is the
simple word for "judgment." Alford’s and the Bible Union revisions both
give "he that heareth my voice, and believeth on Him that sent me, hath
everlasting life and shall not come into judgment"; and again, "they that have
done evil unto the resurrection of judgment."
The common thought is,
"we shall have to come into judgment, but we hope not to be condemned." The
Scripture truth is; if such as we are at our best came into judgment, we could
not but be condemned. hear the Psalmist express it when as a servant of the
Lord he yet pleads: "Enter not into judgment with Thy servant, O Lord; for in
Thy sight shall NO FLESH LIVING be justified" (Psa. cxliii. 2).
And
that this is the fact Scripture everywhere bears witness. The solemn final
scene, as Rev. xx. pictures it, before the great white throne, we shall look at
in detail at a future time. But the second chapter of Romans is sufficiently
plain as to the issue of judgment for those who come into it. Let us look
briefly at the apostle’s words.
Mark then, in the first place, it is
"the day when God shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ" (ver. 16).
The principle, too, of the judgment is clearly stated. God "will render to
every man according to his deeds; to them who by patient continuance in well
doing seek for glory and honour and immortality (incorruption) eternal life:
but unto them that are contentious, and do not obey the truth, but obey
unrighteousness, indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish, upon every
soul of man that doeth evil, of the Jew first and also of the Gentile; but
glory, honour and peace to every man that worketh good, to the Jew first, and
also to the Gentile: for there is no respect of persons with God."
These are the principles of judgment; what is the actual result? Who of
all the sons of men can advance his claim to eternal life upon this ground,
before a holy and heart. searching God? The issue is this: -
"For as many
as have sinned without law" - and these are the least guilty and the least
responsible - "shall also PERISH without law; and as many as have sinned in the
law shall be JUDGED BY THE LAW." Does any one think he can escape, when judged
by the law? The apostle’s words elsewhere exclude absolutely so vain a
hope. "For as many as are of the works of the law are under the curse; for it
is written, Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things written in
the book of the law to do them" (Gal. iii, 10). This then is the law’s
judgment; and this the patient continuance in well doing which the law
requires. Judged then by this rule, who can escape? Not one, assuredly. As it
is written again: "Whatsoever the law saith, it saith to them that are under
the law: that every mouth may be stopped, and ALL THE WORLD become guilty
before God" (Rom. iii. 19).
If then God enters into judgment with a
saint and servant of His, be cannot be justified. The Old Testament and the New
unite in this assurance. And God’s way of deliverance from condemnation is
by deliverance from the judgment that would involve it. The believer does not
"come into judgment": the "resurrection of judgment" is the portion of the
wicked alone.
Let any one consider, with the fifteenth chapter of the
first epistle to the Corinthians, and the fourth of the first of Thessalonians,
before his eyes, the order and connection of what is detailed there, and he
will see how clearly and satisfactorily Scripture deals with this question.
When "the Lord himself shall .descend from heaven with a shout," not yet
visible to men, as we shall see directly, "first the dead in Christ shall
rise." They rise "in power," "in incorruption," "in glory," "in the image of
the Heavenly" - of Christ Himself. Could there be a question of trying for
their life these perfected and glorious saints? They have been already, for a
longer or shorter time, every one of them absent from the body, and present
with the Lord. Can it be now a question of whether they had title to the
blessed place they have been in? Assuredly it can never be: the case has been
abundantly settled before this. And can it be other for those who, remaining
alive, without dying change their mortality for immortality, and are caught up
with the risen saints in one glorious company, "to meet the Lord in the air,"
and "be forever with the Lord"?
It is after this that the Lord appears
to judgment, for we are assured that "when Christ (who is our life) shall
appear, then shall we also appear with Him in glory" (Col. iii. 3). And not
till after this is there judgment, personal judgment. "He shall judge. the
quick and the dead at His appearing and His kingdom."
Details, as to
the judgment will come afterwards. It is very evident there is here no putting
upon trial to see who they are, and whether worthy or not to enter into life.
Christ’s call, which makes no mistake, summons forth His saints to meet
Him. Not one is forgotten; not one unknown. Blessed be His name! it could not
be. And thus the whole matter is definitely settled, and can never come up
again.
That we should give account of ourselves to God, is another
matter, and should not be confounded with this. As a question of reward, we
shall receive for the deeds done in the body, and "suffer loss" or find
gracious recompense accordingly. That is not denied but affirmed. But we are
not judged according to our works: we do not come into judgment, if our works
do. There is a very manifest distinction between these things.
Having
seen then the Scripture testimony as to death and judgment, let us return to
look at these as the portion of men, from which Christ’s work delivers His
own. "It is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment" For
the saint on the other hand, "Christ was once offered, to bear the sins of
many, and unto them that look for Him shall He appear without sin," - or rather
"apart from sin," as having no more to settle that question - "apart from sin
unto salvation."
"Once death," then, and "after this, judgment" is the
lot of the unsaved. How clear this makes the distinction between the two! Death
temporary and to give place to judgment, which is not in death but afterwards.
Thus Scripture. How feeble then again all Mr. Constable’s arguments as to
the primary sense of words; and that death and nothing but death in its primary
sense is the final judgment! Twice death, in effect, is his argument: once
before, and then again in the judgment.. Once death says Scripture, but after
this the judgment. That judgment is indeed the second death. But therefore the
second death is not the repetition of the first: it is cancelled forever when
the judgment of the second death begins. Is it so ill-named "a death that never
dies"? a death in which they who suffer it also never die? How vain to dispute
the unspeakably solemn fact!
Go To Chapter Twenty
Three
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