Life and Fruitfulness Through Death
“Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.” — John xii. 24.
It is strange thai, in a world made by the God only wise and good, there should be such a thing as death. It is more wonderful that this death should come out of a thing so glorious as life. But, beyond these, there is a wonder greater still, — that life should grow out of death, and corruption be the seed and parent of incorruption.
Yet this last is the process which God has been carrying on in our earth, since the threatening took effect against Adam: “In the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die.”
It needs no great power to bring death out of life. Man can effect that without an effort. But to bring life out of death needs other power than man’s. Man can kill, but God only can make alive. It is the Creator alone that can quicken; and hence the apostle sets these two things together when he says, “God who quiclceneth all things, and calleth those tilings which be not as though they were” (Rom. iv.
17). The power to destroy life has been given to the creature; but the power to impart it is a prerogative of Godhead and a function of Omnipotence. Thus all of death that is in us we owe to ourselves, and all of life that is in us we trace solely to God, to him whose name is “Jehovah,” who not merely is King “eternal and immortal,” but “who only hath immortality’1 (1 Tim. vi. 16).
We can, however, go a step farther than this; and it is to this higher point that the apostle leads us when he says,” Thou fool, that which thou sowest is not quickened except it die ’ (1 Cor. xv. 36). These words are peculiar, and the thought embodied in them is not one which man has ever owned, far less originated. The apostle is speaking, no doubt, especially of the resurrection of the body, yet in so doing he enunciates a wider, more universal, and more subtile truth, — a truth unacknowledged by philosophy, but largely recognised in Scripture, and taught by many natural processes, — that death is the way to life, that the dissolution of the lower life is necessary in order to the development of the higher. Yes; this is the sum of the divine testimony concerning life and death; that the latter, instead of being the destruction or extinction of the former, is the preparation for and introduction to it; that the ascent from a lower kind and narrower region of life to a loftier and wider is through death. This is the narrow isthmus, or rather the subterraneous passage, through which God is conducting us, from the bleak coasts of this poor moorland lake to the shores of that fair ocean, whose waters spread themselves out under calmer skies, and break upon a sunnier shore.
“That which thou sowestis not quickened except it die!’ Strange words, and most marvellous truth! Yet the apostle speaks as if this were one of the plainest and commonest of nature’s laws; so that a man must be a fool, if he has not read that law in the every-day processes of sowing and springing. And as it is with the seed, so is it with man himself. It is by means of darkness that we reach the light. It is by falling that we rise; by going down into the depths of the valley that we find our way up to the mountains of immortality beyond. It is through winter that we pass into spring. It is by dying that we are made to live, — live for ever; for the life that is not reached by death seems but half secure. The life that lasts, — the life that is truly immortal and eternal, is only obtained by dying. It is resurrection-life that is the truest as well as the highest form of life, the surest as well as the most glorious immortality. It admits of no reversal and no decay. These souls of ours are quickened to an endless life, by having first passed through a death of trespasses and sins; and these bodies must go down into the grave, and there be dissolved, that every particle of mortality may be shaken out of them, ere they can be made partakers of the glory in reserve for them. They are sown in weakness, that they may be raised in power; they are sown in corruption, that they may be raised in incorruption. It is the grave, the abode of putrid loathsomeness, that is the womb of the undecaying and the undefiled. John Howe, in commenting on the expression, “armour of light,” exclaims, “Strange armour that a man can see through!” so may we say here, “Strange life that is the offspring of death; how unlike the child and the parent to each other!”
Yet we shrink from death and abhor the grave! What! “are we afraid of becoming immortal?” Are we reluctant to part vvTith weakness, and disease, and corruption? Do we refuse to enter the porch and gate of life’s temple? Are we dismayed at the prospect of going into the robing chamber, where the vestments of this vile flesh are put off, anJ the raiment of a glorious immortality put on? Fools that we are! Do we not remember that” that which is sown is not quickened except it
die r
But our Lord’s words add another truth to those already noticed on this point. It is not merely life, but fruitj ulness, that is to be reached through death; so that death is the parent of fruitfulness, and to retain life is to be unproductive. “Verily, verily, I say unto you, except a corn ’ (or grain) “of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.” It is as if he said, Look at that grain of wheat; it contains in it both life and fruitfulness; but these are locked up, imprisoned in it; nor can they be disengaged or set loose, so as to unfold and multiply themselves, save by death. The fruitfulness that is in it must remain all folded up and lost, unless death come in to break up its prison: it is life that is keeping it from living, and multiplying, and replenishing the earth; the outer life is imprisoning the inner, and not till that outer life has perished can the inner life flow out upon the world; the germs of a higher excellence are so closed up in its secret cells, so bound together, that they cannot expand or shew themselves, till the dissolution of that which we call life has bidden these secret treasures come forth. The various elements of higher being and powers of propagation are so wrapt round with this covering, this coating of life, that ere they can come forth death must do its work, breaking the Lars of the prison-house, and making the deep cells of happy life to give up their wondrous inmates.
Thus, that which seems to us the destruction of all fruitfulness, is its true paternity. That which appears to dissolve all excellence, to wither up all beauty, to scatter all sweetness, and to mar all power of reproduction, is the very thing by which these are led forth from inactivity and inertness to do their work upon the earth, and to fulfil the end of their being. Death, which is in itself an evil and a penalty, is yet God’s instrument for opening prisons, and unloosing chains, and disengaging the higher vitalities and perfections of being. And we cannot but notice that our Lord, having thus vindicated the connection between productiveness and death, adds, by way of application, “He that loveth his life shall lose it; but he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal.”
Take that brown rough bulb, and preserve it with all care from damp and frost, and the foot of the destroyer; what is the result? Nothing. “It abideth alone.” Whatever may be its treasures, they lie hidden. But cast it into the ground and bury it, and immediately a change comes over it. Corruption seizes it. Part after part falls off and dies. This, however, does not affect its inner vitalities, save to call them out, and send up to man the hidden beauty. It shoots up in its greenness to the sun; leaf after leaf unfolds itself; blossom after blossom comes forth from the mvsterious recesses in the mouldering root; till the lily itself waves before us in its comeliness, and we feel “that Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.”
Such is the law of creation, of the new as well as of the old creation: through darkness to light; through death to life; through corruption to fruitfulness and glory.
But our Lord’s words primarily and especially concern himself. He was the grain of wheat (sower and seed in one); and, as such, he must fall into the ground and die; for, without his dying, his coming would profit nothing, his incarnation would be barren. It was death that was to draw out his treasures, and unlock the storehouse of his unsearchable riches.
That he was the true seed, in which were deposited all life and fruitfulness, a few passages will shew. “It pleased the Father that in him should all fulness dwell.” “In him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily.” “In him are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.”
The Christ, the Incarnate Word, is the one divine depository of all the riches of Godhead, whether the riches of grace or of glory, of wisdom or of power. And as he is the one depository, so is he the one channel of conveyance, to the creature, of all this fulness of the everlasting God. He is to the Creator what the eye, the ear, the tongue, the whole bodily frame, are to the creature. He is the one fountain-head of divine blessing, the one outlet of heavenly love, the one medium of intercourse between the finite and the infinite, the human and the divine. The invisible becomes visible in Him, and he that hath seen him hath seen the Father. That which man calls development is a reality only as connected with him; and progress is but a name or a falsehood, save as rooted in him. Man has many Christs, but the true Christ is one.