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 yii. 24.
The seed, then, is divine; and, as such, it contains an infinite store of treasure. But this is not enough. How are its riches to be made available for us? Let the following statements be considered: —
I. Incarnation is not enough. — No doubt, in the incarnation is wrapt up the love of God, — the love of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost; and the simple announcement, “the Word was made flesh,” “unto us a Child is born,” is glad tidings of great joy. Still there is something awanting. It is the beginning, but it is not the end. Is love to meet with no obstructions? And if sin opposes, and righteousness opposes, and law opposes, what is love to do, or how is it to reach the sinner? The Son of God might take flesh and dwell among us; but this did not secure life for the dead, or pardon for the condemned, or salvation for the lost, or victory over man’s great enemy, or honour to God’s broken law
The fountain must be unsealed, else its waters are useless; the box of spikenard must be broken, else its fragrance will not flow out to cheer man’s fainting heart, or heal this world’s polluted air.
II. Power is not enough. — Love, though armed with almighty power, finds mighty barriers. It is hedged in by righteousness, and righteousness is stronger than power, as much stronger as the moral is higher and greater than the physical. And just as God cannot lie, so omnipotence cannot conquer law, or set its provisions aside. Mere strength cannot come to the judgment, or prevail with the Judge. In the eye of law, power is unknown; in the decisions of the judgment- seat, it is not recognised as an element at all. Power, however great, cannot reach the criminal, though it may walk round the walls of his dungeon, and try its energies against the massive gratings. Infinite power dwelt in the man Christ Jesus; and this was, no doubt, good news.” But, till something has been done to cause this power to flow out, and do glorious things in righteousness, it is unavailable for the sinner, whatever it may be for the righteous. The vessel may be full, but there is a wall of iron between it and us.”
III. Suffering is not enough. — The Son of God did truly suffer; more truly and more greatly suffer than any other being has done or can do. His burden of grief was the heaviest ever borne by man; and from the cradle to the cross he was the Man of sorrows, the suffering One both in body and in soul. Yet these tears and groans were not enough; they could not unlock the heavenly treasure deposited in him, nor draw forth the provision for a needy world contained in his unsearchable riches. If any amount or intensity of suffering could have done this, it would have been that of the man Christ Jesus; but even Ms suffering was not enough. It was part of the process, but it was not the whole. Something deeper and more penal, something that had in it more of condemnation and wrath, was needed. Only such suffering as ended in death, could draw out the life and fruitfulness wrapt up in the divine seed.
IV. Holiness is not enough. — At his conception he was “the holy Thing;” and during his life he was “the holy One;” and in his walk on earth there was seen an obedience, which, of all other obediences, was the most perfect; both for admiration and example. Yet this did not touch the law’s inexorable penalty, nor help to bear the legal curse. He that would save us must be a substitute, as well as an example, and must undergo the law’s last sentence, ere he is in a legal condition to bless, or to pour out the divine love on us, in pardon, and healing, and joy.
V. Death alone can do the work. — The love that stops short of this effects nothing; and, however
M large it seems, or near it comes, it but mocks the sinner. If the fulness treasured up for us in the “Word made flesh” is to come forth, then he must die. There must he the pouring out of the soul unto death. Even he is not at liberty to communicate his love and joy to us, save through his own death; his death as the payment of the righteous penalty, and the fulfilment of the unchangeable sentence, “The soul that sinneth it shall die.” He, though the true wheat, must “abide alone,” except he die.
He has died, the Just for the unjust; dying the sinner’s death, and bearing the sinner’s curse. Thus he “brings forth much fruit.” All that made this fruitful One barren has been taken away. Death has done what life, in all its divine vigour, could not do. Tn the sinner’s grave, to which the Surety went down, the dissolution of legal bonds has been effected, whereby the fulness, hitherto pent up and imprisoned, comes forth to a dead world, like spring sending up its warm breath and covering earth with verdure.
This truth is not here spoken for the first time. It is the truth wrapt up in the first promise respecting the woman’s seed, the man with the bruised heel. It is the truth to which Abel’s sacrifice pointed so explicitly. It is the truth coming out in all the Levitical sacrifices and rites. It is the truth uttered by prophets: “When thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days.” It is the truth announced by apostles: “Without shedding of blood is no remission.” It is the truth to which such prominence is given in the Apocalypse, when the Son of God is seen as the Lamb slain, and when the saints sing, “Thou hast redeemed us to God by thy blood.” It is this which the apostle Paul had specially in view when he interprets the tabernacle veil as meaning “the flesh” of Christ (Heb. x. 20). That which shut out the worshipper from the mercy-seat was the symbol of the body of the Son of God! The veil, which was hung before the holiest, said to the Israelite, “Godhead is within; the mercy-seat is within; the glory is within; but there is a hindrance which makes them at present unapproachable. Ere you can draw near, that veil must be 6 rent,’ and then all is open; but till that is done there is no access to God, even to that God who has come down to make his dwelling in the midst of you.” The flesh, or body, of Christ said to every one, “Godhead is witlain; Jehovah has come down; he is at your side; but ere this can profit you that body must be broken, that flesh must have its life poured out.”
These, then, are the glad tidings which we bring. This veil has been rent in twain from the top to the bottom; the way is open for the sinner; go in at once into the holiest; go in now, go in as you are, and stand boldly before the mercy-seat. It is now the throne of grace for you! Yes; the good news to the sons of men are not merely that the Word was made flesh, but that that flesh was wounded.
that body broken for us. The good news are, that the corn of wheat has fallen into the ground and died. Having died, it has not merely been again “quickened,” but has itself become the quickener of the dead. It is death that has imparted to it this productiveness, this life-giving energy. It will not now abide alone; it will bring forth much fruit, and that fruit will remain.
The extent of this fruit-bearing we do not yet see. It is only one here, and another there, whom we see quickened from the death of sin by the allvivifying power of him who, as the last Adam, is made a quickening spirit (1 Cor. xv. 45). But, in the day of his glorious re-appearing; when he comes with the ten thousand of his saints, those who have slept in him, and those who shall be alive at his return; when he comes to smite Antichrist, to bind Satan, to deliver creation from its groans, to bless Israel, to be a light to the Gentiles, to set up his righteous kingdom, and to make all things new; it shall be seen what he has done by dying. In that day, when he presents to himself the Church of the first-born, the redeemed from among men, without spot or wrinkle, a great multitude that no man can number, we shall learn the extent and excellency of that fruitfulness which he acquired by dying. Heaven and earth, men and angels, shall then see why it was that this corn of wheat fell into the ground and died.
That which is true of the Head is true also of the members, though in different manner and degree. The better life, both of soul and body, is only reached by death. And as the “quickening” comes by death, so does the fruitfulness. It is not merely the “eternal weight of glory” that is to be wrought for them by their present affliction, but their fitness for future service as God’s kings and priests; their power of eternal ministry in the kingdom hereafter; their completeness, both of character and qualification, for the unending work; the kind and amount of their everlasting success; in other words, their “fruitfulness” depends on their assimilation to their Lord here, in weakness, in humiliation, in suffering, and in death.
Hence we sorrow not as those who have no hope, as to their life, or their glory, or their fruitfulness. Their life is hid with Christ in God; and when he who is their life shall appear, they also shall appear with him in glory.
The heathen sorrowed without hope. To the philosophic Athenian, even the bold Roman, death was gloom, and nothing else. There was no hope about it. Their Ely si an fields were poor, and the prospect of reaching them a sorrowful uncertainty. To them death connected itself with no hope, no brightness, no triumph. It was not sunset to them; for that bids us be on the outlook for another Sun. as bright as that which set. It was not autumn, nor winter; for these speak of returning spring and summer. It was not the seed cast into the rough soil; for that predicts the future tree or flower, more beautiful than the seed. It was pure and simple darkness; all cloud, shadow, desolation. The death of childhood and youth was especially Litter and terrible; nor can anything be more touching, nor more expressive of the “sorrow without hope,” than the emblems, which we still find carved upon Grecian or Etrurian tombs. A shattered pillar; a ship gone to pieces; a race lost; a harp lying on the ground, with snapped strings, and all its music lost; a flower-bud crushed, with all its fragrance in it; — these were the sad utterances of their hopeless grief. The thought that death was the gate of life, came not in, to cheer the parting or brighten the sepulchre. The truth, that the grave was the soil, and the body the seed sown by God’s hand, to call out all the latent life; that the race was not lost, but only a little earlier won; that the column was not destroyed, but transferred to another building and another city, to be” a pillar in the temple of God; ’ that the bud was not crushed, but transplanted, for fuller expansion, and with all its odour unexhaled and unimpaired, to a kindlier soil and air; that the harp was not broken, nor its music spilt and lost, but handed up to a truer minstrel, who, with a finer touch and heavenlier skill, will bring out all the rich compass of its hidden music, which man would not have appreciated, and which earth would but have spoiled; — these were things which had no place in their theology, hardly in their dreams. They sorrowed as those who had no hope.
But the death even of the ripe and aged, was to them a thing of darkness and fear. It was less strange and sad than that of childhood and prime; but it was still a perplexity, an unsolved mystery. And do we not sometimes forget that this mystery has been cleared away? Not that we doubt the personal safety or blessedness of the departed heir of the kingdom; but we speak of his usefulness being ended, or at least only prolonged here on earth, in the good deeds, or good words, or good report which he has left behind, and by which he, being dead, still speaketh, and still is useful. Now, no doubt, that which the text calls u fruitfulness” is thus carried out; so that a saint’s death becomes a thing of life to thousands, and a saint’s memory becomes as fruitful as his living person was. But there is another productiveness, which spreads itself out over eternity, and which death, so far from destroying, only develops. It is for this that he is educating here, — for this that he is undergoing his training below, and serving his earthly apprenticeship. The fitness for service, — whether of priesthood or of kingship, for we are kings and priests unto God, the power of working truly and successfully for God, acquired here by hard experience, during years of doing and suffering, — these, so far from being lost, or superseded, or thrown by, are but matured and unfolded hereafter; transferred from a narrow corner here to the spacious universe of God; set free from fetters and limits, to spread themselves out over a far wider range of objects, in the exercise of a ministry, at once priestly and kingly; a ministry as perfect and successful as it is boundless and everlasting.
No man’s usefulness ever ends. The true becomes truer; the powerful becomes more powerful; the noble becomes nobler; the fruitful becomes more fruitful; the successful multiplies successes; and without fear of reverse, or failure, or discomfiture, or weariness, the liberated saint rejoices in the anticipation of an eternal future of usefulness, — usefulness in all respects illimitable, usefulness far beyond that of his most productive clays on earth. The corn of wheat, before it fell into the ground, was comparatively barren; but having fallen into the ground and died, it brings forth much fruit.