Chapter XVIII
We may think perchance, that ive are free to speculate to prove historical credibilities, to boast the liberty of a suspended assent to what seems all too objective and material for the falsely spiritualizinor tendencies of the age in vjhich ive live. We may think so noTv; but when the end draws near “when sorrozv breaks us, ivken age weakens, when darkness begins to close around us, where will all such licettse of thought le a)td -what will it avail us? — Bishop Ellicott.
Amid the signs and transactions of the death and resurrection of Christ we have this statement: “And the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints which slept arose, and came out of the graves after his resurrection, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto many.”
The graves were opened, the bodies that slept arose and came out of their graves. Nothing could be more explicit; nothing clearer than that this was a literal resurrection, a literal return to life of the bodies put in the grave. This is the first fruit of Christ’s resurrection, the pledge and symbol of ours.
Christ’s resurrection was the great pattern of ours. He said to his disciples: “Behold, my hands and my feet, that it is I myself, handle me and see.” He showed them his hands and side — a literal resurrection of his pierced, marred, and bleeding body. This is the earnest authority and hope of our resurrection. We are to be raised from the dead, not from a germ, for this is the fact paganized. It is not a rehabilitation, not a new creation, but a raising up again of the same thing which had fallen — raised and transfigured, refined, glorified, in conditions, relations, qualities. So also is the resurrection of the dead.
Among the first indications of heresy is that about the resurrection; our going off begins here. In Paul’s masterly argument in Corinthians to refute these resurrection heretics, he sets forth the literal resurrection: the body sown in weakness, raised in power; the same body raised that is sown. The mortal — that is, the dead body
—puts on immortality. The corruptible body puts on incorruption.
The dead are to stand before God in judgment. We are to be judged for the deeds done in this body. This body is a partner in all our doing, and it must bear its share in the awards of that judgment day. Christ says soul and body can be cast by God into hell. The identity, the unity, and sameness follow through the history of eternity. These vile bodies are to be changed — not other bodies made, but these we bear and will put in the grave are to feel the regenerating and transforming force of the resurrection.
Daniel says: “And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, and some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.”
The sleepers are to come forth. It is the body that sleeps; the soul never sleeps. It is that which is sleeping in the dust of the earth which is to awake. The sleep’ ers in the dust of the earth are to awake. The body only is sleeping in the dust of the earth. What could be more specific, direct, than this statement?
Our Lord says: “Marvel not at this: for the hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice, and shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life, and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation.”
Here the resurrection is coming out of the grave. What have we put in the grave? These mortal bodies — and that which we put in the grave is to hear his voice and come out of the grave.
Paul puts the doctrine in a wholesome form and very full of comfort: “But I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep, that ye sorrow not, even as others which have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him.”
No refining in this to meet the vicious philosophy of the day. No surrender to the higher rationalistic and Sadducean H3 criticism. It is a brave and tender statement of a precious and divine truth. Who are sleeping in Christ? We know who! We folded their hands with tears and kissed the lips and laid them to sleep and wrote on their tombs the words of hope and resurrection. We did not see their spirits and could not follow them in their heavenward flight, but we did bear their bodies, broken-hearted, and lay them to sleep and their forms are forever mirrored on our hearts, and Christ shall bring them back to us out of their graves and out of their sleep to our embrace and to our hearts.
We sang, as we laid them to sleep, “Asleep in Jesus.” We put it on the marble that marked their bed of sleep: “Asleep in Jesus! Blessed sleep! From which none ever wakes to weep.”
It is out of the grave they are to come! It is out of the dust they are to come! It is out of the sea they are to come! The body is in the grave, the body is in the dust, the body is in the sea. The body, imperishable as the spirit, shall by the voice of the Son of God come out of the grave, come out of the dust, come out of the sea. Glorious fact, mysterious fact; but God, God’s Son, God’s Word makes and solves its mystery. Faith holds to God, faith holds to God’s Son, faith holds to God’s Word. Faith, almighty faith, sees God, sees the Son of God, sees his word, laughs at mysteries and impossibilities, and cries: ‘It shall be done!”
ID 145