Chapter XXII

/ rejoice in the glory to be revealed for it is no uncertain glory ive look for. Our hope is not hung upon such an untwisted thread as I imagine sOy or it is likely, but the cable of the strong tow of our fastened anchor is the oath and promise of Him who is eternal verity. Our salvation is fastened with God’s own hand, with Chrisfs ozvn strength, to the strong strap of God’s unchangeable nature.

Let us be ballasted with grace that we be not blown over and that we stagger not. I never believed till noTV that there was so much to be found in Christ on this side of death and heaven. How sweet, how sweet is our investment! — Samuel Rutherford.

“It is sown in weakness; it is raised in power.” Our bodies in their present form are feeble. Their history is sown in weakness, frailty is the essential quality, their greatest vigor is dashed in a moment’s dis* ease, its manliest strength goes down to childish feebleness in a day and sinks helpless and nerveless into the grave — born to weakness, as well as to sorrow, as the sparks fly upward. The resurrection change will be into power. Energy will be one of its predominant features then, as weakness is now — energy, deathless energy; energy unimpaired by labor, by clime, by sickness, or death; energy without restraint or diminution, energy tireless in its pursuits. Exhaustless in its flow of life and spirits, it will need no rest to repair, no sleep to refresh, no recreation to recover waste; it will feel no faintness nor fatigue by the strongest pressure, severest tension, and most engaging employments. They will serve God day and night, as the outflow of a vigor which is sustained without pain or weariness through all the midday hours of that nightless land.

Weariness, weakness, waste are here. The heavenly bodies will be strength unabated, vigor unworn, life unweakened; no age to its youth, no sickness to its health, no fatigue to its toil, no night to its day. Energy unabated, power unlimited, strength unimpaired, vigor unweakened — these will characterize our heavenly bodies.

‘It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body.” Natural, our present bodies are akin to the brutes and in common with them — subject to appetite and passion, not actuated by the higher part of our being. The spiritual body will be lifted above appetite, passion, fitted for the uses and as the vehicle of the immortal part of man which is akin to God, and all its being, uses, and employment must be after God’s high and heavenly designs. These bodies of ours in their present form are natural bodies, fitted for our present uses, but low and fleshly in their tastes and tendencies. They are but dragged unwillingly into the regions of the spiritual and heavenly; they are truly of the earth earthy — “vile bodies” they are called in the Epistle to the Philippians. The change will fit them for heavenly and spiritual uses; they will be the fitting agents for the changed, high, happy sphere into which the resurrection life has introduced them. The fittest organs they will be for heavenly activities and heavenly engagements. These earthborn and earth-habituated bodies translated to

’65 heaven without change would be unfit for the engagements of that world, bewildered by its brightness, appalled by its sleepless labors. Smitten and overpowered by its ecstatic visions, they could not bear the strain of that life; they could not engage in its worship nor meet the duties of one hour of heavenly demands. Its change will fit it for the exchange of weakness for strength, sickness for health, life for death, and mortality for immortality, earth for heaven.

The apostle begins this fifteenth chapter of First Corinthians to refute errors about the doctrine of the resurrection, but carries it on by putting the doctrine in its true and sublime attitude, and closes with a lofty and triumphant strain: “If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. So also it is written. The first man Adam became a living soul. The last Adam became a life-giving spirit. Howbeit that is not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural; then that which is spiritual. The first man is of the earth, earthy: the second man is of heaven. As is the earthy, such are they also that are earthy: and as is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly. And as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly. Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; neither doth corruption inherit incorruption. Behold, I tell you a mystery: We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. But when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written. Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is thy victory? O death, where is thy sting? The sting of death is sin; and the power of sin is the law: but thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Wherefore, my beloved brethren, be ye steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labor is not vain in the Lord.”

Here the apostle includes in this great change those who are living when Christ shall come. Though they do not die, they will be changed — that is, those who are Christs’s. In a moment, quicker than thought, the work will be wrought; the change not in substance but in quality. At that time, the bodies of the dead in every particle rescued from the grave and changed to incorruption, the triumph will be complete. Then, and not till then, our rapturous and victorious song will be sung, and the prophecy fulfilled. 168