John 12:24

DEATH THE FULFILMENT OF LIFE

‘Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone.’

John 12:24

The universal and inexorable doom of all life is here pronounced by Him Who abolished death. Jesus Christ abolished death in the only way in which a stubborn fact can be abolished—by showing that it is not what it appears to be. Death appears to be the seal of failure, it is the condition of success; it appears to be an end, it is also a beginning; it appears to be a humiliation and a curse, but its cleansing waters purge the soul of her travel-stains, and land her refreshed upon the farther shore.

I. Death, is the gate of life.—What was the secret, the hidden source, of St. Paul’s joyous attitude towards the thought of death? Why did he look forward to ‘finish his course with joy,’ instead of only to ‘depart satisfied’? What made him so sure that ‘to die is gain’? His belief in the Resurrection, of course. But this belief rested not only on what he saw in the clouds on the road to Damascus, not only on the reports of the Twelve and the survivors of the ‘five hundred brethren’ who had seen the risen Christ, but on the overpowering conviction, to which the Resurrection of Christ opened His eyes, that death has no sting to those who know the hidden laws of life. The passage from death unto life is no unique portent; it is the open secret of the universe, which Jesus Christ brought to light. In the world without it is exemplified in every harvest field. ‘That which thou sowest is not quickened, except it die.’ The seed ‘dies’; it does not perish entirely, else the analogy would fail; but it dies as a seed, and takes new life as a blade. In the world within St. Paul knew what it was to die to the old man, to die and be buried with Christ, and to rise again into newness of life. Is this analogy from Nature really valid and helpful? Many have doubted it. To some the law of renewal in Nature has seemed only to make the fate of mankind more cruel by contrast. The well-known lines of Catullus have had many echoes in literature. And if an impartial view of nature, including man, does give us something immortal, namely, the law of mortality, and something invariable, namely, the law of change, is this much comfort to us? There is only one way in which the values of life can escape the doom of the existences to which they are linked; and that is by constant transmutation into values of a higher quality. Cling to them as they are, and they fade and perish; let them go, make a living sacrifice of them, and they will still be yours, transmuted and enhanced. That which we receive in exchange for what we have given up is never the same as what we surrendered. In St. Paul’s words, ‘Thou sowest not that body which shall be, but bare grain.’ The new life is always life on another plane. And if we make a living sacrifice of ourselves in reasonable service to God, the new man whom we shall put on in return for the old man whom we have put off is not just our old selves back again, but a new self, nearer to the image of God.

II. The law of re-birth has an intimate bearing on our daily life.—It should determine our whole attitude towards our experience. What did St. Paul mean by saying, ‘I die daily’? Did he simply mean that he was in constant peril of death? No; his words have a much deeper meaning. They mean that the law of sacrifice has become a constant part of his experience. He is conscious that deaths and re-births are continually going on within him. His whole life has taught him that all gain comes through pain, all profit through loss. He began, it may be, with a hard struggle against his lower appetites. At least, the lurid picture of the internecine warfare between flesh and spirit, too strongly painted to represent the average experience, must surely have been drawn from his own spiritual combat; and we know that such highly-strung, neurotic temperaments as his have often to pass through the fire in this way. Then there came the call to surrender the pride of legal righteousness, and the treasure, too highly valued, of Rabbinical learning. All that he had counted gain was now to be set down as loss, yea, counted but as refuse, that he might win Christ. Henceforth he walked the earth as one already dead, and yet continually dying anew—always bearing about with him the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life of the Lord Jesus might be made manifest in him. Yes, he knew, more intimately than it is given to most of us to know it, that it is the nature of all earthly things either to perish and be lost, or to be transmuted into values of a higher quality. The new life is never the same as the old. Instruments are used up in realising ends, and lower ends become instruments for realising higher ends.

III. I do not think that we ought to dwell much on the thought of death; indeed, I am not sure that Spinoza was wrong when he said that there is no subject on which the wise man will ponder less often than on his own death. One of the most illuminating thinkers among our contemporaries was accustomed to say, ‘Death does not count.’ It does not count, in this sense—that it is not of great moment whether God calls us in youth, middle age, or old age. God is just and merciful, and will somehow give us all a fair chance of doing and being what He requires of us. We need not trouble ourselves about the fate of unbaptized infants, or persons cut off, as it seems to us, without the opportunity of preparing for death. We are much more sure that God is just than that ‘as the tree falls so must it lie.’ I rejoice, too, that the rather vulgar and morbid attitude towards death which was common in the last century is now felt to be in bad taste. And I hope that we are losing, together with the fashion of parading our bereavements, that disinclination to talk and think about the dead which is the obverse side of the same false sentiment. Let us do all in our power to ‘keep the memory green’ of those whom we have loved and lost, and not behave as if some tragic or shameful thing had befallen them or us. If we could face the changes and chances of this mortal life in the simple faith that they are meant to be stepping-stones, and not stumbling-blocks; if we could face them with a fixed resolve to tear the heart of goodness out of what appears to us as evil, confident that all things must work together for good to those who love God, how much useless friction and fretting we should escape, and how much braver and happier our lives would be!

—Professor Inge.

Illustration

‘The righteous law of the spiritual world, the law of death and re-birth as the condition of all growth and all permanence, has been dimly perceived by nearly all religions. The more we study the dogmas, the ritual, and the sacred mysteries of the various religions that have flourished among men (excluding the worship of mere savages) the more impressed we shall be by the universality of symbolism intended to express the law of spiritual death and re-birth. If there be a “key to all mythologies” it is here. Men have felt that everywhere in Nature God has stamped some hint of the law of re-birth. The changing seasons, the rising and setting suns, the time process itself, with its mysterious register, human memory—all point to the central law of the higher life, “That which thou sowest is not quickened, except it die.” This train of thought has its value as an argument for our survival after death. It is, indeed, the chief foundation of our faith in a future life. Without undervaluing the argument from Divine justice, which is not satisfied, so far as we can see, by the distribution of rewards and punishments in this world; without undervaluing the confident claim of human love, which asserts its prerogative as the most Divine part of our nature, to insist that it has the quality of everlastingness, so that neither death nor life, nor any other creature can separate us from love, whether human or Divine, or terminate our capacities of loving and being loved—without undervaluing these arguments, I still think that the strongest argument for immortality is the unquenchable conviction that in the mind of God values are facts, and indestructible facts. Whatever has value in God’s sight is safe for evermore; time and change cannot touch it. And so far as we can make our own those things which we know to be precious in His eyes, we have the assurance that for us, too, death has no importance, save as the entrance to another state, in which those same treasures will be ours, purer and more unalloyed.’

(SECOND OUTLINE)

LIFE THROUGH DEATH

Why did out Lord speak in parables? Because they are easily remembered. Because they are easily understood. Because they aroused thought; they made people think, and when people begin to think they begin to learn.

I. This parable speaks of life coming through death.—Through death to life is the Divine order. The burial of the seed is not its destruction, but its quickening and its expansion. The seed-corn of one year must perish if the harvest of next year is to be reaped. There is no life without dying; e.g. take a single grain of wheat, in it there is provision of a hundredfold increase, but for that increase its own life must be surrendered. When we see the harvest fields bending low with golden corn, remember the harvest comes through death. So all our life, all our pardon, all our peace, all our comfort, all our hope comes through the death of Christ. ‘They have have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. Therefore are they before the throne of God.’

II. Life comes through death, the death of Christ.—Christ dieth no more. ‘All His tears have been changed to pearls, all His blood-drops into rubies, all the thorns of His crown into diamonds.’ ‘He hath given us rest by His sorrow and life by His Death.’ And He says to every believing soul, ‘Because I live, ye shall live also’ (John 14:19). In the great Harvest-Home of Heaven ‘He shall see of the travail of His soul, and shall be satisfied,’ for He shall ‘gather together in one the children of God that were scattered abroad.’

—Rev. F. Harper.

Illustration

‘I have read of a minister who was standing before the window of an art store. A picture of the Crucifixion was there. A street arab approached from behind. Turning to him, the good man asked, “Do you know Who that is hanging upon the Cross?” “That is our Saviour,” came the prompt reply, as the boy looked at the inquirer with manifest pity and surprise at his ignorance. “Them’s the soldiers, and that woman crying there is His mother.” He waited, that the man might take it in, then added, “They killed Him, mister, they killed Him!” “Where did you learn all this?” inquired the minister. “At the Sunday-school,” said the boy. The preacher turned and went his way, but presently he heard a voice of one who had run to overtake him, saying, “He rose again, though, mister; I wanted to tell you He rose again.” ’