John 5:28-29

THE TWO RESURRECTIONS

‘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.’

John 5:28

Our Blessed Lord had just been speaking of the change from a life of sin to a life of holiness through faith in Him, as a passing out of death into life. It is a truth which runs through all the teaching of our Lord and His Apostles, that those are dead in the sight of God who are living in sin. They are spoken of as ‘dead in trespasses and sins.’ It is not only that those who are living in sin are under sentence of eternal death so long as they do not truly repent; it is not only that when they have done their work for that hard and deceitful master—sin—they will get eternal death for their wages. But they are dead already: alive to the things of this world, but dead to the things of the world to come; dead to all that is good and heavenly, caring no more for spiritual things, such as prayer, worship, the Bible, Sacraments, and all that has to do with God and Christ and heaven, than a dead body cares for the things of this world. Awfully true of too many are those words which our Blessed Lord addressed to the Church in Sardis, ‘I know thy works, that thou hast a name that thou livest, and art dead.’

I. It is such dead people as these that our Lord meant when He said, ‘The hour is coming and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God: and they that hear shall live.’ The voice of Jesus, heard, listened to, and obeyed, had power then, and has power now, to awaken souls from the death of sin to the life of righteousness. So He said again, ‘He that heareth My Word, and believeth on Him that sent Me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life.’ Blessed are they who hear the voice of Jesus calling to them—‘Awake, thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light.’ The change that takes place in a man who is awakened by that voice, and turns from a life of sin to a life of righteousness, is nothing less than passing out of death into life. ‘If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away, behold, all things are become new.” It is like Lazarus coming forth at the call of Jesus from the tomb, where he had lain bound hand and foot with grave clothes, and then loosed and let go.

II. The resurrection of the body.—So, when our Blessed Lord had spoken of that wonder which was even then taking place, and should continue to take place—the passing of souls out of spiritual death into spiritual life through faith in Him, He goes on to speak of the resurrection of the body. ‘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.’ ‘All that are in the graves shall hear His voice.’ Wonderful! Those bodies that have long since become a mere handful of dust, those dry bones that have long since lost their clothing of flesh, they shall all come forth at His voice, once more living bodies, some to the resurrection of life, some to the resurrection of damnation. Go and stand in the churchyard in some quiet hour, and try to picture to yourself that wonderful resurrection scene. How still the place is! It is God’s acre, all sown with human bodies. There lie the people who dwelt in the houses and farms and cottages which you inhabit now—who tilled the same fields which you till, and went about the same daily tasks and employments which you are busied with day by day, and met together in the same church in which we are gathered now. Some of them you remember well, some of them were parents, brothers, sisters, children, friends, neighbours, of you who are living now. Some lived and died and were laid there long before the oldest of you were born. Some did good and some did evil and never repented of the evil, but died as they had lived, in their sins. Good and bad, penitent and impenitent, all lie side by side in those quiet graves, and it seems as if there was now no difference between them and all had fared alike. If you read the inscriptions on the grave-stones, you would wonder, as a child once did, where they buried all the wicked people. Ah, well, it is not for us to judge the departed. We must leave that to God Who alone knows the hearts of men. Christian charity bids us hope the best we can, even of those who may have seemed to us unchanged from evil to the last. So our beautiful funeral service is full of hope. We pray that when we shall depart this life, we may rest in Jesus, as our hope is this our brother or sister doth. It may be a very bright and confident hope, it may be in some sad cases a very faint hope; we may not judge, we are not forbidden to hope. It is true that in one part of the service the hope seems to many people too confident. Take the case of a man who has died without giving any sign of true repentance, of a changed heart; who perhaps has used bad language even on his death-bed, or been suddenly cut off in his sins—can it be right, some people ask, to commit that man’s body to the ground with such words of hope as these?—‘Forasmuch as it hath pleased Almighty God of His great mercy to take unto Himself the soul of our dear brother here departed, we therefore commit his body to the ground; earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust; in sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life, through our Lord Jesus Christ.’ But these words are very much misunderstood. It is not, ‘in sure and certain hope of his resurrection to eternal life.’ There is no sure and certain hope expressed in the case of the particular person whose body is then being committed to the ground. The words merely declare that we, as Christians, look forward with sure and certain hope to the resurrection to eternal life. In that faith and hope we commit to the ground the bodies of those who, having been baptized, were, at least in outward profession, Christians. There is no sure and certain hope expressed that each person so buried will have his or her part in that resurrection to eternal life. That we must leave to God. We know from our Saviour’s words that there is a resurrection to damnation as well as a resurrection to eternal life. And there are sad cases in which, while we have a sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life for all true Christians, we must have a dreadful fear that their resurrection will be only to judgment and damnation.

III. And what of ourselves?—We have all, as Christians, a sure and certain hope that there will be a resurrection to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. But what sort of hope have we that we shall have a share in it, and that we shall be delivered from that terrible resurrection to damnation? For we must die, and our spirits return to God Who gave them; and our bodies must be laid in the grave, until that great resurrection day. Let us not deceive ourselves with vain and groundless hopes in such a matter as this. A mistake here can never be set right. We cannot expect to lead a life of sin and afterwards rise to a life of glory. We cannot live without God here, and die with a sure and certain hope of a resurrection to be with God for evermore. We cannot shut our ears and hearts against the voice of the Son of God now, and lie down in the hope of hearing His voice calling us to come forth to the resurrection of life in that day. No; if we would live and die in the blessed and comforting hope of that resurrection, we must hear His voice now, and open our hearts to Him Who is calling us to arise from the death of sin to the life of righteousness. We must believe in Him with such a faith as will make us dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord. We can have eternal life now. It is the gift of God through Jesus Christ our Lord.

—Prebendary J. E. Vernon.

Illustration

‘There is no more fatal mistake than that which people make who go on in sin, thinking that there is plenty of time, and that they can leave off their sins and live a Christian life when they choose. They cannot. Sin is an awful power. It holds the soul that has given way to it with a grip as firm as that of death. A man who has lived for some time in the habit of yielding to sin, cannot break loose from it just when he chooses. “Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? Then may ye also do good, that are accustomed to do evil.” Take care, then, of the first step in a downward course. Do not say to yourself, I will not go too far, I can stop when I choose. A man might just as well plunge into a rapid river, saying that he meant to come out as soon as he felt the current bearing him away, or go upon ice marked “dangerous,” intending to come off when he felt it breaking beneath him. Once let yourself fall under the power of sin, and you can no more get free when you choose than a corpse can raise itself from the grave. It is a miracle of Divine grace when a sinner turns from darkness to light, from the power of Satan to God. He cannot do it by his own will. True conversion after a certain age is rare, and when it does take place, it is like life from the dead. It is, indeed, a greater miracle than a resurrection from the dead: for they that are in the graves must come forth when they hear the voice of the Son of God; but those that are dead in sin have the dreadful power of refusing to hear His voice calling them from the death of sin to the life of righteousness.’