Acts 2:25

25-28. There are two points in this announcement which required proof, and to the presentation of this Peter immediately proceeds. Having stated that Jesus was delivered according to the determined purpose of God, he now quotes that purpose as expressed by David in the 16th Psalm. (25) " For David says concerning him, I foresaw the Lord always before my face; for he is on my right hand, that I should not be moved. (26) Therefore did my heart rejoice, and my tongue was glad. Moreover, my flesh shall rest in hope; (27) because thou wilt not leave my soul in hades, neither wilt thou suffer thy Holy One to see corruption. (28) Thou hast made known to me the ways of life; thou wilt make me full of joy with thy countenance. " Only so much of this quotation as refers to the resurrection suits the special purpose of the speaker, the preceding portion serving only to connectedly introduce it.

The words, "Thou shalt make known to me the ways of life," constitute the affirmative assertion of a restoration to life, which had been negatively expressed, "Thou wilt not leave my soul in hades, neither wilt thou suffer thy Holy One to see corruption" The words "Thou wilt make me full of joy with thy countenance," no doubt refer to that joy set before Jesus, for which "he endured the cross, despising the shame, and is now set down at the right hand of the throne of God."

It is commonly agreed among interpreters, that in the sentence, "Thou wilt not leave my soul in hades, neither wilt thou suffer thy Holy One to see corruption," there is no distinction intended between the condition of the soul and that of the body; but that the whole is merely equivalent to the statement, Thou wilt not leave me among the dead. I am constrained, however, to adopt the opinion advanced, but not defended, by Olshausen, that the apostle does intend to fix our attention upon the body and soul of Jesus separately. The most obvious reason for this opinion is the fact that his body and soul are spoken of separately, and with separate reference to their respective places of abode during the period of death. The soul can not see corruption, neither can the body go into hades; but when men die, ordinarily, their bodies see corruption, and their souls enter, not the grave, but hades. The words in question declare, in reference to both the body and soul of Jesus, that which must have occurred in his resurrection, that the one was not left in hades, neither did the other see corruption. The apostle, in commenting upon them, makes the distinction still more marked, by saying, (verse 31 , below), "He spoke of the resurrection of Christ, that his soul should not be left in hades, nor his flesh see corruption." Why do both the prophet and the apostle so carefully make the distinction, unless they wish to fix attention upon it?

The term hades designates the place of disembodied spirits. It is, as its etymology indicates, ( a, privative; idein, to see) the unseen. The Greeks were good at giving names to things. When they watched a friend sinking into the arms of death, they could see, by the motion of the frame and the light of the eye, the continued presence of the soul, until at last, the muscles were all motionless, and the eye fixed and leaden. They could still see the body, and after it had been deposited in the grave they could revisit it and see it again. But where is the soul? You see it no longer. There are no signs of its presence. It is gone; and its invisible abode they call hades, the unseen. That the soul of Jesus entered hades is undeniable. That it returned again to the body at the resurrection is asserted by Peter; and it is this return which was predicted by the prophet, and which caused the exultation both of himself and the apostle.

The resurrection of Jesus is not appreciated by the religious world now, as it was by the apostles. As respects the return of his soul from hades, Protestant writers have fled so far from the justly-abhorred purgatory of the Catholic, and the gloomy soul-sleeping of the Materialist, that they have passed beyond the Scripture doctrine, and either ignore altogether the existence of an intermediate state, or deny that the souls of the righteous are short of ultimate happiness during this period. On the other hand, they have so great a tendency to absolute spiritualism in their conceptions of the future state, that they fail to appreciate the necessity for the resurrection of the body of Jesus, or to exult, as the apostles did, in anticipation of the resurrection of their own bodies. As long as men entertain the idea that their spirits enter into final bliss and glory immediately after death, they can never be made to regard the resurrection of the body as a matter of importance. This idea has been produced a general skepticism among the masses, in reference to a resurrection of the body; for men are very apt to doubt the certainty of future events for which they see no necessity. As respects the resurrection of the body of Jesus, the most popular conception of its necessity is no doubt this, that it was merely to comply with the predictions of the prophets and of Jesus himself. It would be far more rational to suppose that it was made a subject of prophesy, because there was some grand necessity that it should occur.

It would occupy too much space, in a work of this kind, to fully develop this subject, we must, therefore, content ourselves with only a few observations, the complete vindication of the correctness of which we must forego.

When the eternal Word became flesh, he assumed all the limitations and dependencies which belong to men; "for it behooved him to be made in all things like his brethren." One of these limitations was the inability to work without a body; hence, to him, as well as to his brethren, there was a night coming in which he could not work. He says, "I must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; the night is coming when no man can work." This night can not be the period after the resurrection, for then he did work. It must, then, be the period of death, while his soul was absent from his body. During this period, he himself asserts, he could do no work, and certainly neither history nor prophesy refer to any work which he then did. It was the Jewish Sabbath among the living, and he observed it with absolute stillness in hades. If he had appeared to his disciples, as angels appear to men, convincing them that he was still alive, and could then have gone to heaven in his mere spiritual nature, who could say there was any necessity for a resurrection of that body in which all his sufferings were endured, and through which all temptations had reached him? But he could not be. Hades was to him a night of inactivity, as it is to all his disciples, though to neither is it a state of unconsciousness. If it had continued forever, then the further work of redemption, which could only be effected by a mediator in heaven, a Christ on the throne, sending down the Holy Spirit, directing the labors of men and angels, and finally raising the dead to judgment, would have remained undone forever. It was this thought which caused the exultation of the apostles, in view of the recovery of his soul from the inactivity of hades, and its reunion with the uncorrupted and now incorruptible body. "He was delivered for our offenses," but "was raised again for our justification." His death was the atonement, enabling God to be just in justifying those who believe on Jesus; but his resurrection enabled him to enter heaven with his own blood, securing eternal redemption for us. The resurrection was, therefore, an imperious necessity in his case, and it will be in ours; for not till he comes again will we enter the mansions he is preparing for us, and receive the crown of righteousness which he will give to all them, who love his appearing.