The weak point of all these schemes and methods to which I have already
referred for helping humanity out of the slough, and making men
happier, is that they underestimate the fact of sin. If a man comes to
them and says, 'I have broken God's law. What am I to do? I have a
power within me that impels me now to evil. How am I to get rid of it?'
they have no adequate answer. There is only one remedy that deals
radically with the fact of human transgression; only one power that
will deliver each of us, if we will, from the penalty, the guilt, the
power of sin; and that is the sacrifice of Christ on Calvary, and its
result, the inspiration of the spirit of life that was in Jesus Christ,
breathed into us from the Throne itself. Thus, and thus only, is the
veil done away in Christ.
III. Lastly, where does the life that destroys death come from?
'He will swallow up death in victory,' or, as probably the word more
correctly means, 'He will swallow up death _for ever_.' None of the
other panaceas for the world's evils that I have been speaking of even
attempt to deal with that 'Shadow feared of Man' that sits at the end
of all our paths. Jesus Christ has dealt with it. Like the warrior of
Judah who went down into a pit and slew a lion, He has gone down into
the lair of the dreadful thing, and has come up leaving Death dead on
the threshold.
By His death Christ has so altered that grim fact, which awaits us all,
that to those who will trust their souls to Him it ceases to be death,
even though the physical fact remains unaltered. For what is death? Is
it simply the separation of soul from body, the cessation of corporeal
existence? Surely not. We have to add to that all the spiritual
tremors, all the dreads of passing into the unknown, and leaving this
familiar order of things, and all the other reluctances and
half-conscious feelings which make the difference between the death of
a man and the death of a dog. And all these are swept clean away, if we
believe that Jesus died, and died as our Redeemer and our Saviour. So,
unconsciously and instinctively, the New Testament writers will seldom
condescend to call the physical fact by the ugly old name. It has
changed its character; it is 'a sleep' now; it is 'an exodus,' a 'going
out' from the land of Egypt into a land of peace. It is a plucking up
of the tent-pegs, according to another of the words which the writers
employ for death, in preparation for entering, when the 'tabernacle is
dissolved,' into 'a house not made with hands,' a statelier edifice,
'eternal in the heavens.' To die in Christ is not to die, but becomes a
mere change of condition and of place, to be with Him, which is far
'better.' So an Apostle who was coming within measurable distance of
his own martyrdom, even whilst the headsman's block was all but in his
sight, said: 'He hath abolished death,' the physical fact remaining
still.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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