The General Resurrection (2)

Augustus Toplady (1740-1778)

Beautiful and expressive is the metaphor under which St. Paul, in the passage before us conveys the doctrine of the Resurrection: If the body is sown in corruption, what is death but a sower, who commits his grain to the earth that it may one day spring up with superior comeliness and addition? What are the seasons of death and interment but seed times preclusive to harvest? Man, like wheat, is sown in corruption, that is, he is lodged in the grave, where corruption is the necessary means of refinement; just as the beauty and stateliness of the full ear is owing to the putrefaction of the seed from whence it springs. But though sown in corruption, and though it may long continue in that state, the body shall yet be raised in incorruption. Sin, that moral corruption of the soul; disease, weakness, mortality, and pain, those infirmities of the body, shall then be laid aside for ever. It is sown in dishonour but shall be raised in glory.

Universal death is a standing proof of universal sin. Death passed upon all men, says the apostle, or went through, all men, without sparing one, because all have sinned. Sin, therefore, is the grand dishonor of man; for all things beside, it puts us at the greatest distance from God. It transforms the soul into the image of Satan, and has thrown our bodies for a while, on a level with the beasts that perish. Death thus being thus the consequence of sin, is the reason why the apostle says, that the dead are sown to dishonour; for notwithstanding the survival of the soul, and the subsequent revival of the body, death and the grave are, for the time being, considered in themselves dishonorable to man, who once shone bright in the unclouded resemblance and full immortality of God; and are a sad evidence of the height from which we are fallen. Thanks to redeeming merit, acting in conjunction with infinite mercy and wisdom, the dishonour, great as it is, will not be perpetual. Glory will, one day, succeed the eclipse; wipe away our dishonour and supercede our reproach. As death reigns through the disobedience of the first man, so shall life reign through the righteousness of the second Man, the Lord from heaven.

Some persons, in order to obviate the necessity of Christ’s mediatorial work, ask, very confidently, “What have we to do with Adam?” Let such look around the world and see the manifold distresses of mankind; nay, I refer them to one of the most awful proofs the universe affords. Let them look at a dead corpse and then ask, if they can, what have we to do with Adam? The death of infants particularly, who are never guilty of actual sin, cannot be accounted for but on the principle of their being sinners by nature. Every misery in short we feel, whether moral or natural; every sin we commit, whether voluntary or involuntary; and every single instance of mortality we see, is a separate demonstration of original sin. But it is no wonder that they who lightly esteem the redemption wrought by Christ, should, in order to make room for the contempt of that work, labour to pour ridicule on the very thing which renders that redemption necessary. They know that the readiest way to overturn the superstructure is to begin with sapping the foundation. They seek, even against their own daily experience, to deny the dishonours of the fall; that they may, with greater ease, rob the Mediator of the glory of our recovery. Is this the kind return? Are these the thanks we owe?

The body being sown in dishonor will, as was hinted before, be raised in glory; which glory will chiefly consist in our being raised free both from sin itself and from its minutest effects; for, as sins the most finished dishonour, so holiness, or conformity to the divine nature, is the supreme glory of man. The apostle goes on, “It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power.” The body is committed to the ground in weakness indeed; deformed and inanimate, or motionless and insensible as its kindred clay, with which it is going to mingle. Yet all this shall be done away; it will be raised in power; not only by virtue of the power of God, but likewise endued by Him with power in itself. Being purified and re-built, by His Almighty operation, and re-united to its ancient companion, the soul, its power will not only be restored, but enlarged and perfected; nor can it be otherwise, when a glorified soul shall dwell in a glorified body.

Great is the present dignity resulting from this union, imperfect as both are; but to what a superior height will that dignity and power be advanced, when the soul, that has been with God ever since its departure, resumes its habitation, which divine Omnipotence has made fit for its reception. The apostle adds, “It is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body.” Not that the essence of the body will be changed, much less another body be substituted in the room of that that died; for then it would not be a resurrection; since that body, and that only which died, can be said to rise again. But the sense of the passage is, that the body, both before death and after it, has many qualities, or rather marks of infirmities, which are of a mere natural or animal kind. But in the resurrection, they shall be cleared of all that is gross, sensual and imperfect. They shall, in short, be spiritualized; that is, made capable of relishing spiritual enjoyments, and of assisting the heavenly hosts in the seraphic exercise of endless praise, and the spiritual worship of heaven; qualified in the utmost degree for the residence of their respective souls, to which they will then be reunited, and for the glories of the divine presence, to which they will then be admitted.

Many, and very important, are the inferences suggested by this doctrine of the resurrection, and the glory that will follow upon it. I will close the subject with observing:

How thankful we should be to God, not only for assuring us, in His Word, that we shall rise again, but for giving us proof of it, by the resurrection of His blessed Son! How should our hearts glow with gratitude! How should our lips abound with praise, the He who was delivered to death for our offences, manifested the truth of His mediatorship, and the acceptance of His sacrifice on our behalf, by rising again; whereby our faith in Him, both as God and Mediator, is established, and the certainty of their justification who trust in Him, and of their resurrection to immortal blessedness, are confirmed. If angels sang at His birth, even when He began to enter the scene of His stupendous humiliation; much higher and sweeter must they sing, when they beheld Him rising from the tomb, bearing the ensign of mortality, and loosening the bands of death. And surely we ought to emulate their joy, and adopt their Hosannas; we for whose sakes He entered on the arduous warfare, should congratulate His victory, and render Him the tribute of faith and praise. Yes, it was for our sins that Her died: it was for our justification that He rose again; it was as our Representative and Forerunner, that He ascended up on high, and carried our nature with Him into heaven, after He had, in that same human nature, merited heaven for us, and taken our sins out of the way, as if they never had been.

We, too, shall rise again and receive these very bodies which we must shortly lay aside for a season. These eyes will see our risen and exalted Saviour in the clouds; these ears shall hear Him pronounce either a favorable or tremendous sentence. If you are prepared by divine grace for that awful meeting, you can now meet the Lord of Life in prayer, resulting from faith and thankfulness, the fruit of His love; which are necessary ingredients to soften the apprehensions of death, and give us a comfortable view of the resurrection. We may, without presumption, apply the following words to ourselves, “Beloved, now we are the sons of God,” that is manifestly so, by being endowed with faith and repentance.

Having these evidences of our adoption, when death cuts the knot, or rather snaps the slender thread, which holds us to the world, and ties us to the body, we shall be present with the Lord, we shall be like Him, and see Him as He is. This is a transporting hope, not fallacious, as earthly hopes are; but a hope as solidly grounded as it is divinely comfortable; a hope that has the gratuitous love of God for its original source; the infinite merits of Christ for its foundation; and the faithful promise of God for its additional security.

Let us, then, with such well-grounded expectations, look up to the Holy Spirit for His sanctifying influences, that our affections may be heavenly and divine. It is His gift to bestow on us the wedding garment, which is the righteousness of Christ, so that by the imputation of His passivize and active obedience, and the renewing energy of His grace, we shall stand blameless before Him in time, and be admitted at death to the participation of His glory above. Be it our constant prayer, to know, that we are mystically planted in the likeness of His death, by faith in His adorable Person, and infinite merits, and by obedience to His commands and deadness to the world, and shall be also in the likeness of His resurrection. “Blessed and holy is he that hath part in this resurrection: over him the second death shall have no power.”

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