Christ, Christianity and the Bible Part 9

He says, "I have flesh and bones."

They are still silent.

Then he stretches out his hands towards them. He shows them his feet.

There are great marks in them--there is around these marks as the stain of blood, or of wounds whence blood had flowed.

Still they do not speak. They are afraid to believe; it is too good to be true.

He says to them, "Handle me and see--take hold of my feet--feel me-- examine me for yourselves."

They are as immovable and speechless as men changed into stone.

He turns upon them quickly and says, "Have you anything to eat?"

They point to the untasted supper.

Then comes the climax.

He goes to the table.

He sits down.

He eats before them.

It is of record that he did eat _broiled fish_ and an _honeycomb_.

Either this is the worst fable ever palmed off on the church of Christ--on the credulity of aching human hearts--or it is the truth of G.o.d.

Call it the truth of G.o.d--then the body in which our Lord Jesus Christ rose was the body in which he died.

That body, stamped and sealed with the stigmata of the cross, is the living, quivering definition, and indisputable demonstration of immortality. Immortality is the living again in a body which was dead and dieth no more; or, it is the change of the body in which we now live into an incorruptible, glorious body which shall never die.

In that body which he raised from the dead, and which never saw corruption, our Lord Jesus Christ now sitteth at the right hand of G.o.d.

He is there as the vision and standard of immortality.

He is there as the forerunner, the prototype, the sample and prophecy of immortality for the Christian.

Until the Christian is made immortal his redemption is not complete.

The Christian who dies is transported to heaven.

His estate there as compared to this is "far better."

But "far better" is not the "best." It is only a comparative.

The superlative requires that the Christian shall have a body.

Without a body the Christian is neither a complete human being nor a perfect son of G.o.d.

The divine ordination is "_spirit, soul, and body_."

Unless the Christian receives an immortal body the victory of our Lord Jesus Christ over death and over him who has the power of death (that is the Devil) is not complete.

Satan as the strong man armed holds the goods and keeps them secure within his house.

The instrument with which he is armed is the law. That law which requires that it shall be "appointed unto men once to die." The goods are the bodies of the saints, and the house is the dark and dismal grave.

O the pitifulness of it! that our Lord Jesus Christ should possess the Christian as a ghost in heaven, and the Devil hold his blood -bought and spirit-sealed body in the grave.

A risen Christ in an immortal body, surrounded by disembodied Christian ghosts in heaven forever--that is a concept too hideously grotesque to consider.

An immortal Christ who redeemed his own body from the power of the grave, but is unable to deliver the bodies of those for whom he died--to think it is blasphemy! to believe it--impossible!

If the Devil be the strong man armed, the risen Lord is the one "stronger than he," who has met and equalled all the demands of the law, and by his death nullified its ultimate power over the bodies of those for whom he died.

In the very nature of the case, then, full redemption requires that the body of every Christian shall be delivered from the grave, and that every Christian, whether living or dead, shall be clothed finally with an immortal body.

This is the great objective of salvation--not just to save men from vice and immorality here; not just to fit them with an antidote against the poison of sin; or give them an impetus to holiness and truth for a few brief years in this mortal body, then let them die under various circ.u.mstances of suffering and pain and be carried away to heaven to live there as attenuated, invisible ghosts forever!

O no! it is not that!

It is true men are to be saved here and now in such moral and spiritual fas.h.i.+on as that each saved person should make the world sweeter and better and nearer to G.o.d for living in it. All that is true, but it is only a part of the glorious truth. The supreme objective--the _ultima thule_ of redemption--is--

_Immortality_--the Christian eternally and incorruptibly embodied.

And this immortality, this eternal embodiment, is to be accomplished for every Christian. The fact that death has been abolished officially as a penalty for the Christian is a demonstration that abolition of death means abolition for the whole Christian; as a whole or complete Christian must have a body, then the abolition of death for the Christian means abolition of death from the body. The abolition of death from the body is immortality; by virtue, then, of the abolition of death, immortality is a.s.sured to every Christian.

Not one will be forgotten even though centuries may have broken into dust above his grave.

This immortality will be brought to pa.s.s by him who is the Resurrection and the Life.

It will be brought to pa.s.s at the Coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

He is coming to this world again. By every law of necessity he _must_ come. He is coming to complete redemption, to bring on the capstone amid shoutings of "grace, grace unto it."

He will raise the dead who have fallen asleep in his name. He will change the living ones who are his at his coming. He will make the body of each incorruptible, deathless, immortal, like unto his own glorious body, as it is written:

"We shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is." (1 John 3:2.)

And again it is written:

"We are citizens of a country which is in heaven; from whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ; who shall change the body of our humiliation, that it may be fas.h.i.+oned like unto the body of his glory, according to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto himself." (Philippians 3:20, 21.)

At the last he will regenerate the earth. He will make it over. He will make all things new. He will set this race of redeemed immortals within it. Perfectly recovered from the spoliation of sin and death, they shall inhabit it forever. G.o.d shall get his own world again.

Paradise lost shall become paradise regained, and G.o.d's purpose to make man his const.i.tutional, governmental, moral and spiritual image shall be fulfilled. Man shall be G.o.d incarnate, and incarnation shall be seen to be the beginning and the ending of the purpose of G.o.d.