15 - John 8:51

’Verily, verily I say unto you, If a man keep my saying, he shall never see death.’ -John 8:51. The fabulists who delight in taking God’s world to pieces that they may make it over again according to their own fancy, and who think that the wonderful in what is can bear no comparison with the wonderful in the products of their imagination, sometimes whisper in the ear of some forlorn favourite a mystic word of impenetrable meaning, by virtue of which he treads under foot the difficulties of time and sense, lays hold of all supposed laws of nature and crumples them in his hand; speaks, and brazen gates fly open; speaks, and they shut for ever; speaks, and the absent are present, the present disappear; speaks, and death itself ceases to be the master, surrendering its victims, withdrawing its claims. Thus in the dream world man seeks food for his wonder loving fancy, little weening that God’s world has wonders incomparably greater. The Son of God has brought a word into this world which a man has only to receive into his heart, and lo! all things are possible to him, all difficulties are subject to him, and victory over all enemies, including death, the last, is secured to him. The announcement is met with universal incredulity. Very pretty; very striking as a form of expression; but literally untrue, and true only in a sense so strained as to make the statement valueless. This is the view taken by most. But the cavillers are really put out of court by the admission which they are obliged to make that they have not personally tested the declaration. He that keepeth the word of Jesus shall never see death; to him only the marvels of the word are promised; to him only is it given to see the power that belongs to the word. The New Jerusalem cometh down from God out of heaven (I once saw it in a dream; its edifices were incomplete, its columns were rising, it was growing towards the measure of the stature of a perfect city in Christ; a city of the earth was below it, even a city like this Bombay; it grew as it descended, but its descent was scarcely perceptible; others around seemed to see nothing of it): only they who are of it can see it; except a man be born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.

Yet even the unbeliever, if he could reason as impartially about religion as about other things, would have to acknowledge that Christ’s word has exercised a power which nothing else in this world ever did. He left to his disciples this word, and nothing more; this word by virtue of which they inherited all that wrath of the world which had crucified him on Calvary. Did they keep if? At first it seemed as though they would not; they denied and forsook him; the word was too terrible a word to be kept; it began by costing them all they held dear. However, the prayer of Christ prevailed; they did not shake it utterly from them; before it was lost they grasped it convulsively; they returned to the Sufferer, the cross, the tomb; it conducted them then to the throne of grace, and made them prevalent in prayer; it worked mightily in them, casting out of their hearts many vain dreams and delusive speculations which had hitherto cruelly choked it. Pentecost came, and then the word was clothed with its own fulness of power. They went forth conquering and to conquer. No Caesar, no Alexander ever encountered such difficulties as they did. The Caesars of the world, one after another, hurled against them all they had of power; but the apostles of Jesus of Nazareth triumphed. Christian churches were gathered everywhere, multitudes were baptized for the dead. The consecrated mythologies of ages, intertwined with the affections and the sensibilities and the genius and the art of many glorious centuries, the old world religions of Assyria, Egypt, Greece, Rome, Scandinavia, all were successively overthrown, pulverised, annihilated. The battle is not yet spent; but the word of Christ maintains its own, fuses itself into every language, visits every clime, utters itself in the midst of every nation, and enriches millions of hearts with peace, gratitude, humility, love, and hope. Are we saying too much when we affirm that the world, if it would view the matter impartially, would see these marvellous victories of Christ’s word?

If the word of the solitary and unbefriended Nazarene has really had this stupendous sway in the world, so that even now it is a hundred fold more spoken of than any other word, is it reasonable to predicate of such declarations as the one now considered, extravagance or unmeaningness? It is more reasonable to presume that if we cannot see the truth of them, it must be because of the falsehood in us. The word of Christ is that by means of which a reunion is effected between the sinner and God. It is the word of reconciliation, revealing God as Saviour, as One providing salvation through the death of the Lamb, and offering it freely to every one that believeth, every one that willeth. It is the word which casts down the heaven high mountains reared by our sins between us and God; mountains of sins, each sin having the torments of hell wrapped up in it; mountains of accumulated sins, to remove a single one of which not all the angelic host would have been equal; all these mighty and unscalable mountains swept away by a single word, the word of Christ. It takes them away from between us and God, by the oblation offered on the cross; and it unites us to God in a bond that nothing has power to sever. United to God, all things are ours; all the perfections of God are engaged to fulfill in our behalf all the promises of God.

Christ is himself the Word of God. Keeping his word in our heart, we keep him; keeping him we keep the Father; all the Godhead is with the word, is in the word which we hide in our heart.

What now about death? Death is that which came to man when he departed from God. Sin obtained dominion, and the life of God vanished from his heart and mind. Without any promises, any covenant, any hold upon the aid of God, he was thrown into the midst of the world’s amphitheatre, to be the prey of the world’s evil. The fear of physical death dogs him at every step, and clouds the whole of his mortal existence; finally, he dies in his sins, having no passport to the realms of life and light. The last enemy is overcome by the word which keeps the believer in conscious enjoyment of God’s love; the death which has no power to interrupt his communion with the Father and with the Son cannot be called death. But Christ has in his hand the keys of Hades and of death; and there is reason to believe that among the final displays of his power will be the extinction of even that penumbra of death which now comes to the believer. "We shall not all sleep; but we shall all be changed."