Here is the profound truth seen already in earlier passages in the Epistle. We have had it reasoned out, above all in the sixth chapter, in its revelation of the way of Holiness, that our only possible right relations with the Lord are clasped and governed by the fact that to Him we rightly and everlastingly belong. There, however, the thought was more of our surrender under His rights. Here it is of the mighty antecedent fact, under which our most absolute surrender is nothing more than the recognition of His indefeasible claim. What the Apostle says here, in this wonderful passage of mingled doctrine and duty, is that, whether or no we are owning our vassalage to Christ, we are nothing if not de jure His vassals. He has not only rescued us, but so rescued us as to buy us for His own. We may be true to the fact in our internal attitude; we may be oblivious of it; but we cannot get away from it. It looks us every hour in the face, whether we respond or not. It will still look us in the face through the endless life to come.
For manifestly it is this objective aspect of our "belonging" which is here in point. St Paul is not reasoning with the "weak" and the "strong" from their experience, from their conscious loyalty to the Lord. Rather, he is calling them to a new realization of what such loyalty should be. It is in order to this that he reminds them of the eternal claim of the Lord, made good in His Death and Resurrection; His claim to be so their Master, individually and altogether, that every thought about one other was to be governed by that claim of His on them all. "The Lord" must always interpose, with a right inalienable. Each Christian is annexed, by all the laws of Heaven, to Him. So each must—not make but realize that annexation, in every thought about neighbour and about brother.
The passage invites us meantime to further remark, in another direction. It is one of those utterances which, luminous with light given by their context, shine also with a light of their own, giving us revelations independent of the surrounding matter. Here one such revelation appears; it affects our knowledge of the Intermediate State.
The Apostle,[237] four times over in this short paragraph, makes mention of death, and of the dead. "No one of us dieth to himself"; "Whether we die, we die unto the Lord"; "Whether we die, we are the Lord's"; "That He might be Lord of the dead." And this last sentence, with its mention not of the dying but of the dead, reminds us that the reference in them all is to the Christian's relation to his Lord, not only in the hour of death, but in the state after death. It is not only that Jesus Christ, as the slain One risen, is absolute Disposer of the time and manner of our dying. It is not only that when our death comes we are to accept it as an opportunity for the "glorifying of God" (John xxi. 19; Phil. i. 20) in the sight and in the memory of those who know of it. It is that when we have "passed through death," and come out upon the other side,
"When we enter yonder regions,
When we touch the sacred shore,"
our relation to the slain One risen, to Him who, as such, "hath the keys of Hades and of death" (Rev. i. 18), is perfectly continuous and the same. He is our absolute Master, there as well as here. And we, by consequence and correlation, are vassals, servants, bondservants to Him, there as well as here.
Here is a truth which, we cannot but think, richly repays the Christian's repeated remembrance and reflection; and that not only in the way of asserting the eternal rights of our blessed Redeemer over us, but in the way of shedding light, and peace, and the sense of reality and expectation, on both the prospect of our own passage into eternity and the thoughts we entertain of the present life of our holy beloved ones who have entered into it before us.
Everything is precious which really assists the soul in such thoughts, and at the same time keeps it fully and practically alive to the realities of faith, patience, and obedience here below, here in the present hour. While the indulgence of unauthorized imagination in that direction is almost always enervating and disturbing to the present action of Scriptural faith, the least help to a solid realization and anticipation, supplied by the Word that cannot lie, is in its nature both hallowing and strengthening. Such a help we have assuredly here.
He who died and rose again is at this hour, in holy might and right, "the Lord" of the blessed dead. Then, the blessed dead are vassals and servants of Him who died and rose again. And all our thought of them, as they are now, at this hour, "in those heavenly habitations, where the souls of them that sleep in the Lord Jesus enjoy perpetual rest and felicity,"[238] gains indefinitely in life, in reality, in strength and glory, as we see them, through this narrow but bright "door in heaven" (Rev. v. 1), not resting only but serving also before their Lord, who has bought them for His use, and who holds them in His use quite as truly now as when we had the joy of their presence with us, and He was seen by us living and working in them and through them here.