Such a conclusion in either member of the proposition is impossible. It is impossible, for no such postulate as inability or faithlessness can be laid against the Son of God.
By His own immortality as the first-fruits of them that slept, as the ordained forerunner and sample of all those whom He has redeemed He is, and in the nature of things, under bonds to give immortality to each, to raise the dead and transfigure the living in His likeness.
As the dead can be raised and the living changed only when He is personally present then He must come to this world again to give that immortality of which seated on yonder throne in heaven He is the promise and the pledge.
He made this promise by the grave of Lazarus.
Standing there with His cheeks wet with tears of sorrow over the one He loved and in profound sympathy with the grief-stricken sisters, groaning in Himself, not merely as one who was under the spell of sorrow and heartache, but full of “indignant protest” (this is the meaning of the word “to groan”) against the havoc of death as the work of that being whom we so familiarly call “Devil,” without stopping to measure his dignity, malignity and power, He said:
“I am the resurrection and the life; he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live:
And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.”
Wondrous, gracious, far reaching and full of measureless comfort is the promise, but nine out of ten who repeat it seem never to have comprehended the full import of it.
For this is what He meant.
Listen to it as I quote it in its fullness of intent: