It is evident, therefore, that our translators considered judgment to be the primary and usual meaning of the word. Why, then, did they not translate it here, “rising to judgment,” or “resurrection of judgment”? It must have been because they believed either that (1.) “judgment” would make no sense here; (2.) that “damnation” would make better sense; or, (3.) that “damnation” was more in accordance with the analogy of faith. But we can decide these points for ourselves. “Judgment” is the better word here, for it accords with the doctrine of the New Testament, that in proportion as man goes wrong, he dulls his moral sense, and [pg 311] needs a revelation of truth to show him what he is. A true man, who has lived according to the truth here, has judged himself, and will not need to be judged hereafter. (1 Cor. 11:31.) He rises into the resurrection of life. But those who follow falsehood here, need to see the truth; and they rise into the resurrection of judgment. The truth judges and condemns them. But this is really an ascent to them also. It is going up higher, to see the truth, even when it condemns them. This passage, then, is no exception to the principle that wherever “resurrection” (ἀνάστασις) occurs in the New Testament, it implies going up into a higher state.
All the other places where the word occurs either evidently have this meaning, or can bear it as easily as the other. Thus (Luke 14:14), “Thou shalt be recompensed in the higher state of the just.” (20:27), the Sadducees “deny a higher state.” (Acts 1:21), “he is to be a witness with us of the ascended state of Jesus.” (Acts 4:2), “preached, through Jesus, the higher state of the dead.” (17:18), “preached to them Jesus and the higher state.” (20:23), that Christ “should be the first to rise into the higher state.” (Lazarus and others had returned to life again before Jesus, so that in this sense he was not the first fruits.) (Rom. 6:5), “planted in the likeness of his resurrection.” This can only mean as Christ passed through the grave into a higher state, so we pass through baptism into a higher state.
The only text which presents any real difficulty is Heb. 11:35, translated, “women received their dead raised to life again,” literally, “women received from the resurrection their dead” (ἐξ ἀναστάσεως), which may refer to a return to this life, as in the case of the child of the widow of Sarepta (1 Kings 17:17), and of the Shunamite (2 Kings 4:17).[38] But in the same verse, the other and “better” [pg 312] resurrection is spoken of, for the sake of which these martyrs refused to return to this life. The case referred to is probably that of the record of the seven brothers put to death by Antiochus (2 Macc. 7:9), who refused life offered on condition of eating swine's flesh, and said, when dying, “The King of the world shall raise us up, who have died for his laws, unto everlasting life” (εἰς αἰώνιον ἀναβίωσιν ζωῆς ἀνατήσει ἡμας), literally, “to an eternal renewal of our life.”[39] This verse shows, therefore, that though ἀνάστασις may mean a return to this life, yet that the other sense of a higher life is expressly contrasted with it, even here.
Our conclusion, therefore, with regard to this term ἀνάστασις, is, that its meaning, in New Testament usage, is not “rising again,” but “rising up,” or “ascent.”
2. Ἀνίστημι. This word is the root of the former. It is used one hundred and twelve times in the New Testament. It is translated with again (as, “he must rise again from the dead”) fifteen times. It is translated thirty-six times “rise up” or “raise up” (as, “I will raise him up at the last day”), and ninety-six times without the “again.” It is rendered “he arose,” “shall rise,” “stood up,” “raise up,” “arise,” and in similar ways.
3. Ἐγείρω. This word is also frequently used in relation to the resurrection, and is translated “to awaken,” “arouse,” “animate,” “revive.” The natural and usual meaning is ascent to a higher state, and not merely a “rising again.”
From these considerations we see that the primitive and central meaning of the terms used to express the resurrection is that of ascent. It is going up. This is the essential Christian idea. But it soon became implicated with the Pagan idea of immortality, or continued existence of the soul, and the Jewish idea of a bodily resurrection at the last [pg 313] day. But though there is a truth in each of these beliefs, the Christian doctrine is neither one nor the other. The gospel assumes, but does not teach, a continued existence of the soul. Since the greater includes the less, in teaching that the man rises at death into a higher life, it necessarily implies that he continues to live. And in teaching that he is to exist as man, with soul and body, in a higher condition of development, it teaches necessarily the bodily resurrection of the Jews. Christ, who came “not to destroy, but to fulfil,” fulfils both Pagan and Jewish ideas of the future state in this doctrine of an ascension at death.
The principal points of the teaching of Jesus concerning the life which follows the dissolution of the body are these: First. As against the Sadducees, he argues that the dead are living (Matt. 22:31, and the parallel passages), from the simple fact that God calls them his. If God thinks of them as his, that is enough. His thinking of them makes them alive. No one can perish while God is thinking of him with love. Such an argument, carrying no weight to the mere understanding, is convincing in proportion as one is filled with a spiritual conception of God. Secondly. Jesus abolishes death by teaching that there is no such thing to the soul which shares his ideas concerning God and the universe. This is implied in the phrases, “He that liveth and believeth in me shall never die.” (John 11:26.) “He that believeth on me hath everlasting life.” (John 6:47.) “I am the living bread, whereof if a man eat, he shall live forever.” (John 6:51.) “Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life.” (John 6:54.) “If a man keep my saying, he shall never see death.” Here, “eating Christ's flesh, and drinking his blood,” is plainly equivalent to “keeping his saying,” and “believing on him.” As “food which we eat and drink changes itself so as to become a part of our own body by assimilation,” so Christ intends that his truth shall not be merely taken into the [pg 314] memory, and reproduced in words, but shall be taken into the life, and reproduced in character. Thirdly. He teaches that as feeding on his truth changes our natural life into spiritual life, and lifts temporal existence into eternal being, so it will also place us outwardly in a higher state and higher relations, to which state he applies the familiar term the “resurrection” or “ascent,” the “going up.” “I will raise him up at the last day.” The “last day,” in Jewish and New Testament usage, means the Messianic times, as appears from such passages as Acts 2:17, where the term is used of the day of Pentecost; Heb. 1:2, “hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son;” 1 John 2:18, “Little children, it is the last time.” Jesus tells his disciples that he is going to the Father (John 14:15), in whose house are many mansions, where he is to prepare a place for his disciples. (John 14:2.)
That “resurrection” was understood to mean a present higher state, and not a future return to life, appears also from its use by the apostles. Christians are spoken of as having already “risen with Christ” (Col. 3:1); “risen with him in baptism” (Col. 3:1); walking “in the likeness of his resurrection” (Rom. 6:5). And, no doubt, it was by making this idea of a present resurrection too exclusive, that some Christians maintained that it was wholly a present resurrection, and not at all future—that “it was past already.”