If, says the Apostle Paul, in this present life we have a hope resting on Christ, and nothing more, we are more to be pitied than all the rest of the world (1 Cor. 15:19). The idea is that if this hope in Christ which the believer has is a delusive hope, with no prospect of fulfillment in the future, the Christian is indeed in a sad state. He has chosen a life of self-denial; he will not indulge in the pleasures of the world, and if there are no pleasures in the darkness into which he is about to enter, then he has miscalculated, he has chosen a life that shall end in self-obliteration. If he has no home to go to, no God to welcome him, no King to say, "Well done, exchange mortality for life," then he is indeed in a pitiable plight. But such is not the case. The hope of the Christian enters beyond the vail, into the very presence of God Himself, and endures throughout all the eternities.
I. THE CHRISTIAN NEVER DIES.
1 John 8:51—"Verily, verily, I say unto you, If a man keep my saying, he shall never see death." 11:25, 26—"Jesus said unto her, 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. Believest thou this?"
What Jesus means here is not that the believer shall not pass through the experience that we call death, but that in reality it is not death, at least, not in the sense in which it is death to the unbeliever. Jesus has taken the sting out of death. How sharply the contrast between death and the experience through which the believer passes is presented in 1 Thess. 4:13, 14—"But I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep, that ye sorrow not, even as others which have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him." Jesus "died"—He tasted the awfulness of death; the believer in Him "falls asleep." Cf. John 11:11—"Our friend Lazarus sleepeth." We have no ground in these words for the modern doctrine of soul-sleeping. Christ did not mean to say that the soul is unconscious between the time of death and the resurrection. For, when the disciples did not understand His figurative language, He told them plainly, "Lazarus is dead" (11:11-15). What Jesus meant was that death is something like that which takes place when we go to sleep. What takes place when we go to sleep? Surely the current of life does not cease, but flows on, and when we awake we feel better and stronger than before. There is a shutting out of all the scenes of the world and time. Just so it is in the case of the believer's death. Three ideas are contained in the word "sleep": continued existence,—for the mind is active even though the body is still; repose—we lose our hold on and forget the things of the world; wakening—we always think of sleep as followed by awakening.
The word "see" in John 8:51 means that the believer shall not gaze at death protractedly, steadily, exhaustively. Death is not the objective of his gaze. The believer's outlook is that of life not death. The death of the body is to be reckoned no more as death than the life of the body is life (1 Tim. 5:6). The believer's back is turned upon death; he faces and gazes upon life. The temporary separation of the soul and body does not even interrupt, much less impair, the eternal life given by Jesus.
II. THE BELIEVER GOES TO BE WITH CHRIST.
2 Cor. 5:6, R. V.—"Being therefore always of good courage, and knowing that, whilst we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord." Phil. 1:23, R. V.—"But I am in a strait betwixt the two, having the desire to depart and be with Christ; for it is very far better."
The experience (death-sleep) through which the believer passes ushers him at once into the presence of Christ. It takes him instantly to be "at home" with the Lord. Surely there can be no hint of unconsciousness or the sleeping of the soul in these words. It would seem from Paul's words in 2 Corinthians 5:1-5 that some kind of spiritual body is given to the believer during the period of his waiting for the resurrection body. What Paul longs for is not to be in a bodiless state, but to put on another body which shall not be subject to death. "At home with the Lord"—that is what "death" (?) means to the believer.
III. THE BODY OF THE BELIEVER IS RAISED FROM THE DEAD.
See under the Doctrine of the Resurrection for the full discussion of the believer's resurrection body, its characteristics, etc.