The Resurrection Of God’s Children
The Resurrection of God’s Children
Excerpted from “The First Resurrection”
Sermon #391
Delivered on Sunday morning, May 5, 1861, at the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington
The redemption we look forward to is not one dimensional, nor is it surface level. Our resurrection will be like Christ’s, with the full flourishing of bodies and spirits. We will experience at last what God intended for us all along.
I saw thrones, and seated on them were those to whom the authority to judge was committed. Also I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded for the testimony of Jesus and for the word of God, and those who had not worshiped the beast or its image and had not received its mark on their foreheads or their hands. They came to life and reigned with Christ for a thousand years. The rest of the dead did not come to life until the thousand years were ended. This is the first resurrection. Blessed and holy is the one who shares in the first resurrection! Over such the second death has no power, but they will be priests of God and of Christ, and they will reign with him for a thousand years. . . . And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Then another book was opened, which is the book of life. And the dead were judged by what was written in the books, according to what they had done. Revelation 20:4-6, 12
I think some ministers would do far more for the profit of God’s people if they would preach more about the first coming of Christ and less about the second. But I have chosen this topic because I believe it has practical bearings and may be useful, instructive, and rousing to us all. I find that the most earnest of the Puritan preachers did not resist dwelling upon this mysterious subject. I turn to Charnock,a and in his discussion upon the unchanging nature of God, he does not hesitate to speak of the fiery destruction of the world, of the millennial reign, and of the new heavens and New Earth.
I turn to Richard Baxter,b a man who above all other men loved the souls of men—who, perhaps more than any man, with the exception of the apostle Paul, agonized in birth for souls—and I find him making a barbed arrow out of the doctrine of the coming of the Lord and thrusting this great truth into the very hearts and consciences of unbelievers as though it were Heaven’s own sword.
And John Bunyanc—plain, honest John, who preached so simply that a child could comprehend him and was certainly never guilty of having written upon his forehead the word mystery. He, too, speaks of the coming of Christ and of the glories which shall follow and uses this doctrine as a stimulus to the saints and as a warning to the ungodly. I do not think, therefore, I need tremble very much if the charge should be brought against me of bringing before you an unprofitable subject. It shall profit if God shall bless the word, and if it is God’s word, we may expect his blessing if we preach it all. But he will withdraw it if we refrain from teaching any part of his counsel because in our pretended wisdom we fancy that it would not have practical effect.
Turn to the first letter to the Thessalonians: “We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep. For this we declare to you by a word from the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord” (1 Thessalonians 4:13-17).
Here is nothing said whatever about the resurrection of the wicked. It is only stated that the dead in Christ shall rise first. The apostle Paul is evidently speaking of a first resurrection. And since we know that a first resurrection implies a second, and since we know that the wicked dead are to rise as well as the righteous dead, we draw the conclusion that the wicked dead shall rise at the second resurrection, after the interval between the two resurrections shall have been accomplished.
Everyone will rise—no orthodox Christian doubts that. The doctrine of a general resurrection is received by all the Christian church. What, then, is this resurrection after which Paul is exerting himself, if by any means he might attain unto it? It could not be the general resurrection. He would attain to that however he might live. It must be some superior resurrection of which only those shall be partakers who have known Christ and the power of his resurrection, having become like him in his death. I think you cannot interpret this passage, or give it any force of meaning, without admitting that there is to be a prior resurrection of the just before the resurrection of the unjust.
In chapter 14 of the Gospel of Luke, in verses 13-14, you have a promise made to those who, when they host a feast, do not do it with the intention of getting anything in return. “When you give a feast, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you. For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the just.”
I would not insist upon it that this would prove that the just rose at a different time, but still there is to be a resurrection of the just, and on the other hand, there is to be a resurrection of the unjust. And the time of reward for the righteous is to be the resurrection of the just, which is spoken of as being a particular period.
There is a passage in Hebrews where the apostle, speaking of the trials of the godly and their noble endurance, speaks of them as “refusing to accept release, so that they might rise again to a better life” (11:35). The better life is not in the after results of Resurrection, but in the Resurrection itself. How then could it be a better resurrection unless there be some distinction between the resurrection of the saint and the resurrection of the sinner? Let the one be a resurrection of splendor, let the other be a resurrection of gloom and horror, and let there be a marked division between the two. As it was in the beginning, it may be even to the end—the Lord has put a difference between him who fears God and him who fears him not.
I have no purpose to serve except to make the Scripture as plain to you as possible. And I say it yet again: I have not the shadow of a doubt in my own soul that these passages teach us that there shall first of all be a resurrection concerning which it shall be said: “Blessed and holy is the one who shares in the first resurrection! Over such the second death has no power, but they will be priests of God and of Christ, and they will reign with him for a thousand years” (Revelation 20:6).
Spurgeon says, “If it is God’s word, we may expect his blessing if we preach it all. But he will withdraw it if we refrain from teaching any part of his counsel.” He spoke critically of pastors who compromised their biblical teaching to accommodate the newly popularized theories of Charles Darwin (which were the talk of London at the time) and opposed various higher critics who taught that the Bible wasn’t reliable.
Spurgeon takes delight in referring to the men whose books God used to mold his thinking. He refers here to John Bunyan, author of The Pilgrim’s Progress, with great fondness. In fact, The Pilgrim’s Progress was Spurgeon’s favorite book—he read it over a hundred times. His many comments on it were collected into a book called Pictures from Pilgrim’s Progress, his own commentary on Bunyan’s great work of fiction. Spurgeon often spoke of the writers who were his mentors as if they were old friends—Baxter, Bunyan, John Owen,d and Charnock among them. He talks about these men as if he knew them well—he calls Bunyan “plain, honest John”—for they had a formational role in his thinking, just as Spurgeon has had in my life and in the lives of numerous others.
Spurgeon’s meditation demonstrates his understanding that our anticipation of eternal life as resurrected beings in a resurrected universe has present, practical implications. “Therefore [in light of our eventual resurrection], my dear brothers and sisters, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain” (1 Corinthians 15:58, NIV).
How do we know that our labor in the Lord is not in vain? Because of our bodily resurrection. Just as we will be carried over from the old world to the new, so will our labor. In a sense, not only our bodies but also our service for Christ will be resurrected. J. B. Phillips renders 1 Corinthians 15:58 as follows: “Let nothing move you as you busy yourselves in the Lord’s work. Be sure that nothing you do for him is ever lost or ever wasted.”e
Bruce Milne writes, “Every kingdom work, whether publicly performed or privately endeavored, partakes of the kingdom’s imperishable character. Every honest intention, every stumbling word of witness, every resistance of temptation, every motion of repentance, every gesture of concern, every routine engagement, every motion of worship, every struggle toward obedience, every mumbled prayer, everything, literally, which flows out of our faith-relationship with the Ever-Living One, will find its place in the ever-living heavenly order which will dawn at his coming.”f
Paul says, “In this hope we were saved” (Romans 8:24). What hope? The words of the previous verse tell us: “the redemption of our bodies” (verse 23). That’s the final resurrection—when death will be swallowed up and sin will be reversed, never again to touch us. This is what we should long for and live for.
Is resurrected living in a resurrected world with the resurrected Christ and his resurrected people your daily longing and hope? Is it part of the gospel you share with others? Paul says that the resurrection of the dead is the hope for which we were saved. It will be the glorious climax of God’s saving work that began at our new birth. In liberating us from sin and all its consequences, the Resurrection will free us to live with God, gaze on him, and enjoy his uninterrupted fellowship forever, with no threat that anything will ever again come between us and him.
May God use our mentors, the pastors and friends we talk to, and the books we read to preserve us from embracing lesser hopes. May we rejoice as we anticipate the height, depth, length, and breadth of our Savior’s redemptive work.
a Stephen Charnock was a Puritan clergyman in the seventeenth century who at one time served as a chaplain to Henry Cromwell; he was best known for his classic work The Existence and Attributes of God.
b Richard Baxter was a Puritan church leader, theologian, and hymn writer in seventeenth-century England. He was best known for his classic work on Heaven, The Saints’ Everlasting Rest.
c John Bunyan was a writer and preacher in seventeenth-century England, best known for his classic allegory, The Pilgrim’s Progress.
d John Owen was a seventeenth-century English Puritan pastor and reformed theologian.
e J. B. Phillips, Letters to Young Churches: A Translation of the New Testament Epistles (London: G. Bles, 1947), 66.
f Milne, The Message of Heaven and Hell, 257.
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