Romans 14:9 For to this end Christ both died, and rose, and revived, that he might be Lord both of the dead and living. This Lordship — I. PROVIDES THE ONLY SOLID AND SATISFACTORY ASSURANCE OF THE FUTURE REUNION AND RECOGNITION OF HIS FOLLOWERS. The question that rises oftener than any other to the lips of the bereaved touches this point of reunion. You may try to construct a heaven cut clean off in all its sympathies and attachments and recognitions from this world we are in now. But you will almost certainly then have before the mind a heaven practically destitute of sympathies and attachments, too vague to awaken expectation, too unreal to inspire enthusiasm. He who rose is the Lord of the living and the dead. They are not two families, but one, because they are all in Him, in spite of the transient curtain that hangs between the departed and ourselves — a curtain that probably has its only substance in the eyes of our flesh. The resurrection of the body of Jesus signifies the literal reality of all that is promised the Christian in his future home — the actual identity of the person here and the person there, and the actual renewal of affections and their interchange; for what is the identity, or the blessing of it, if the heart has got to begin its whole history afresh? It signifies the actual restoration, too, of the society, only in more exalted forms, of those who have believed and worshipped the same Saviour here. There will be no confusion of persons, no obliteration of the lines that mark off one soul from another. We shall be just, as distinct persons: with all personal faculties, affections, sympathies, substances, yes, and appearances, as we are now. In those celestial congregations there will, no doubt, be something to be recognised by, in feature or form, inbred on earth and indestructible by dissolution. Hence the need of a glorified resurrection body, to be set free at the last change — following the analogy still of His body who died and rose the same. II. SUGGESTS THAT OUR RESURRECTION LIFE WILL BE SOCIAL AS WELL AS INDIVIDUAL. As everything in the kingdom of heaven has its type and model in the Person of our Lord, so in the rising of His form, and the subsequent interviews with His disciples, we see a promise that, literally and for ever, those to whom He imparts His Spirit will move together in a family order and freedom about Him. Nothing less than this can be taught us by the parable of Lazarus, by the inspired images of the Apocalypse, by the company of saints made perfect; but, more than all these, by the reappearing, in the body, of the Lord of the dead and the living. Whither would the forth-going soul take its strange journey if there were no centre of spiritual attraction, no Christ receiving the believer to Himself where He is? (Bp. Huntington.) Parallel Verses KJV: For to this end Christ both died, and rose, and revived, that he might be Lord both of the dead and living. |
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