(Concluded from page 83.)

APPENDIX

I add as an appendix a brief summary of the testimony of the New Testament to immortality. If we take the four Gospels together, they tell us, first, of a new Man, a Second Adam, supernaturally born into the world ; hence in many ways He is in contrast with the first Adam. He is a Person incarnate, which is affirming that He is a divine Person; for no mere created spirit-being has the power to become man. He is, then, both God and Man. Being born into the world, He is the Seed of the woman-just such a Man as was promised in Gen. 3 :15. The record of His earthly life proves that He was not, like Adam, of the earth, earthy, but a heavenly Man upon earth.

Assailed by Satan, He was faithful and obedient. He did no sin. Being sinless in life and nature, He was not subject to death-was personally exempt from the death and judgment to which men are appointed. He was a Man having life in Himself, possessing intrinsic power to banish death and annul corruption. In the exercise of this power He proved Himself to be the Deliverer, the Saviour of men.

But His perfections need not be further delineated. Calling attention to them is sufficient to show that He was a unique Man, of an order distinct from that to which all other men naturally belong. This is true, notwithstanding the fact that He was a Man "in the likeness of sinful flesh." Partaking of our human nature-flesh and blood- did not make Him one of us, for He was what none of us are-"holy, harmless, undefiled, and separate from sinners." But if not one of us, He was in very truth one with us.

I have said that this unique Man was not subject to death. He is declared, however, to have power (the right, competency) to lay down His life. The Gospels represent Him as One on "whom violent hands could not be laid until the hour came when of His own will He should put Himself in men's wicked hands, and willingly subject Himself to the power of Satan.

In the sacrificial side of this we need not enter here. That He laid down His life in atonement for us is a central, a cardinal, truth of Scripture; but we are concerned here with the fact of His death witnessed to by each of the four Gospels. They showed that He died, not from any personal necessity, but substitutionally. And having power to lay down His life, He had also power to take it up again-power to arise from among the dead, as the four Gospels testify He did.

Further, the record plainly shows that, as risen from the dead, His humanity is in a new condition. As born into the world, our Lord's humanity was as that of the sons of Adam-a true flesh and blood body. In that sense His body was a natural body, though not of natural generation, but a body prepared by the Holy Spirit (Heb. 10 :5), capacitating the Son of God for participation in human life and in death.

But in resurrection our Lord's body has been spiritualized. It is suited to a spiritual creation-heavenly and unchangeable. In dying and rising again, our Lord has passed out for ever of the flesh and blood condition of humanity, and entered into its final and permanent condition (2 Cor. 5 :16).

To complete our summary of the testimony of the Gospels, it only needs to add, that they witness to the fact that it was as a spiritualized Man that our Lord arose from the dead and ascended to heaven. He has gone into a spiritual sphere in a body suited for that sphere in which He abides.

We pass on to briefly state the testimony of the rest of the New Testament. After the death and resurrection of Christ, God's message to men takes on a new form. It is no longer a promise of a new Man to come; nor is it the announcement of One who is God's delight here among men that is emphasized, but the great fact that (by way of death and resurrection) He has entered into His glory. He is spoken of not merely as One who has died and lives again forever, but as in a spiritual sphere and glorified body, in which is illuminated the life and incorruptibility that God promised to faith in announcing the coming of the Seed of the woman. By His coming, and victory over death, the promised life and incorruptibility has been manifested-the life and incorruptibility of which the risen Christ is the eternal Head. The way provided to reach that creation is no longer a matter of promise but an existing fact-not what faith infers and dimly foresees, but what it realizes as an accomplished reality.

And, further, faith knows it to be its own portion. As the believer looks back upon the men of past ages who died in faith, he thinks of them now as participators in this life and incorruptibility. As
he sees one and another of faith's family now passing off this scene, he says, Death cannot dissolve the bond of their eternal blessing with Him, where He is. Though they die, they shall live again, and rise to life with spiritual bodies like their Lord's, and in the heavenly sphere and condition upon which Christ has already entered. If he reads of the hour of trial for the world, which is to follow the rapture of the Church, and the unparalleled martyrdom of those who shall then witness to God's and Christ's claims, laying down their lives for the testimony they bear, he knows they shall be raised to life and incorruptibility, and added to the already glorified company in heaven. If he looks further still to the time when the first heavens and earth pass away, and thinks of the multitude who have owned allegiance to Him who died but rose again, he will infer that they too shall be transformed and transferred into the new creation which is to replace that which passes away.

Such is the hope, or prospect, which the New Testament distinctly defines as being the eternal portion of all those who through faith are delivered from the consequences of sin.

I will only add here that the thought of life and incorruptibility, as the New Testament develops it, shows that every member of the family of faith will ultimately be conformed to Christ as He is- with a spiritual body like His own. And, further, when the last company of the saved shall have entered into this spiritual condition, bearing thus the image of "the Firstborn from the dead," God and men shall dwell together in unutterable blessedness forever (Rev. 21:3).

But what of the wicked ? The New Testament picture of their end is exceedingly solemn. They are raised, and thus complete men, in bodies to endure for ever. Yet there is no expression in Scripture whatever to show that their bodies will be like that of the risen Christ. It seems that the inference we are intended to draw is that, while the bodies of the wicked shall not be subject to physical death, they shall yet bear forever the marks of sin. Theirs will be an existence, not of life and incorruption, but of eternal separation from Him by whom life and incorruptibility have been brought in. C. Crain