The Lord has thus answered the question which His solemn words would raise in every soul that fears God. He had shown it to be no question of law or of ordinance, but of hearing His word and believing the Father that sent Him. Such only have eternal life; but he who so believes has it now. How blessed and secure his portion in Christ!
Next He turns to the more general state of things. “Verily, verily, I say to you, An hour is coming and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God; and they that have heard shall live.” (Ver. 25.) It is indeed the sad truth: men in all the activities of the world are the dead. Nor is it a question of a stricter morality or of a holier religion: Either one or other or both they may acquire and yet want life. Dogma cannot give it any more than practice. It flows from the Son of God who quickens whom He will, yet is it by faith, and so through the word which the Spirit applies livingly.
Here it is that Evangelicalism is feeble and Sacramentalism is false. If the latter superstitiously gives to a creature ordinance the honor which belongs to a divine person alone, the former ignores and lowers the truth by talking of a converted character and of devoting to God what was once abandoned to self and sin; but neither has any adequate estimate of the total ruin of man, nor consequently of the absolute need and real power of divine grace. “The dead” are men universally now till born of God. It is no picture of the future resurrection, whether of just or unjust, which follows in verses 28, 29, but of the present hour, as the Lord Himself intimates; for it now is, “when the dead shall bear the voice of the Son of God.” His voice goes forth “to every creature” in the gospel; “and those that have heard shall live.” Such are the means and condition of life. It is of faith that it might be by grace. Man's utter powerlessness is as manifest and certain as His glorious energy. Those that have heard shall live. Alas! the mass of mankind have ears but they hear not, even as to the Jews, when they saw Him, there was no beauty that they should desire Him. Whether it be superstitious or skeptical man, he submits not to the sentence of God on his own estate, nor consequently feels the need of sovereign mercy in Christ, who alone can give the life he wants for God now or through eternity. But whatever the mercy of God, He will have His Son honored, and this now by hearing His word and believing the testimony of Him who sent Him. This tests man thoroughly, which the law only did partially. For never does the sinner trust God for eternal life till grace makes him see his sins and distrust himself utterly. Then how glad is he to learn that the goodness of God gives eternal life in Christ and has sent Him that he might know it How willingly he owns himself one of “the dead,” which no man does really till he lives in the new life which is in Christ! How heartily he bows to the Son of God and blesses the God who sent Him in love and compassion, willing not the death of sinner, but rather that be might have life through His name!
But the same unbelief, which of old in the Jew violated the law and lusted after idols, now in the Gentile trusts an ordinance for it, to the exaltation of those what arrogate to themselves its valid and exclusive administration, or openly distrust God and alight His Son, confiding in themselves without Him. They are the religiously or the profanely infidel. They are “the dead” and have never heard the voice of the Son of God, but only of their priests or of their philosophers. Whatever their boastings, they shall not live, for they have not Christ, but only ideas, imaginative or rational, not the truth which is inseparable from Christ received by faith to the glory of God, and the total annihilation of all human pretensions.
It is all-important to see that all truth centers in the person of Christ, who, being God from everlasting to everlasting, deigned to become man, without the least forfeiture of divine glory, yet loyally accepting the position proper to humanity. Hence the language of the Lord in what follows, the misapprehension of which has led not a few theologians of eminence to the brink, if not into the pit, of fundamental heterodoxy. “For as the Father hath life in himself, so hath he given to the Son to have life in himself; and hath given him authority to execute judgment [also], because he is Son of man.” (Ver. 26, 27.) The Lord evidently speaks here as come below, a man, the sent of God, and servant of the divine purposes, not as the One who is over all, God blessed forever, though both be true of Him in His person. As the eternal Son, He quickens whom He will; as come in humiliation, it is given Him of the Father to have life in Himself. Born of a woman, He is still Son of God. (Luke 1:3535And the angel answered and said unto her, The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God. (Luke 1:35).) But men despise the man Christ Jesus. Some trust in themselves that they are righteous, all disliking Him who did not His own will but the will of Him that sent Him. He who lived on account of the Father is irksome to all that live to themselves, and odious to such as seek honor one of another. They misuse His humanity to deny His deity. They have no life, for they have no faith. But they cannot escape judgment, and a judgment executed in that very nature of man for which they rejected the Son of God. It is as Son of man that the Lord Jesus will sit on the throne. Doubtless He will show His divine knowledge in judging; but, as lie says expressly, authority is given Him of the Father to execute judgment, because He is Son of man. As Son of God He quickens; as Son of man He will judge. How solemn! Had He been only Son of God, who would have dared to despise Him? The light of His glory had consumed instantly every proud adversary from before Him. It was His grace then in becoming man to save men which exposed Him to contempt in His path of lowly obedience and suffering in love. The archangel is a servant; He stooped to become one. (Phil. 2:66Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: (Philippians 2:6).) But the God of this world blinded them, so that they counted as only man Him who never more proved Himself God to such as by grace had eyes to see. If they insulted Him in His work of grace, how will it be when He executes judgment, and this as Son of man? Such is the award of God.
“Wonder not at this; for an hour is coming, in which all that are in the tombs shall hear his voice, and shall go forth, those that practiced good unto a resurrection of life, and those that did evil unto a resurrection of judgment.” (Ver. 28, 29.)
Thus another hour is announced distinct from what “now is,” and only “coming,” an hour not of quickening such of the dead as hear the voice of Christ, but of “all that are in the tombs” rising. It is the hour of proper resurrection; and the Lord carefully negatives the popular thought of one general resurrection. Not so; here, as elsewhere, we learn of two resurrections wholly and distinctly contrasted in character, as we find in Rev. 20 they are in time.
It did not enter into the scope of the Lord's discourse, any more than of the Spirit's design in the Gospel, to reveal in detail the order of events chronologically. This has its suited place in the great prophecy of the New Testament. But the far deeper difference of their relation to Christ Himself, viewed as Son of God and Son of man, is laid before us in a few words of the profoundest interest—a difference which would be true if no more than ten minutes intervened, but which is rendered far more distinct and impressive, inasmuch as the Revelation lets us see an interval of more than a thousand years. How great the confusion in the theology of the schools and pulpits, which supposes a single promiscuous rising of just and unjust, and this mainly on an exegesis so absurd as that which applies Matt. 25:31-4631When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory: 32And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats: 33And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left. 34Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: 35For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: 36Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me. 37Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink? 38When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee? 39Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee? 40And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me. 41Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels: 42For I was an hungred, and ye gave me no meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink: 43I was a stranger, and ye took me not in: naked, and ye clothed me not: sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not. 44Then shall they also answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee? 45Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me. 46And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal. (Matthew 25:31‑46) to the resurrection! For it is certainly a judgment of the quick, of all the nations, before the Son of man when He comes again in glory, not the judgment of the wicked dead and their works before the great white throne after heaven and earth are fled away and all question of coming again is closed. There is the further mischief resulting from this interpretation, that it tends to insinuate that just and unjust come into judgment, or that unjust come into it no more than the just, to the destruction of the capital truth of the gospel; which contrasts life and judgment, as we have seen in our Savior's words.
There is this essential difference in the two hours, that, while in the first some only by grace heard His voice and had life, in the second all that are in the tombs shall hear it and shall go forth. But there is no confusion of just and unjust longer. In the world they had been more or less mixed together. In the field where the good seed was sown the enemy sowed tares, and, spite of the servants, the Lord ruled that both were to grow together until the harvest. But in the coming hour there is no mingling more: the solemn severing of all takes place, “those that practiced good unto a resurrection of life, and those that did evil unto a resurrection of judgment.” For life eternal in Christ is never inoperative, and the Holy Ghost, who is given to the believer consequent on the accomplishment of redemption and the ascension of Christ, works in that life, that there may be the fruit of righteousness by Jesus Christ to God’s glory and praise. Hence such as believed are here characterized as those that practiced good, and as this had its root in life, so its issue is a resurrection of life; while those who had no life, being rejectors of Him who is its source, are described as “those that did evil,” and their end a resurrection of judgment. In the hour that now is they would not have the Son of God in all His grace; they must be judged by the Son of man in the hour that is coming. The two resurrections are as distinct as the characters of those who rise in each. But Jesus is Lord of all and raises all; though on a different principle, of a different class, and to a different end.