IN
HIS HANDS WHO HATH ABOLISHED DEATH
AND
BROUGHT LIFE AND INCORRUPTIBILITY TO LIGHT BY THE GOSPEL.
1 CORINTHIANS 15:16-28COR 15:16-28
CHRIST THE RESURRECTION.
"IF the dead rise not, then is not Christ raised: and if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins. Then they also which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished. If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable. But now IS Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept. For since by MAN came DEATH, by MAN came also the RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. For as in ADAM all DIE, even so in CHRIST shall all be MADE ALIVE.
“But every man in his own order:
“CHRIST THE FIRSTFRUITS; [see Lev. 23:10, 11]
“Afterward they that are Christ's at his coming.”
(An elliptical sentence, meaning, that they at His coming shall be displayed in resurrection; according to Rev. 20:5: "This is the first resurrection;" which refers, not to the fact of the saints being raised, but to their subsequent state as the companions of Christ in His glory.)
THE END, OR ETERNAL STATE.
"THEN COMETH THE END, [the thousand years of His reign being fulfilled,] when HE [Christ] shall have delivered up the kingdom to God, even the Father [i.e. He that put all things under Him]; when HE [Christ] shall have put down all rule and all authority and power.”
DIGRESSION.
DEATH EMPLOYED NOW AS CHRIST’S SERVANT, BUT DESTROYED AT THE END.
“For HE [Christ] must reign, till HE [by means of death; see Rev. 19:11-21; Zech. 14:16-19; Rev. 20:7-9] hath put all enemies under his feet. THE LAST ENEMY THAT SHALL BE DESTROYED BEING DEATH [HIMSELF].
For HE [Christ] hath put all things [for a season] under HIS [namely Death's] feet. But when he saith [ειπε—i.e., either the Holy Ghost is here shown as speaking through the apostle himself in this passage, or this expression may be taken as equivalent to "But when it is said,"] all things are put under him [Death], it is manifest that HE [Christ] is excepted, which [having the keys of hades and of death, see Rev. 1:18,] did put all things under him.”
THE END, OR EVERLASTING STATE, RESUMED.
"And when all things shall be subdued unto HIM [Christ], then shall the Son also himself [having delivered up the kingdom] be subject unto him [the Father] that put all things under him, THAT GOD MAY BE ALL IN ALL.”
N.B.—"CHRIST THE FIRSTFRUITS" is surely the antecedent to the pronoun HE, wherever we here find it printed in capitals. If this passage be carefully examined, we venture to say that it will be found that by no rule of construction can THE FATHER (according to the ordinary thought) be taken as the antecedent to the FIFTH HE, where it is said, "For he hath put all things under his feet." That this latter passage refers to the Son, not to the Father-being no quotation, as is commonly thought, from Psa. 8:6— we seek to show in the following note.
** When Christ rose again from the dead, He having through death destroyed him that had the power of death, that is, the devil (Heb. 2:14), THE KEYS OF HADES AND OF DEATH WERE WRESTED FROM THE ENEMY'S HANDS, AND GIVEN TO HIM. (Rev. 1:18.) Death therefore is now the servant of Christ; who, as here stated, "HATH PUT ALL THINGS UNDER HIS FEET." That He has done so is clear: because, if He, having life in Himself, can abolish death at any moment He pleases, and yet for the present refuses to do so; thereby leaving death to desolate all things on earth; He is to be viewed virtually, though negatively it is true, as having put all under the enemy's feet. And what, we ask, is His object in this? It is that He may prove Himself in the end to be the mighty Destroyer of death; and that, as shown in the above passage, in two different ways, and DI two different periods: FIRST, when He raises and changes His saints (1 Cor. 15:51; 1 Thess. 4:16,17);
SECONDLY, when, after having, by means of death, avenged Himself on His enemies (Rev. 20:7-9), He raises the wicked (Rev. 20:13), that is, in the first place, at the resurrection of life, and next at the resurrection of judgment; a thousand years intervening between them (John 5:25): one being an act of grace, the other of power, on His part. As to the latter, observe, this is the precursor to death in another and a more terrible form; namely "the second death," the doom of the wicked in the lake of fire forever. (Rev. 20:12-15.)
As to the millennial saints upon earth; they, being sustained in life by the Son, though in natural mortal bodies, never will die. At the end however, the thousand years having expired, they, like the living saints in 1 Thess. 4:15, will be changed. In common with the rest of creation, they will be made new (see Rev. 21:5), clothed with immortal spiritual bodies. In this way it is that in their case Christ will SWALLOW UP DEATH IN VICTORY-will put an end to mortality. (See Isa. 25:8; Rev. 21:4.)
The reader, we believe, will allow the above statement to be abstractedly true: but whether it is the interpretation of the passage, is the question. All that we plead for is, a careful impartial examination of the latter, in order to ascertain what it really means. We, for our part, do not believe a verbal coincidence between two texts, as in the case of Psa. 8:6 and 1 Cor. 15:27, to be of itself alone a sufficient warrant for the interpretation of any passage whatever. We maintain that the whole scope thereof ought to be duly considered before we come to any conclusion upon it.
As to the expression "put all things under his feet," this surely is capable of being applied in two ways, and to different persons; to the Father and the Son, as in Psa. 8:6; and also to the Son and death, as above in 1 Cor. 15:27. In Rom. 5:21 we find an analogous case. There we read of sin reigning on the one hand; of grace, the direct contrast thereto, reigning on the other; the verb REIGN being used in altogether two different connections. The ordinary view of the passage, if we adopt it, we confess, leaves us under the painful impression that the following statement is merely a truism: "But when he saith all things are put under him, it is manifest that he is excepted which did put all things under him." Who, we ask, needs to be told that the Father is not to take a lower place than the Son? Who expects that under any circumstances God will identify Himself with His own creation—with that which is to be put under Christ's feet—in the way in which the ordinary view of this passage supposes? Surely the fact of the Son of man receiving the kingdom at the hand of the Father, from whom all power emanates, is so utterly inconsistent with the idea of the latter becoming subordinate to the former, that we need not be reminded that such a thing never will be. Whereas, as a plea for our view of the passage, we maintain that Satan having in some cases taken advantage of the truth of Christ's perfect humanity in order to bring in false doctrine as to His person, we do need to be reminded that though He is the Son of man in the full sense of the term, He ever was and ever will be entirely free from all taint of mortality; that HE is not to be put under the feet of the last enemy, Death. The Lord died, it is true; but it was in grace, to make atonement for sin. He laid down His life of Himself; and in the same way He took it again (John 10:17,18); each of these being an act of omnipotence, which He, the God-Man, alone could perform. And not only so; but, having risen again from the dead, never again to be made sin for His people; and having, as we have seen, the keys of hades and of death; He, the mighty conqueror of him who once had the power of death, never can die: He is "alive for evermore." (Rev. 1:18.)