THEREFORE, we may note, the statement of the Lord Jesus is the strongest the language He employed could afford: and where is the tongue more admirably accurate than the Greek? and by whom is it wielded with such precision as by the writers of the New Testament? The Lord's words here recorded show that it is decided forever between the believer and the unbeliever. The truth is, that for man all turns upon Christ. Do I make light of Him? Then I give the lie to the testimony of God. I insult the grace and truth which came by Jesus Christ, and prove myself to be at war with God. This I cannot do, save to my eternal judgment: “He that believeth not is judged (κέκριται) already, because he hath not believed on the name of the only begotten Son of God;... shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him” (John 3:18, 3618He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. (John 3:18)
36He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him. (John 3:36)). If I receive Him by faith, I have eternal life in Him on the warrant of the living word of God: “He that heareth my word and believeth him that sent me hath everlasting life, and cometh not into judgment” (κρίσιν). It is a verbal noun formed from, and alluding to, the same word that was rightly translated “judge” in verse 22. It is essential to the context that the same sense should be preserved intact throughout. Weigh what comes afterward: “Verily, verily, I say unto you, The hour is coming and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and they that hear shall live.” Manifestly we have life again as the effect of hearing His voice—and this, too, going on now. The dead, the spiritually dead, are being awakened to hear the voice of the Lord Jesus Christ, then heard when the great salvation began to be spoken by Him, but still continued “by them that have preached the gospel unto you by the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven.” And they that hear shall live—as He said. Such is the declared effect: He that believes “hath everlasting life:” “For as the Father hath life in himself, so hath he given to the Son to have life in himself.” The reason why the Father is said to give this to the Son is, I apprehend, because Christ the Son so completely takes the place here of a sent One in humanity upon the earth, though even He does not so speak till He had betrayed, as it were, His own intrinsic glory, as One personally entitled to quicken whom He would. Here, however, true to the place He had been pleased to accept, as man in subjection to God the Father, whose glory He upheld above all things, He only speaks of the Father as having given to the Son to have life in Himself. It is part of His perfection as man, that He did not claim as a present thing all or any of the rights attached to His essential dignity, but that He entered fully into the humiliation by which alone God could be retrieved in His moral glory here below, by which alone the counsels of grace to the lost could be made holily efficacious.
Hence the Lord says that the Father hath “given to the Son to have life in himself, and hath given him authority to execute judgment also, because he is the Son of man.” Life is in Him; He also is the appointed Judge. Then we have the final result: “Marvel not at this; for the hour is coming in the which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice, and shall come forth.” Here it is an hour, not “that now is,” but wholly future; and it is no question of faith called for, or unbelief proved, but “all that are in the graves shall hear his voice.”
Before, the only part expressly treated was the believer with his blessing; dead indeed as to his state by nature, but quickened by hearing the voice of the Son of God. It was an individual personal thing for the soul; but when we come to this future hearing of His voice, there is no question of faith any longer. It is the mighty power of the Son of God that is put forth absolutely and universally. Therefore, “all that are in their graves,” it is said, “shall hear his voice, and shall come forth.” Does this mean all at the same moment, so that they all form a common class? Not only is there no such doctrine anywhere else in the Bible, but this passage, rightly understood, excludes it. Popular as it may be, the idea of a general resurrection is wholly without foundation—nay, contrary to all Scripture. No doubt two or three passages in the word of God have been construed to speak of an indiscriminate rising from the dead, and none more commonly or more constantly than the verses before us. Yet it is not merely a mistake as to the force of the text, but a fundamental error, which will be found to obscure and weaken salvation by grace; for it confounds the ways of God, and blots out that present difference which it is God's manifest desire to render specially distinct now to faith, as it will be by and by in fact, when confusion is no longer possible.
They were not, then, to wonder that even now dead souls receive life in hearing Christ; for a more manifest wonder was coming when the voice of the Son of God sounds forth in a day that is future. Then, “all that are in the graves,” (that is, not the dead morally, but all literally dead,) “shall hear His voice, and shall come forth.” These are thereon not viewed as a common category, which as lying in the graves they were, but are by resurrection divided into two distinct classes— “They, that have done good unto the resurrection of life, and they that have done evil unto the resurrection of [not 'damnation,' but] judgment” —the very same word throughout. It cannot be denied. It is in vain for learned or unlearned to attempt glosses, clever or clumsy, over the expression. The word of God is too strong for man to bend it. No doubt, the truth is too bright for those that uphold the error of the A.V. in this particular case. This or other reasons may have influenced the English translators from Tyndale: the motive I do not pretend to judge; but the fact is plain. And I affirm that “condemnation” or “damnation” is a wrong rendering of κρίσις, for which there is no tenable ground. The verb means, and is rightly translated, “judge” (verses 22-30); the substantive means, “judgment,” or “the act of judging,” and should have been so translated throughout, as is now done by the Revisers of 1881. (Vers. 22, 24, 27, 29, 30).
But this makes the distinction of the two classes that are raised from their graves manifest and complete. As to the first, they are those that have practiced good (for they are no longer characterized as believers only); it is a life-resurrection. As bowing to Christ in this world, they had life in Him, the Son; their resurrection is simply the consummation of the life. For the body will be quickened as well as the soul. It is Christ, as the Son of God, who gave them life through faith, even now and in this world; it is Christ who will shortly call them out of their graves; and the power of the life they possessed in Him will be then manifest forever.
As to unbelievers, they contemned the Son of God. They saw not His glory; they felt not His grace. They consequently lived, or rather they lay, in unremoved death, moral or spiritual death before God. They had no life even while they lived, because they had not the Son of God; and the consequence is that they, summoned from their graves, know not a resurrection of life according to the mold of Christ's own, but simply rise to be judged. They come forth in due time (solemn thought!) that they may be compelled in judgment to honor that Son whom here they spurned to their own everlasting shame and ruin—to honor Him who, when they were alive, met them with gracious words of life, had they but hearkened to His voice of quickening grace. But, alas! He was definitively rejected. They had done nothing but evil or worthless things here; they are called up by Christ's power. It is a judgment-resurrection.
Thus, beyond all controversy, there remains the patent fact that we have two resurrections distinguished here by their character—resurrections, not merely separated by time (which is stated expressly elsewhere, but after all it is quite a subordinate question), but in their own nature and issues as different as can possibly be. A difference of character is a far more important feature than a difference in point of time. For my own part, so far from thinking so much of the long space between them, I believe that were it but a minute which separated the resurrection of life and the resurrection of judgment, the eternal and essential features would remain; that the one is a resurrection of life which is given by the grace of God in His Son, and always distinguishes those who have received Him here; the other is a resurrection of judgment for those who would not have Him in this world, but are finally compelled by divine power, when His voice is heard in glory, to honor the Son even as the Father.
W.K.
(Concluded).