SCRIPTURE has many ways of describing the conversion of a sinner to God. It is a translation from darkness to light; from the kingdom of Satan into the kingdom of God’s dear Son; it is a new creation, whereby old things pass away and all things become new. In our text it is a passing from death unto life; surely a most instructive description of a remarkable experience. In the natural order of things we are familiar enough with the passing from life to death. The wages of sin is death, and death has passed upon all men, for that all have sinned. Indeed the word ‘passing’ is often used to describe death, as in “so-and-so has passed away,” or “so-and-so had a peaceful passing.” But in our text the natural and sinful order of things is completely reversed, and the same word is used to describe a spiritual and gracious order of things; for to pass from death to life is an experience altogether above nature; an experience eminently spiritual and gracious. To pass from life to death is sooner or later the common lot of all men; to pass from death to life is the privilege of few; how few they are to-day who have passed this way! This is the work of a creative power altogether of God.
The natural man is dead in trespasses and sins—dead especially to God and all that pertains to the kingdom of God. Death admits of no degrees, and when Scripture describes man’s state by nature as a being dead, it means that, spiritually, he is absolutely and completely so. Many, however, refuse to admit the total depravity and spiritual helplessness of the natural man. We are told that there is a divine spark somewhere in all men which only requires a helpful environment, and a little patience and encouragement to develop into something wonderful. Others again tell us that there is an evolutionary process going on, not only in the natural world, but also in the moral and spiritual worlds, and by it men are assured of realising heaven upon earth at some remotely future period. By means of these and similar assertions, unbelieving men would fain pass from death to life by the simple expedient of refusing to admit that they are dead in very deed. Proud man even in his sin and shame will neither bow to the authority of God’s Word, nor yet to the plainest facts of history. In his endeavour to avoid the humiliating admission of his own utter lostness he will turn this way and that like a fish on the hook, until either the Holy Spirit convinces him of it in mercy, or he is compelled to admit it in judgment. In Genesis iii. 24, we read, “So he drove out the man, and he placed at the east end of the Garden of Eden cherubim, and a flaming sword which turned every way to keep the way of the tree of life.” In the face of this solemn word, how pitifully vain are all such human efforts to bridge the gulf between death and life.
But here Christ assures us that some have passed from death to life. Over against man’s death in sin, the Gospel of the grace of God holds out the promise of life; such life as is not only a triumph over death and the sin which occasions death, but such life as holds a more abundant restoration of all that sin took away; peace, love, joy, hope, purity and fellowship more abundant. It is life everlasting over which death shall never more triumph. It is a life of grace and blessedness derived immediately from God through our Lord Jesus Christ, and maintained in the infinite power and love of God.
Here then we have, on the one hand, man’s death, and in the other, life that shall never end. But how are we to pass from one to the other? That is the solemn question which in some form or other and at some time or other every one who would pass from death to life must face. The answer is, of course, in one word, Christ—”I am the way,” the divinely appointed way unto the Father, the only possible way for—”no man cometh unto the Father but by me.”
It might be helpful to some if we think of this way as a bridge spanning a river, say the Forth Bridge, uniting the north and south banks of the Forth. The main strength of the whole structure consists in its being built up on piers bedded in the solid rock at the bottom of the river. From these the vast steel framework extends across in each direction and upwards into an immense and complicated structure of steel girders, bolted, riveted and cemented into one solid mass of incalculable strength, easily able to carry the heavily loaded trains far out of reach of the water below.
As the bridge spans the river, so does Christ in His obedience, death and resurrection span the deep abyss between our death in sin and our life in God. As the strength of the bridge consists mainly in its being built up on piers sunk into the bed-rock at the bottom of the river, so is the way of everlasting life upheld by righteousness firmly embedded in, and rising out of the solid rock of eternal justice, so that God is just and the justifier of him that believeth in Jesus. It is easy now to cross the river, but let us think of the years of thought and sweat and toil and devotion to which the massive structure is a lasting memorial. When enlightened and enabled by the Holy Spirit, nothing is so easy as an obedient response to the Gospel call—”Come,” “Believe,” etc. Nothing so utterly simple. But, oh, let us think of Gethsemane, and its mysterious sweat of blood, and its crying and tears. There was nothing easy there; let us think of the Cross, with its agonising cry, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” and the 69th Psalm, “Save me, O God; for the waters are come in unto my soul. I sink in deep mire, where there is no standing; I am come into deep waters, where the floods overflow me.” Here surely are thought, toil, sweat, devotion and love unparalleled. We can only stand afar off and look with reverent and humble amazement.
But life rises out of His death, for on the third day He rose again. It is not possible that He should be holden of death; the glory of His Person as the God-man makes it impossible. And the claims of eternal justice make it impossible. The same justice which claimed and obtained infinite satisfaction in the blood of the Redeemer, now, being satisfied, requires the life of Him that died; and so He who was dead is alive for evermore. The life He, as the surety substitute of His people, died to procure, He now lives to bestow, and “He is able to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them.”
This is the way then which the Gospel brings to our very feet and invites us to enter upon. But here again we are faced with a serious question. A way there may be, straight, strong and clearly defined; but how can one that is dead avail himself of it? How many “shall seek to enter in and shall not be able, because strait is the gate and narrow is the way that leads to life, and few there be that find it?” How many sit for years, it may be, under the Gospel preached in scriptural purity, and in all that time never pass from death to life, and finally (how solemn the thought!) pass out into the midnight of everlasting death? A sad and convincing proof, this, if proof were needed, of that death to the uttermost which holds men in its awful grip. “Ye will not come unto me that ye might have life.”
What then, shall all men perish even at the very gates of life? Shall the Gospel only mock them in their death by holding out a promise of life they can never avail themselves of? Nay, verily, it were blasphemy to charge God with such mockery. Shall the impotent man spoken of at the beginning of this chapter perish even while he waits for the moving of the waters? Let the narrative speak. “Rise, take up thy bed and walk.” For 38 years this man, bound by his own helplessness, has not risen, and now shall he arise at a word? Immediately the man was made whole and he arose. Surely never man spake like this man. “Rise”—a word not to mock his helplessness and to accentuate his infirmity, but to heal and restore; a word of divine and gracious power even as He who spoke it is divine and infinitely gracious. A word this is also of enabling power—power to will and to do what itself requires; “Rise,” and the man in the very effort to obey actually rose, and was himself the subject of a miracle. I suppose no one was so astonished as the man himself at the success of his effort. But, oh, happy astonishment! All praise, honour and glory to the One who spoke as never man spoke.
How sadly different is the ready obedience of this man to the response of many to the Gospel! Many there are who sit under the Gospel call, and their only response is, “I cannot come, I cannot believe”; a solemn enough truth, certainly. But (and herein is the evil of their attitude) instead of including their inability in the many other sinful and evil things which condemn themselves, and which call loudly for repentance, they make of it a bed whereon to stretch themselves, and to relieve themselves of all responsibility in the matter. A bed this which has carried its tens of thousands to a Christless grave, and even “their death of bands is free.”
Let us remember that in the case of this impotent man, we have more than his infirmity to take into account. We must take into account One whose word is the word of a King, unto whom all power in heaven and earth is given. One, moreover, who has forever united His own presence to the ministry of the Gospel by an inseparable bond in that great promise, “Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.” Let us never forget that of Him who says, “Come unto, Look unto me,” etc. This is true, “As the Father raiseth up the dead, and quickeneth them; even so the Son quickeneth whom He will.” At the breathing of His life-giving Spirit upon them, they “who were dead in trespasses and sins, he hath quickened,” and almost before they are aware they are passed from death unto life. The evidence of their being alive is in the fact of their believing, coming, looking for the saving of their souls, for, “He that heareth my word, and believeth in him that sent me, hath everlasting life and shall not come unto condemnation, but is passed from death unto life.” In this they “work out their own salvation with fear and trembling, because it is God that worketh in them to will and to do of his good pleasure.” In their very effort to obey the Gospel call, they find themselves graciously, humbly, and willingly enabled “to embrace Jesus Christ as he is freely offered in the Gospel,” and he is thus “made of God unto them wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification and redemption; that, according as it is written, He that glorieth let him glory in the Lord.” Oh, blessed people who are in such a case as this.