Death is the solemn consequence of sin. Mankind was not created mortal; yet Adam was warned against eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, because death would be the result: “In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die” (Gen 2:17). Adam and Eve did eat the fruit of that tree; it was an act of rebellion. And, according to God’s threatening, they became mortal from that moment; so they had to recognise that they had “no continuing city” (Heb 13:14) in this world. They did not die immediately, but it was certain that a time would come when they would have to leave this world.
So it is with every one of us, for in this fallen world “it is appointed unto men once to die” (Heb 9:27); none of us has a continuing city here. Probably no one would argue with the certainty of death; it is so obvious that everyone dies, sooner or later. Yet we need to apply this to ourselves and say, I must die. And we ought to add, Although I do not know when it will happen, it is utterly unreasonable for me, as well as for everyone else, to presume that death is far away – especially at a time when so many have been swept away into eternity through the Covid-19 pandemic.
A S Patterson, a nineteenth-century minister in Glasgow, expands on the thought of Hebrews 13:14: “The wealthiest, strongest, finest, noblest of the towns and commonwealths of earth are but things of time. And men themselves are frailest and more fleeting still. How urgent and important to sit loose to earthly homes and all terrestrial things, and to aim at the loftier dwelling and a nobler prize! How poor is he who has but an earthly city for his home and but an earthly treasure for his portion! How rich and happy he whose soul shall soon possess – and even now by Christian hope anticipates – the city that shall never pass away.”^1^
Jesus vividly described the folly of assuming that death is far away when He spoke of the farmer who had a remarkable harvest and imagined the new barns he would erect to hold the abundance of food. The man was wise not to waste the food that God had provided in His kind providence, but he was utterly unwise in his attitude to the future. He told himself: “I will say to my soul, Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years; take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry” (Lk 12:19). No doubt he did have enough food to last him for many years, but he had no guarantee that he would live for any of these years. So, when God spoke to him, He called the man a fool; it was altogether senseless for the man to think as he did. God told him: “This night thy soul shall be required of thee”. He was rich in the things of this world but, Christ said, he was “not rich toward God”.
We must die; it is God who has made the appointment, which makes it absolutely certain; we cannot avoid keeping it. But He has not told us when it will be. So it is surely wise to seek to be ready. Israel was told: “Prepare to meet thy God” (Amos 4:12), and that direction is just as relevant to each of us today. We are directed to prepare to meet God. How foolish to focus solely on eating and drinking and other necessary things of this life!
We do need them; but other things are even more important, which is why the Saviour counselled, “Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness” (Mt 6:33). We are to seek them above everything else; they are of the first importance. Unless we enter God’s kingdom in this life and have Christ’s righteousness made over to us, we can never enter heaven, the city that will last for ever. The rich fool was looking forward to being merry in this life, a dangerous distraction from earnestly seeking a place in God’s kingdom and pleading to be accounted righteous in His sight – not through his own good works, but only for the sake of Christ’s finished work on earth, to which He came as the Substitute for sinners.
There is indeed a city that will continue for ever; it is described in Scripture as “the heavenly Jerusalem” (Heb 12:22). The Jerusalem on earth was the place of worship in Old Testament times; there “the tribes of the Lord” went up “to give thanks unto the name of the Lord” (Ps 122:4). It was a type of the heavenly Jerusalem, where the worship will be perfect and will continue for ever. And the people of the Lord, gathering in the eternal city from all parts of the world, will never cease to give thanks to Him for all the wonders of grace, particularly for the perfect work of Christ, who came into this world to work out redemption for sinners. But His work continues: He is the King on the throne of glory, who exerts His authority – through the Holy Spirit applying the Word – on each one who will be brought to the heavenly Jerusalem. The Spirit makes them willing to seek the kingdom of God and His righteousness above everything else that is to be found here. And the spiritual blessings that Christ bestows will continue when the earth and everything in it are consumed with fire.
Abraham was one of those who were made willing to seek an eternal city, one which is described as “a city which hath foundations” (Heb 11:10). He and the other patriarchs were not looking for an earthly city; they were content to dwell in tents, which was a sign of the temporary nature of their stay in this world. The city where they are now, and which all other believers will reach, cannot be swept away, for it has “foundations”; it is founded on the eternal purposes of God, which are unchangeable. These purposes are reflected in the covenant of grace, which is “ordered in all things and sure” (2 Sam 23:5), as David described it, for he understood that heaven is a city with foundations. He was looking for the same city as Abraham.
In spite of the sad state of David’s “house” – his family – he could look forward with confidence, even at a time when death was not far away. He could do so because of the security provided by the everlasting covenant. He had been made willing to seek the Lord; he records that the Lord called on him to seek His face – His favour, what David could not earn. But he records also: “My heart said unto Thee, Thy face, Lord, will I seek” (Ps 27:8), for divine grace had made him willing to do so. In the same way, all God’s children are made willing to seek His favour, for the sake of Christ, who opened up a way to the city that will continue eternally. Their sin and guilt would have kept them out of that city permanently, apart from God’s saving power. But the God who made them willing to seek His favour heard their cry for mercy; He forgave them and turned them from their own ways to walk in the way of holiness, which leads to the heavenly Jerusalem.
If we are on the way to the everlasting city, we should be “redeeming the time” (Eph 5:16), which Charles Hodge, in his Commentary on this Epistle explains as seizing “upon every opportunity to do good” – doing all in our power not to waste time, but making the best use of the limited time we have left. And even if we are not on the way to the city which has foundations, we should be seizing every opportunity to obtain good for our soul. In a chapter on redeeming the time, John Angell James speaks of Henry Martyn as someone who was known, while a student in Cambridge University as “the man who never wasted an hour”;^2^ no hour was to be wasted, but it was an opportunity, either to do good to others, or to get good for himself.
“How much of our time is already gone,” James writes further, “and how little may be yet to come! . . . We know not in any one period of our existence but that it may be the last. Surely, surely then we should [make good use of] our time, when we may be holding, for all we know, the last portion of it in our hands. With the absolute certainty of a life as long as Methuselah’s, not an hour should be wasted.” This is particularly so, he emphasises, when we do not know that another day is guaranteed to us.
James goes on to ask, “What are the purposes for which time should be redeemed?” And he answers, “For the salvation of the soul, the business of religion, the preparation for eternity. You are immortal creatures, my children, and must live for ever in torment or in bliss; and certainly you cannot be forming a right estimate of the value of time, nor be rightly employing it, if your souls are forgotten, salvation neglected, and eternity left out of consideration, ‘for what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?’ . . .
“Our great business in this world is to prepare for the next; time is capital given us to trade with for eternity; and that man who goes off the stage of life, without having attended supremely to the great business of religion, will appear . . . an object of amazement for his unparalleled folly in wasting his hours upon matters which, compared with eternal happiness, were utterly insignificant.” James acknowledges that we must spend time on such other matters as earning our daily bread, but insists that time is to be redeemed from “sloth”, “unprofitable reading”, “worldly amusements”, “trifling conversation and gossip” and “not only . . . absolute idleness . . . but a slow and sauntering habit of doing anything”. And if he was alive today, one could well imagine him adding several other means of spending time which are the result of more recent technology but are largely unprofitable, especially if compared with preparing to spend eternity in the city which has foundations.
James brings the chapter on redeeming the time to a conclusion with renewed emphasis on what really matters: “Religion is a right disposition of mind towards the great and blessed God; and such a disposition, besides the more solemn seasons of public and private prayer, will diffuse its influence over the whole of a man’s life and fill the [spaces] which are left between the most continuous engagements with ejaculatory petitions to heaven, the aspirations of a soul panting after God, and the anticipations of a renewed mind looking towards eternity. Remember then above all things that time was given you to repent of sin, to pray for pardon, to believe in Christ, to work out your salvation, to lay up treasures in heaven, to prepare for the solemnities of judgement and secure that happiness which is not measured by the revolution of years but is, in the strictest sense of the word, eternal.”^3^
We still have that opportunity to prepare for the continuing city; let us seek grace to do so earnestly and flee to Christ for safety. And if we have set out on the narrow way that leads to that city, let us go on, through whatever is left of our lives in this world, consistently “looking unto Jesus”.
^1^A S Patterson, Commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews, Edinburgh, 1856, p 549.
^2^J A James, The Christian Father’s Present to His Children, London, 1863, p 240. James was a nineteenth-century minister in Birmingham and a prolific author. Martyn became a missionary and Bible translator in India and in Persia, now Iran.
^3^James, The Christian Father’s Present, pp 243-251.