David Brown
How precious is the view given of “death” in this passage, as the Saviour’s “last enemy” – the last enemy of that mediatorial crown which He now wears, as the Redeemer of His people from the whole ruins of the fall! He sits on His own throne, “a Lamb as it had been slain” – taken up to it fresh from the cross and placed upon it in high testimony of Jehovah’s complacency in His work. In this character, and vested with this authority and power, will He destroy death, that last enemy of His gracious sway.
Virtually, indeed, it has been done already – on the field of law, though not of fact. “Through death He destroyed him that had the power of death, that is the devil” (Heb 2:14). “He spoiled principalities and powers, and made a show of them openly, triumphing over them in” His cross (Col 2:15). There He “abolished” or “destroyed death” (2 Tim 1:10). A legal basis had to be obtained for the actual destruction of so righteous a penalty as death, “the wages of sin”. In the righteousness of that penalty, Satan was strong. On that field, but for Christ’s death, he was invincible. In this sense “the accuser of the brethren” had the power of death – power to insist on its infliction, on the same eternal principles of the divine government by which himself was ruined as a sinner; power to see it invested, in its approaches with unmixed terrors to men, with a “fearful looking for of judgement and fiery indignation, which shall devour the adversaries”; power to have a hand in mixing “the cup of trembling” to the dying sinner. Yes, “the sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law”; nor could the Son of God Himself override these awful securities for the execution of vengeance.
But He could draw off that vengeance, by placing Himself under it as Jehovah’s substitutionary victim; and this He did – “through death” not actually abolishing death, but obtaining a legal title to abolish it from the Throne. He met the enemy on His own chosen field, that proud arena where “was the hiding of His power”. And having “taken from him all his armour wherein he trusted”, He has gone up to “divide His spoils” (Luke 11:21,22; compare Is 53:12). And the distribution is going gloriously on. The sweet sense of pardon and reconciliation – the envy of Satan – is one of the spoils He divides. Superiority to the “sin that dwelleth in us” is another of the spoils left on the field of battle. Falling into the Redeemer’s hands, He divides it to His people.
But the death of death is reserved for the last. Already death is unstinged,
1Taken, slightly edited, from Brown’s useful volume, Christ’s Second Coming. The author is at this point commenting on 1 Corinthians 15:24-26.
so that, though he tears asunder soul and body, leaving what Christ redeemed a lifeless carcase, in this he is no longer Satan’s but Christ’s servant, who “to this end, both died and rose and revived, that He might be Lord both of the dead and living” (Rom 14:9). As such, He “hath the keys of hell and of death” (Rev 1:18). Still the enemy lives. While his victims lie rotting in the grave, he is not “abolished”, “destroyed”, “put under His feet”. But it must, and it shall, come to that. The Redeemer “expects” that what He accomplished sacrificially on the field of law shall be made good royally in the region of fact. The prey shall be taken from the terrible, and the lawful captive delivered. And thus, in the most absolute and comprehensive sense, “He shall see of the travail of His soul and be satisfied”.