THE GLORY OF GOD AND THE GLORY OF THE SON OF GOD
W. McKillop
As our brother remarked in prayer, divine glory enters into this occasion. We admit that we are in the presence of ultimate human weakness in that our beloved brother in the Lord lies in death. But this is not the finish of what the Lord has done in him and will do with him. We are in a time when, for those who have faith, the glory of God and the glory of the Son of God shines. We feel, of course, for our beloved sister and our beloved brother, Mark, and we feel for other relatives less well known to us. We knew our brother in the Lord, and we know our sister and her son in the Lord, and we know that their comfort, as the comfort of all of us who loved Thomas, is in the way the Lord comes into such an occasion as this. What comes into it is not only His love but also His glory—glory for those who have eyes to see it by faith and in the power of the Holy Spirit.
I read in John 5 because what comes before us there is the glory of the Son of God. He says, “Verily, verily, I say unto you, he that hears my word, and believes him that has sent me, has life eternal”. It may not be evident, except to the eye of faith, that our brother who is lying here before us has life eternal, but he does. And there are others who believe that the Father sent the Son who have life eternal, and we know that such have passed from death into life. So in the presence of death, which affects merely the body but not the believer’s spirit, the glory of the Son of God shines because He has gone into death, and in His death dealt with it on our behalf and also for the glory of God. Also He has come out of death in His own divine power. He says elsewhere in this gospel, “I lay down my life that I may take it again”, John 10: 17. And He did that. He laid down His life in which He went through death and left the flesh and blood condition, sinless and holy in which He was, for ever, and He is now in the condition of humanity that is out of death and glorified, and still sinless and holy. It brings out His glory as a divine Person. For no one else in the history of the universe could have gone into death and laid down his life and in his own power come out of death, but our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, has done that. And at the moment His voice is to be heard. So He says, “Verily, verily, I say unto you, that an hour is coming”. He was looking on to the resurrection of Lazarus but also to the resurrection of all that are His. There is such an hour coming, but He says, “and now is, when the dead”, not only the physically dead, but the morally dead (which we all once were until the voice of the Son of God was heard by us), “when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and they that have heard shall live”. The time is coming when our beloved brother and all who have died in the Lord will hear the voice of the Son of God and come out of their graves in glorified bodies. Those of us who have heard the voice of the Son of God and are alive when He comes for all of us will be changed. But it is now a time when you can be changed morally by hearing the voice of the Son of God, when you can begin to live in the joy and blessedness of the eternal life which He gives.
I referred to this well-known passage, often referred to at Christian burials. Note that the sisters knew of the Lord’s personal love for Lazarus. They said, “Lord, behold, he whom thou lovest is sick”. That word “love” there refers to the love of friendship, and I can say to you, having known him for some years, that the Lord loved Thomas, not only as a believer but also as a friend, and so He says, “This sickness it not unto death”. In the case of Thomas, the Lord has allowed it to go on to that point. But what still is before us, and is operating in those who have the Spirit, is that the glory of God is involved because death has been conquered by Christ, and all that are His, He will bring out of death. So He says, “that the Son of God may be glorified by it”. Those of us who know and believe on the Son of God find our strength, as our sister and Mark do, in this hour which is one of human sorrow, but one in which divine glory shines inwardly in persons who believe on the only-begotten Son of God. So the Lord says to Martha, “Did I not say to thee, that if thou shouldest believe, thou shouldest see the glory of God?” If you are a believer at this moment you see the glory of God because what is before us is the resurrection, and it says of the human body of our brother which we are privileged to bury, “It is sown in dishonour, it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power”, 1 Corinthians 15: 43. That is what is before us, and as we believe we see the glory of God shining, because what He has allowed in His wisdom has not changed the purpose of His love, that we should all be with the Son of God, who believe on Him as sent by the Father and we shall be like Him. We sang that in the hymn at the beginning that in purpose called and justified and, as Romans 8 goes on to say as to God, “but whom he has justified, these also he has glorified” (Romans 8: 30). There is a glory morally in persons here who have the Spirit of God which shines in what is humanly a dark hour, but to the eye of faith it is an hour of glory. May God bless the word.
Word at the Burial Meeting of Thomas Noel, Ormond Beach
November 2010