MARCH 4TH, 1930
MARCH 4TH, 1930
[p. 183] BELOVED BROTHER, — The question raised in connection with 2 Corinthians 5 has come up a good many times. The contrast before the mind of the apostle is between the things that are seen and those which are not seen. The earthly tabernacle house is not eternal, but there is a house of eternal character. When living believers are changed, or dead ones raised, they will have a house divinely suited to heaven and to eternal conditions. It will be that kind of bodily condition which is now in heaven in the Person of our Lord Jesus Christ, so that it can be spoken of as “out of heaven”. It will be wholly of new creation kind. 1 Corinthians 15 is quite in keeping with this, because it says as to resurrection of the dead, that it will be raised in incorruptibility, glory, power, a spiritual body. But resurrection supposes that persons have been buried. It applies to those who, as the Lord said, “are in the tombs”. A person is so identified with his body that his body is spoken of as being himself. “Pious men buried Stephen”, and as to the Lord He was buried, and the angel said, “Come see the place where the Lord lay”. The patriarch David has been buried, as Peter said, but he has not yet been raised; he is still in his grave. All living for God, such as Abraham, Isaac and Jacob do, involves that they are so identified with their bodies as to make resurrection a divine necessity. I do not see how one could speak of a “purely spiritual” part being raised. The “purely spiritual” part is surely not in the grave, but with the Lord. But all that was spiritual in saints has been identified with their bodies, so much so that they can be regarded, and are regarded in Scripture, as being in their graves. Resurrection is relative to what was buried, and not exactly to what comes out of heaven. It is the taking out by divine power from the domain of death of those who have died and been buried. All the force of resurrection is lost if this is not seen. Resurrection, as I understand it, is relative to all that is behind it — the power of death and the grave. Complete victory has been achieved by the Lord having died and risen, and the saints as raised will participate actually in His victory. The house out of heaven has in view rather the whole heavenly scene for which that kind of bodily condition is suited and essential. I think if this distinction is kept in mind it helps in the apprehension of how things are presented in Scripture. Resurrection involves a backward look to where saints have been as in death and the grave. The house out of [p. 184] heaven involves suitability to a future and eternal scene of divine glory, for which God has wrought us. It is true that the two things have a point of contact, but we cannot exactly mix them, or set one against the other, without losing some of the peculiar force and blessedness of each. Each has to be apprehended in the setting where Scripture places it. Does this commend itself as being according to truth?
With much love in the Lord Jesus,
Yours affectionately in Him,
March 4th, 1930.