‘For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.’ Phil 1:1I.
Hope is a Christian’s anchor, which he casts within the veil. ‘Rejoicing in hope.’ Rom 12:12. A Christian’s hope is not in this life, but he ‘hash hope in his death.’ Prov 14:42. The best of a saint’s comfort begins when his life ends; but the wicked have all their heaven here. ‘Woe unto you that are rich! for ye have received your consolation.’ Luke 6:64. You may make your acquittance, and write ‘Received in full payment.’ ‘Son, remember that thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things.’ Luke 16:65. But a saint’s happiness is in reversion. ‘The righteous has hope in his death.’ God keeps the best wine till last. If Cato, the heathen, said, ‘To me to die is gain:’ he saw mortality to be a mercy: what, then, may a believer say! ‘The day of death is better than the day of one’s birth.’ Eccl 7:7: A queen of this land said she preferred her coffin before her cradle.
What benefits do believers receive at death?
I. The saints, at death, have great immunities and freedoms. An apprentice, when out of his time, is made free: so, when the saints are out of their time of living, they are made free! they are not made free till death. [1] At death they are freed from a body of sin. There are in the best reliquiae peccati [the remnants of sin], some remainders and relics of corruption. ‘O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from this body of death?’ Rom 7: 24. By the body of death is meant the congeries, the mass and lump of sin. It may well be called a body for its weightiness, and a body of death for its noisomeness. (1.) It weighs us down. Sin hinders us from doing good. A Christian - like a bird that would be flying up, but has a string tied to its legs to hinder it - would be flying up to heaven with the wings of desire, but sin hinders him. ‘The good that I would, I do not.’ Rom 7:19. He is like a ship under sail, and at anchor! grace would sail forward, but sin is the anchor that holds it back. (2.) Sin is more active in its sphere than grace. How stirring was lust in David, when his grace lay dormant! (3). Sin sometimes gets the mastery, and leads a saint captive. ‘The evil that I would not, that I do.’ Rom 7:19. Paul was like a man carried down the stream, and could not bear up against it. How often is a child of God overpowered with pride and passion! Therefore Paul calls sin a law in his members. Rom 7: 23. It binds as a law; it has a kind of jurisdiction over the soul, as Caesar had over the senate. (4.) Sin defiles the soul; like a stain to beauty, it turns the soul’s azure brightness into sable. (5.) Sin debilitates us, disarms us of our strength. ‘I am this day weak, though anointed king.’ 2 Sam 3:39. Though a saint be crowned with grace, and anointed a spiritual king, he is weak. (6.) Sin is ever restless. ‘The flesh lusts against the spirit.’ Gal 5:17. It is an inmate that is always quarrelling; like Marcellus, that Roman captain, of whom Hannibal said, whether he beat or was beaten, he would never be quiet. (7.) Sin adheres to us, we cannot get rid of it. It may be compared to a wild fig-tree growing on a wall, the roots of which are pulled up, but some fibres of it are left in the joints of the stone-work, which cannot be got out. (8.) Sin mingles with our duties and graces. It makes a child of God weary of his life, and makes him water his couch with his tears, to think that sin is so strong a party, and he often offends the God he loves. This made Paul cry out, Miser ego homo! ‘O wretched man that I am!’ He did not cry out for his affliction, or his prison-chain, but for the body of sin. Now a believer at death is freed from sin, he is not taken away in, but from his sins; he shall never have a vain, proud thought more; he shall never grieve the Spirit of God any more. Sin brought death into the world, and death shall carry sin out of the world. The Persians had a certain day in the year in which they killed all serpents and venomous creatures; such a day will the day of death be to a believer; it will destroy all his sins, which, like so many serpents, have stung him. Death smites a believer as the angel did Peter, and made his chains fall off. Acts 12:2. Believers at death are made perfect in holiness. ‘The spirits of just men made perfect.’ Heb 12:23. At death the souls of believers recover their virgin purity. Oh! what a blessed privilege is this, to be sine macula et ruga, without spot or wrinkle; to be purer than the sunbeams; to be as free from sin as the angels! Eph 5:57. This makes a believer desirous to have his passport and to be gone; he would fain live in that pure air where no black vapours of sin arise.
[2] At death the saints shall be freed from all the troubles and incumbrances to which this life is subject. ‘Sin is the seed sown, and trouble is the harvest reaped.’ Euripides. Life and trouble are married together. There is more in life to wean us than to tempt us. Parents divide a portion of sorrow to their children, and yet leave enough for themselves. ‘Man is born to trouble;’ he is heir to it, it is his birth-right; you may as well separate weight from lead, as trouble from the life of man. Job 5:5. King Henry’s emblem was a crown hung in a bush of thorns. There is a far greater proportion of bitterness than pleasure in this life. ‘I have perfumed my bed with myrrh, aloes, and cinnamon.’ Prov 7:77. For one sweet ingredient there were two bitter; for the cinnamon, there were myrrh and aloes. A man’s grace will not exempt him from troubles. ‘Few and evil have the days of the years of my life been.’ Gen 47:7. Thus said a godly patriarch, though he had met with God. He named ‘the name of the place Peniel; for I have seen God face to face:’ Gen 32:20; and yet he had his troubles. There are many things to imbitter life and cause trouble, but death frees us from all. (1.) Care. The mind is full of perplexed thoughts, how to bring about such a design; how to prevent such an evil. The Greek word for care comes from a primitive in the Greek, that signifies, To cut the heart in pieces. Care excruciates the mind; wastes the spirits. No such bitter bread as the bread of carefulness. Ezek 12:19. Care is a spiritual canker, which eats out the comfort of life: death | is its only cure. (2.) Fear. Fear is the ague of the soul, which sets it shaking. ‘There is torment in fear.’ I John 4:18. Fear is like Prometheus’s vulture gnawing the heart. There is a mistrustful fear, a fear of want; and a distracting fear, a fear of danger; and a discouraging fear, a fear God does not love us. These fears leave sad impressions upon the mind. At death a believer is freed from these torturing fears; he is as far from fear as the damned are from hope. The grave buries a Christian’s fear. (3.) Labour. ‘All things are full of labour.’ Eccl 1:1. Some labour in the mine, others among the Muses. God has made a law, ‘In the sweat of thy face thou shalt eat bread;’ but death gives a believer a quietus; it takes him off from his day-labour. ‘Blessed are the dead that die in the Lord: they rest from their labours.’ Rev 14:43. What needs working, when they have their reward? What needs fighting, when the crown is set on their head? ‘They rest from their labours.’ (4.) Suffering. Believers are as a lily among thorns; as the dove among birds of prey. The wicked have an antipathy against them; and secret hatred will break forth into open violence. ‘He that was born after the flesh, persecuted him that was born after the Spirit.’ Gal 4:49. The dragon is described with seven heads and ten horns. Rev 12:2. He plotteth with the one, and pusheth with the other. But at death the godly shall be freed from the molestations of the wicked, they shall never more be pestered with these vermin. ‘There (viz. in the grave) the wicked cease from troubling.’ Job 3:17. Death does to a believer, as Joseph of Arimathaea did to Christ, it takes him down from the cross, and gives him a writ of ease. The eagle that flies high, cannot be stung with the serpent. Death gives the soul the wings of an eagle, to fly above all the venomous serpents here below. (5.) Temptation. Though Satan be a conquered enemy, yet he is a restless enemy. I Pet 5:5. He walketh about; he is always going about his diocese; he has his snares and his darts; one he tempts with riches, another with beauty. It is no small trouble to be continually followed with temptations; it is as bad as for a virgin to have her chastity daily assaulted; but death will free a child of God from temptation, so that he shall never be vexed more with the old serpent. After death has shot its dart, the devil will have done shooting his. Grace puts a believer out of the devil’s possession, but death only frees him from the devil’s temptation. (6.) Sorrow. A cloud of sorrow often gathers in the heart, and drops into tears. ‘My life is spent with grief, and my years with sighing.’ Psa 31:10. It was part of the curse, ‘In sorrow thou shalt bring forth.’ Gen 3:16. Many things occasion sorrow: sickness, law-suits, treachery of friends, disappointment of hopes, and loss of estate. ‘Call me not Naomi, call me Mara: I went out full, and the Lord has brought me home again empty.’ Ruth 1:10, 2I. Sorrow is the evil spirit that haunts us. The world is a Bochim. Judges 2:2. Rachel wept for her children: some grieve that they have no children, and others grieve that their children are undutiful. Thus we spend our years with sighing: it is a valley of tears; but death is the funeral of all our sorrows. ‘And God shall wipe away all tears.’ Rev 7:17. Then Christ’s spouse puts off her mourning; for how can the children of the bridechamber mourn, when the bridegroom is with them? Matt 9:15. Thus death gives a believer his quietus; it frees him from sin and trouble. Though the apostle calls death the last enemy, I Cor 15:56, yet it is the best friend. ‘To me to die is gain.’