IN the valley of the shadow of death the great highway, on which people walk, divides itself, and continues on one side upward unto eternal life, and on the other with a declining path downward into eternal death.
Who, in the valley of death at this fork of the road, will be permitted to take the upward way to the Father-house, and who on the other hand will be forced to take the hollow way into the depth, is then no longer a matter of human choice.
This depends on how he fell asleep or expired. We like to defer this dreadful moment of final dying as far as possible. Back of the dying which we witness. When the body loses its blood-warmth, and thus the separation between soul and body by God is completed. And this can only come to pass after what we call the last breath. Even in that last of last moments almightiness of grace can yet do, what we know not. Only when dying, which is not at once, is ended, not merely to our eye and ear, but also to the eye and ear of the Almighty, is the tree felled, the last fiber cut, and the state and condition which shall be eternal enters in.
And as it is then, it remains. And then discloses itself the way that leads upward to him who is fallen asleep in Jesus, and opens itself the dark pathway to the depth, to him who then does not belong to Jesus.
On Jesus it depends.
The world may have reviled Jesus, cursed and in the bitter death of the Cross have shaken Him off from itself, and that selfsame world may still continue to disparage Jesus and contest His dominion, yet every one shall once perceive, that his lot, too, for eternity hangs on Jesus.
Jesus is the only begotten of the Father, God’s own, dear Son.
And therefore he who does not kiss that Son, goes in against God, and opposes Him even in that innermost and tenderest of the love wherewith the Father loves that only begotten Son.
He who belongs to that Son, him the Father bids welcome in the Father-house. For him who has no part in that Son, there is no part in the inheritance in the Kingdom of heaven.
It depends on Jesus.
Not by manner of speech, as though in the valley of death Jesus standing at the fork of the road, would give, as it might please Him, this one free passage, and turn the other back.
It depends, whether at that moment it is evident, that you belong with Jesus, have a part in Jesus, are of Jesus, and are incorporated in Him.
And this is what Scripture calls: Fallen asleep in Jesus (1 Thess. 4, 14, Rev. Version).
In Jesus.
Do not confuse the deep sense of this mystical expression.
Here you must not think of Jesus’ person. Here is mention of His mystical body. He who as member has been incorporated in the body of Jesus, is in Jesus.
But this body is not the body of flesh and blood, which in His human nature He took from Mary. That material body is now glorified, and like unto that glorified body the material body of the blessed shall once be. Jesus a glorified body, and you a glorified body.
No, here is mention of the mystical body of the Lord. Even as we still speak metaphorically of the “body” of the State, of the “body” of people, of the “body” of an association or institution. Body in Latin is corpus, from which comes our word corporation, and in its board of directors such a corporation has a head, and under this board of directors the corporation has members.
So says Scripture, with Jesus also belongs a body, and that body is the Church.
Insofar therefore there is nothing mystical in it. As there are all sorts of associations of people in the world, and every one knows a “body,” with a “head” and with “members,” so it is also here. There is one communion of all re-born sinners, and that communion also forms one body, and that body also has a head in Christ, and of that body all the re-born are members.
No, the mystical of this Body is, that Scripture says: Christ is “the head of the Church, which is his body, and the fullness (fulfilment) of him that filleth all in all” (Eph. 1, 23).
That “fulfilment” is called in Scripture: the pleroma. So the pleroma of the sun is the whole sphere in which his beams shine forth. The light is not merely the flame, but also the whole sphere of radiancy which the flame creates around itself, everything that makes the flame visible, the fullness of its brightness.
And so it is here. Jesus also is not confined and limited to His person, but there shines out from Him a sphere of love, light and life. That outshining is not merely a brightness, but an outshining that quickens life, that makes life to unfold, that causes life to develop itself, life with its blossom and fruit. And this outshining of Jesus, this life-quickening, animating, clarifying outshining of Jesus in people, is not apart from Him, but is Himself. As one can also say, that the sun is in his room, that the sun is in the flower, that by closing of blinds the sun is shut out, so is Jesus Himself in the church, in our heart, in our good works, and every one, that closes the windows of his soul against Jesus, banishes Jesus.
And all this together, wherein Jesus penetrates, shines into and shines out from and cherishingly operates, all this together is the sphere that belongs with Jesus: this is His body; and he who belongs to this, is of Jesus, incorporated in Jesus, he belongs with Him, he is His, he is in Jesus; and he who so dies, is fallen asleep in Jesus.
SO the difference becomes evident.
In the world a corporation forms itself, a body of members, because they join themselves together, and found an association, and make a statute, and appoint an administration at the head. But all this is action of their will. It does not flow forth from their life. They can dissolve such a corporation again, or cease to be member of it, because there is no mysticism of life in it.
With the body of Jesus this is altogether different.
Into that body of Jesus you do not come by an act of your own will, neither by joining it, but by being born in it. You become no member of it by joining, but by that Jesus Himself incorporates you, and incorporates you with your hidden being, with the kernel of your heart, with your inner existence of soul, by causing you spiritually to root therein.
You do not join, but Jesus takes you up therein, as with the outshining of His life, with the cherishing of His love, with the brightness of His light He enters into you, even as the sun enters into the ground, into the plant, into its blossom and fruit.
This is mystical, because you can not trace it in its origin and operation; because although it takes place in you, at first you even have no knowledge of it. Even as you are conceived and born, and so become member of your father’s family, without having anything yourself to do with it, or observing anything of it, so by the Holy Ghost you are begotten and born in this family of Jesus, and this family is His body, and there you are incorporated and made member of, only later on to become aware of it.
Then later on your act of will comes into play, to confess and to show yourself to be member also in the visible church. But this is merely result, and in that visible church there is many a member which is no member of the family above, neither is in the body of Jesus.
That body of Jesus lies back, lies underneath the church, which you see. That mystical body of Jesus is the background and the underground of it, but you as child of God are in it, spiritually, really, with the root of your existence. And as little as the sun is ever outside of his outshining, just so little is Jesus ever thinkable without that body of all His own, for that body is His pleroma, i.e., the fullness (fulfilment) of him that filleth all in all.
AND on this it depends in dying.
Here on earth that body of Jesus is still entangled with the body of the world. The one has not yet been extricated and removed from the other.
But this it comes to in dying. Death separates those two. In the act of falling asleep, everything that belongs to the body of Jesus, goes out pure and entire from the body of this world.
Thus it can not be otherwise. He who at his falling asleep is in Jesus, remains with Him eternally. But he also who, when he falls asleep, is outside of Jesus, can have no part with Him.
The phrase, the confession, the pious word in dying is undoubtedly significant. But you can not depend on it. It might be semblance. And then it amounts to nothing. Only being in Jesus is what decides.
Good works, alms, devotions that lie back of dying, can be marks of incorporation, but they can also be semblance. Though it were, that you had given all your goods to the poor, and had not love, you were nothing. Thus all this is significant only when it is result of Jesus’ work in our heart. But what decides, is and remains solely the fact that you belong to Jesus, not by calculation, but in reality itself, and hence the being in Jesus, the inbeing in His spiritual body.
This is so with the infant, that dies in the cradle, and with a Methuselah who brought more than nine centuries to a close.
If you have perceived, observed, that he whom you lost by death, was in Jesus, then you also know that your dead is fallen asleep in Jesus.
And as regards what God still left you to possess, and as regards your own soul, at the approach of death it always comes down again to this one thing: to flee and to avoid everything that might rob you of, or that might even becloud, the certainty that you are in Jesus. And then also, every morning and every evening to pursue and to reach after that blessed perception of soul, that you are in Jesus, to deepen and at the same time to clarify it to yourself, and to do this so zealously, that, were the Lord to call you this very day, your falling asleep also would be a thankful and jubilant falling asleep in your Savior.
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