Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1303
“Now He that has prepared us for the same thing is God, who also has given unto us the earnest of the Spirit. Therefore we are always confident, knowing that, while we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord, (for we walk by faith, not by sight). We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord. Therefore we labor, that, whether present or absent, we may be accepted of Him. For we must all appear before the Judgment Seat of Christ, that everyone may receive the things done in his body, according to that he has done, whether it is good or bad.” 2 Corinthians 5:5-10.
IT is quite clear that the Apostle did not consider his body to be himself. He speaks of it as being the frail tent or tabernacle in which he dwelt and, again, as the garment with which, for a while, he was clothed. That tent or tabernacle he expected to see dissolved. And that garment he expected to put off. He distinguished between the outward man which would perish and the inward man, which was his true self, which he speaks of as, “renewed day by day.” The Apostle reckoned upon rising here in the body, according to the Divine will, till he had finished the work which was given him to do. And then he expected to put off his mortal flesh and to be an unclothed and disembodied spirit.
Such is the condition, at the present time, of all the saints who have departed. They are well described as “the spirits of just men made perfect.” With the exception of Enoch and Elijah, who carried their bodies with them into the celestial world, all departed Believers are now spirits unclothed of their bodies and wearing only such array as befits spiritual existences. Is it difficult to conceive of them in that condition? I do not think it should be. Spirits without bodies are not such marvelous things as spirits in bodies!
You meet, everyday, as you walk the streets, spirits in bodies, spirits that quicken flesh and bone and muscle and move a mass of material from place to place. If we had never seen such a thing as a body kept in life and filled with power by an immaterial, invisible and spiritual substance, it would be a very hard thing to realize. No man among us knows how it is that this inner spirit of ours is connected with the body. Where is the point of union? What is the link between soul and sinew? Where does spirit begin and where does matter end? We know that if we will to move our arm it is moved, but how does the mind that wills, manage to grasp the materialism which obeys its bidding? How is spirit capable of acting upon matter at all?
How is it that a spirit can dwell within an abode of flesh, look out of these eyes, listen through these ears, speak by these lips and perform its will by these hands? Eyes and ears and hands are but earth—they are made of such matter as we meet with in other parts of the solid world, mere dust of the earth, materialism wisely molded—but yet corruptible materialism. And yet the soul somehow manages to indwell and inhabit its house of clay—a far more wonderful thing, it seems to me, than for a spirit to exist without a body! We shall find it easy to conceive of a spirit disentangled of materialism in proportion as we have learned to meditate upon spiritual things and to feel the powers of the world to come.
Multitudes around us know nothing of anything which does not appeal to their senses. But the man who has been renewed by the Spirit of God is, himself, made spiritually minded and, therefore, the idea of disembodied spirits is not strange to him. Let us, according to Scripture, look forward to a condition in which our perfected spirits shall abide with Christ, “waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body” (Rom. 8:23). Yet Paul did not expect that the disembodied state would last forever, for he was assured of the resurrection of the body.
He did not despise the body so as to hope never to see it again, but he reckoned that after it had been put off, it would undergo a change and thus would be so renovated that at the coming of the Lord he would put it on afresh—and so his spirit would again be clothed! He expected that mortality would be swallowed up by life. And we, also, confidently
indulge the same hope. The fabric which was put into the ground when the Believer was buried was sown in corruption. We expect to see it raised in perfection.
That which we laid in the tomb the other day was a poor dishonored corpse on which decay was working its fierce will. But we shall see it raised in glory, radiant with the light which made Moses’ face shine! That which we committed to Mother Earth, we lowered into the grave in weakness, but it shall as surely rise in power! That which was buried was a soulish body, only fit for the natural soul. It was not adapted for the movements and aspirations of the regenerated spirit. But we know that when it shall rise, it will be a spiritual body adapted to our highest nature, fitted to be the palace of that gracious life which makes us sons of God! The Apostle’s great expectation was the perfection of his entire manhood—spirit, soul and body in Christ Jesus!