The life of the son of man is given to all men, and they are not told why it is given to them. Some understand that life is not their own, but is a trust, and that it must serve the life of the ‘son of man.’ Others, under the pretext that they do not understand the purpose of life, do not live up to that high aim. Those who do are united to the source of life; and those who do not, are deprived of life. And, from the verses 31 to 46, Christ tells us what is meant by serving the ‘son of man,’ and in what the reward of that service consists.
The son of man, according to the words of Christ, will say (v. 34) as the king did, ‘Come, you blessed of the Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you, for I was hungry, and you gave me meat; I was thirsty, and you gave me drink; you clothed, visited, and comforted me; for I am the same in you, and in the least of those whom you took pity on, and to whom you have done good. You lived, not for yourselves, but for the ‘son of man,’ and therefore shall you have eternal life.’
Christ speaks only of that eternal life throughout the gospel. And strange as it may seem to say so of Christ, who Himself rose from the dead, and who promised to raise all men, He never, by a single word, confirmed the belief in individual resurrection or in individual immortality beyond the grave, but He even attached to the raising up of the dead in the kingdom of the Messiah, as taught by the Pharisees, a meaning that excluded the idea of individual resurrection.
The Sadducees disputed the raising up of the dead. The Pharisees acknowledged it, as all true believers among the Jews still do. The raising up of the dead (not the resurrection, as the word has been erroneously translated) will, according to the Jewish belief, be accomplished at the coming of the Messiah, and the establishing of the kingdom of God on earth. And Christ, on meeting with this belief in a temporary, local, and carnal resurrection, rejects it, and sets in its place His doctrine of the restoration to eternal life in God.
When the Sadducees, who said there was no resurrection, and supposed that Christ agreed in opinion with the Pharisees, asked Him, ‘Whose wife shall she be, of the seven?’ He gives a clear and definite answer to both questions.
He says (Matt. 22:29-32, Mark 12:24-27, Luke 20:34-38), ‘You err, not knowing the scripture or the power of God.’ And in refutation of the belief of the Pharisees, He says, ‘The raising up of the dead is neither carnal nor individual. Those who are raised from the dead become the sons of God and live like angels (the powers of God) in heaven (with God), and there can be no question for them whose wife she will be, because, being one with God, they lose all individuality.’ Concerning the raising up of the dead, He continues, in reply to the Sadducees, who acknowledged only an earthly life, and nothing but an earthly carnal life, ‘Have you not read what God said to you? The Scripture says that God said to Moses, from the bush, “I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” If God said to Moses that He was the God of Jacob, then Jacob is not dead; for God is not the God of the dead, but of the living. With God all are living. And therefore, if there is a living God, the man who is one with God lives too.’
In reply to the Pharisees, Christ says that the raising from the dead cannot be carnal and individual. In reply to the Sadducees, He says that, besides an individual and temporary life, there is another life in communion with God.
Denying individual and carnal resurrection, Christ asserts that the raising from the dead lies in the transfusion of man’s life into God. Christ preaches salvation from individual life, and sets that salvation in the exaltation of the son of man and a life in God. Connecting His doctrine with that of the Hebrews, as far as concerns the coming of the Messiah, He speaks to them of the raising up of the son of man from the dead, thereby meaning, not a personal carnal rising from the dead, but an awakening to life in God. Of individual carnal resurrection He never speaks. The best proof that Christ never preached the resurrection of men from the dead is found in the very two texts quoted by theologians in confirmation of His doctrine of resurrection. These two texts are Matthew 25:31-46 and John 5:28-29. In the first He speaks of the coming, that is, the raising up, the exaltation, of the son of man (we find the same in Matt. 10:23), and the greatness and power of the son of man are likened to those of a king. In the second text, Christ speaks of the raising up of true life here on earth, as expressed in the 24th verse.
It only needs a closer consideration of the meaning of Christ’s doctrine of eternal life in God; it only needs to re-establish in our minds the teaching of the Hebrew prophets to enable us to comprehend that if Christ had wished to preach the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead, which, at that time was being embodied in the Talmud, and was a subject of dispute, He would have done so, clearly and definitely; yet, on the contrary, He not only avoided preaching that doctrine, but even refuted it; nor do we find a single passage in the gospel to confirm it. The two above-mentioned texts have a very different meaning.
Strange as the assertion may seem to those who have not studied the gospel, never in a single passage does Christ speak of His own personal resurrection. If, as theologians maintain, the basis of the Christian faith is the resurrection of Christ, the least we could expect would be that Christ, knowing He would rise from the dead, and that upon His rising the chief dogma of the faith would be founded, should at least once have said so, clearly and definitely. Yet He never does; nor do we find any mention made of His resurrection throughout the whole canonical gospel. The doctrine taught is the exaltation of the ‘son of man,’ or, in other words, of the substance of life in man; and this is to acknowledge one’s self to be the son of God.
In Himself, Christ personifies man, who acknowledges Himself to be the Son of God. Matt. 16:13-20: He asks the disciples what men say of Him, the son of man. The disciples answer that some think Him to be John, miraculously raised from the dead; some think Him a prophet; some Elijah, come down from heaven. ‘And what do you think of me?’ He asks. And Peter, thinking of Christ as he himself did, answers, ‘You are the Messiah, the son of the living God.’
And Christ says, ‘Flesh and blood has not revealed it to you, but our Father who is in heaven,’ or, ‘You have understood, not because you have believed the words of men, but because, knowing yourself to be the son of God, you have understood me.’ And having explained to Peter that true faith lies in our knowing ourselves to be the sons of God, Christ says to the other disciples (v. 20) that they should, in future, tell no man that He, Jesus, is the Messiah. And then Christ says that, though He will be put to torture and death, the son of man, knowing Himself to be the son of God, will be raised up and will triumph over all. And yet these words are interpreted as foretelling His resurrection.
John 2:19-22, Matt. 12:40, Luke 11:20, Matt. 16:21, Matt. 16:4, Mark 8:31, Luke 9:22, Matt. 17:23, Mark 9:31, Matt. 20:19, Mark 10:34, Luke 18:33, Matt. 26:32, Mark 14:48. These fourteen texts are all supposed to prove that Christ foretold His resurrection. In three of these texts He speaks of Jonah in the belly of the whale; and in one, of the raising of the temple. In the other ten texts, Christ says that the son of man cannot be destroyed forever; but nowhere do we find one word concerning His resurrection.
Indeed, in the original, the word ‘resurrection’ does not occur in any one of these texts. Give a man, unacquainted with theological interpretation, but with some knowledge of Greek, these texts to translate, and he will never render their meaning in the way our translators of the gospel have done. There are, in the original, two different words in these texts: the one is ανιςτημι, the other is εγειρω. One of these words signifies ‘to raise.’ The other signifies ‘to rouse or waken,’ or it might
