The God of the Living

Now that the dead are raised, even Moses shewed at the bush, when he calleth the Lord the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. For he is not a God of the dead, but of the living: for all live unto him. LUKE 20:37–38

MacDonald knew death well. His mother died when he was eight. He was ill all his life with the disease that killed several of his children, and he buried four of them. It is not surprising that he wrote often about death and what lies beyond it. What is surprising is how much joy there is in what he wrote. His sermon The God of the Living, in the first series, and The Inheritance, which closes the third, are full of a confident hope.

The argument of Jesus

The God of the Living is a sermon on the Lord’s answer to the Sadducees, who denied the resurrection. Jesus pointed them to the words God spoke to Moses at the burning bush: I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. God did not say I was, but I am; and He is not a God of the dead, but of the living. MacDonald thought this argument went far deeper than a point of grammar. God changes not. If He has once called Himself a man’s God, He cannot then let that man perish and remain his God. A God who let His children fall into nothingness would not be the God He has revealed Himself to be.

I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. JOHN 11:25–26

He turned the argument into prayer, as he often did. “The beloved pass from our sight, but they pass not from thine.” Death, he said, looks final to us; it seems an end, an utter change. But “This that we call death, is but a form in the eyes of men.” Those who have died are still alive to God, and still known and loved by Him.

The resurrection of the body

MacDonald believed firmly in the resurrection of the body. He did not think the dead were destined to be ghosts. We will always need bodies, he said, to reveal us to one another and to receive the revelation of God in His world. In the resurrection, those we have loved will be known again, more truly themselves than ever, and every heart will cry out with joy at the sight of them. “Yet not the less is the doctrine of the Resurrection gladdening as the sound of the silver trumpet of its visions, needful as the very breath of life to our longing souls.”

For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. 1 CORINTHIANS 15:53

The inheritance

The last of all the Unspoken Sermons takes as its text Paul’s thanksgiving to the Father, which hath made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light. MacDonald began with a contrast. In any earthly inheritance, every share given to one heir makes the shares of the others smaller. In the inheritance of the saints it is the other way round. “In the inheritance of the saints, that which each has, goes to increase the possession of the rest.” The more there are to share it, the richer each one is, because the inheritance is God Himself, and love multiplies by being shared.

Giving thanks unto the Father, which hath made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light. COLOSSIANS 1:12

He believed that heaven would not be a place of idleness, but of endless discovery and joy, and he was impatient with dreary pictures of heaven that made children afraid of it. The inheritance is the universe of God, given to His children to know and love, with God at the heart of it; and the way into it is to become, here and now, children fit to receive it.

Weighing it

These sermons are full of a hope that is deeply scriptural, and they have comforted many in bereavement. MacDonald’s reading of the Lord’s answer to the Sadducees — that the God who calls Himself our God will not let us perish — is close to the heart of the passage. His joy in the resurrection of the body, his picture of the inheritance of the saints, and his refusal to be gloomy about heaven are a fine corrective to the vague and ghostly hopes of much popular religion.

Two points need weighing. The first is that, in The God of the Living, MacDonald wrote that we are not required to believe that the same body is raised again, and he spoke of a resurrection body that would carry the same person but not the same matter. He believed in a real, bodily resurrection; but readers will want to keep before them the empty tomb, where the very body that was laid in the grave was raised, and Paul’s teaching that God will quicken our mortal bodies. There is mystery here, and Paul himself speaks of a body sown in weakness and raised in power; but the continuity is real.

But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you. ROMANS 8:11

The second is that MacDonald’s hope for the dead extended, as the next chapter shows, to all the dead. The New Testament speaks of a resurrection of the just and of the unjust, and of a judgement that follows death. The hope of the inheritance belongs to those whom the Father has made meet for it, through the Son in whom we have redemption.

And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment. HEBREWS 9:27

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Think of someone you love who has died in Christ. Give thanks that they live unto God.

2. Read Luke 20:27–38 and consider the Lord’s argument. What does it mean to you that God is the God of the living?

3. Read 1 Corinthians 15:35–58 and let its hope fill your heart.

4. Is your picture of heaven dreary? Read Revelation 21:1–7 and 22:1–5, and let Scripture enlarge it.

5. Read Colossians 1:12–14 and give thanks for the inheritance of the saints, and for the redemption that makes you meet to share it.

A PRAYER

Father, You are not the God of the dead, but of the living, and all live unto You.

Thank You that those I have loved and lost in Christ have not passed out of Your sight, and that I shall see them again.

Thank You for the hope of the resurrection, and for the inheritance of the saints in light.

Make me meet to share it, through Your Son, in whom I have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins. Amen.