2 Timothy 1:10 But is now made manifest by the appearing of our Savior Jesus Christ, who has abolished death… "All men," says St. Paul," are all their life- time, through fear of death, subject to bondage." And every one, who has at all watched his own mind, knows that this is true. The very heathen, as our missionaries teach, tell us how death is known and feared, and looked forward to, with fearful expectation, as the great and universal enemy. Thus the fear of death is felt by all men, and is the fly in every pot of ointment, that, once found there, spoils and mars it: it is the sword hung overhead, whose keen point and sharp edge glitter ominously and threateningly in the light of every banquet; it is the hollow skull, with its eyeless sockets and its melancholy emptiness, that spoils every marble monument. I. MEN ALWAYS DID AND STILL DO ALL THEY CAN TO KEEP OFF THE UNWELCOME THOUGHT. The Greek and Roman, as they bound their heads with the wreath of roses, and stretched their limbs on the soft moss under the green arbutus, and drank off their goblets of wine, tried to forget that all this would soon be over, and that there would come one day the last disease. But it always was vain, and always will be, to attempt to quench the thought, though it may he staved off; the wine and flowers and song cannot last for ever. II. BUT WHAT 1S IT THAT THUS MAKES DEATH AN OBJECT OF UNIVERSAL APPREHENSION AND DREAD? Is it always the act of death? is the mere dying always a dreadful thing? No! it is sin; it is the sense of accountability, and the solemn expectation of the account we have to render; it is "the fearful expectation and looking-for of judgment": it is these which make death dreadful and dreaded, so that, "through fear of death men have been subject to bondage." III. Our text says THAT CHRIST "HATH ABOLISHED DEATH." is, then, death dead? That cannot be. I see Christians die as well as other men. But the sting of death is drawn; for sin is taken away. Death, therefore, is not the summoner of God's court of trial, but the usher to call him into God's glorious presence-chamber. The Christian does not die when his body and his soul are for a time divided. He has in his spirit, that is, in himself, his truest self, a life which is eternal; from the moment he believes and trusts in Christ, from that moment "he hath eternal life." IV. BUT, IS IT ONLY THE CHRISTIAN TO WHOM DEATH IS THUS ABOLISHED? "The fathers, where are they?" Did life and immortality begin with Christ? Were Christians the first to share and to enjoy them? Righteous Abel, when he fell by a brother's hand, and his fainting soul departed from his mangled body, took possession of the paradise of God. Noah and Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, David and Hezekiah, the glorious company of the prophets, the whole line of penitent believers — however unknown to men, yet known to God — inherited at death the same life that the Christian now inherits. But they did not know, as we know, the life and immortality which they received. Life and immortality existed as surely then, as now; but they then were "in the dark." The light had not risen: it was night with them; and only the stars threw a trembling light on the things beyond the grave. The heathen had, indeed, their Elysian fields; but that shadowy world was only a reproduction of the most pleasing portions of this present life, where, as the Indian hopes to use his bow and arrows to hunt the shadowy deer, as the Chinese hopes to employ the ghost of his loved paper money in that spectral world, so the heathens of Greece and Rome saw their heroes engrossed in the employments and amusements of this world — throwing the quoit, or driving the chariot, or reposing on beds of roses, in those fields of their own creation. And the views of the pious Jews and patriarchs were dim and obscure. "A land of darkness, as darkness itself, and of the shadow of death, without any order, and where the light is as darkness" (Job 10:22; Isaiah 38:10, 11; Psalm 88:4, 5). (W. W. Champneys, M. A.) Parallel Verses KJV: But is now made manifest by the appearing of our Saviour Jesus Christ, who hath abolished death, and hath brought life and immortality to light through the gospel: |
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