|
After that He adds the words, "Verily, verily, I say unto you,
The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of
the Son of God; and they that hear shall live. For as the Father
hath life in Himself; so hath He given to the Son to have life in
Himself." As yet He does not speak of the second resurrection,
that is, the resurrection of the body, which shall be in the end, but
of the first, which now is. It is for the sake of making this
distinction that He says, "The hour is coming, and now is." Now
this resurrection regards not the body, but the soul. For souls,
too, have a death of their own in wickedness and sins, whereby they
are the dead of whom the same lips say, "Suffer the dead to bury
their dead,", that is, let those who are dead in soul bury them that
are dead in body. It is of these dead, then, the dead in ungodliness
and wickedness, that He says, "The hour is coming, and now is,
when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God; and they that
hear shall live." "They that hear," that is, they who obey,
believe, and persevere to the end. Here no difference is made between
the good and the bad. For it is good for all men to hear His voice
and live, by passing to the life of godliness from the death of
ungodliness. Of this death the Apostle Paul says, "Therefore all
are dead, and He died for all, that they which live should not
henceforth live unto themselves, but unto Him which died for them and
rose again." Thus all, without one exception, were dead in sins,
whether original or voluntary sins, sins of ignorance, or sins
committed against knowledge; and for all the dead there died the one
only person who lived, that is, who had no sin whatever, in order
that they who live by the remission of their sins should live, not to
themselves, but to Him who died for all, for our sins, and rose
again for our justification, that we, believing in Him who justifies
the ungodly, and being justified from ungodliness or quickened from
death, may be able to attain to the first resurrection which now is.
For in this first resurrection none have a part save those who shall be
eternally blessed; but in the second, of which He goes on to speak,
all, as we shall learn, have a part, both the blessed and the
wretched. The one is the resurrection of mercy, the other of
judgment. And therefore it is written in the psalm, "I will sing of
mercy and of judgment: unto Thee, O Lord, will I sing."
And of this judgment He went on to say, "And hath given Him
authority to execute judgment also, because He is the Son of man."
Here He shows that He will come to judge in that flesh in which He
had come to be judged. For it is to show this He says, "because He
is the Son of man." And then follow the words for our purpose:
"Marvel not at this: for the hour is coming, in the which all that
are in the graves shall hear His voice, and shall come forth; they
that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have
done evil, unto the resurrection of judgment." This judgment He
uses here in the same sense as a little before, when He says, "He
that heareth my word, and believeth on Him that sent me, hath
everlasting life, and shall not come into judgment, but is passed from
death to life;" i.e., by having a part in the first resurrection,
by which a transition from death to life is made in this present time,
he shall not come into damnation, which He mentions by the name of
judgment, as also in the place where He says, "but they that have
done evil unto the resurrection of judgment," i.e., of damnation.
He, therefore, who would not be damned in the second resurrection,
let him rise in the first. For "the hour is coming, and now is,
when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God; and they that
hear shall live," i.e., shall not come into damnation, which is
called the second death; into which death, after the second or bodily
resurrection, they shall be hurled who do not rise in the first or
spiritual resurrection. For "the hour is coming" (but here He does
not say, "and now is," because it shall come in the end of the world
in the last and greatest judgment of God) "when all that are in the
graves shall hear His voice and shall come forth." He does not say,
as in the first resurrection, "And they that Hear shall live."
For all shall not live, at least with such life as ought alone to be
called life because it alone is blessed. For some kind of life they
must have in order to hear, and come forth from the graves m their
rising bodies. And why all shall not live He teaches in the words
that follow: "They that have done good, to the resurrection of
life,", these are they who shall live; "but they that have done
evil, to the resurrection of judgment,", these are they who shall
not live, for they shall die in the second death. They have done evil
because their life has been evil; and their life has been evil because
it has not been renewed in the first or spiritual resurrection which now
is, or because they have not persevered to the end in their renewed
life. As, then, there are two regenerations, of which I have
already made mention, the one according to faith, and which takes
place in the present life by means of baptism; the other according to
the flesh, and which shall be accomplished in its incorruption and
immortality by means of the great and final judgment, so are there also
two resurrections, the one the first and spiritual resurrection, which
has place in this life, and preserves us from coming into the second
death; the other the second, which does not occur now, but in the end
of the world, and which is of the body, not of the soul, and which by
the last judgment shall dismiss some into the second death, others into
that life which has no death.
|
|