Asleep in Jesus
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No Scriptural description of death is so suggestive and so consoling, as that which is conveyed by the familiar word sleep. It recurs often. Stephen the martyr breathes his sublime prayer, and then "he fell asleep." Our Lord said to his disciples, "Our friend Lazarus is asleep; but I go that I may awaken him out of sleep." Paul, in that transcendently sublime chapter on the resurrection, treats death as but the transient slumber of the body, to be followed by the glorious awakening at the sound of the last trumpet. And then he crowns it with that voice of the divine Spirit, that marvelous utterance which has been said and sobbed and sung in so many a house of bereavement: "Brothers, we do not want you to be ignorant about those who fall asleep, or to grieve like the rest of men, who have no hope. We believe that Jesus died and rose again and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him." No three words are inscribed on more tombs—or on more hearts—than these: "Asleep in Jesus."
These declarations of God's Word describe death as simply the temporary suspension of bodily activities. Not a hint is given of a total end, an extinction, or an annihilation. The material body falls asleep, the immortal spirit being meanwhile in full activity; and the time is predicted when the body, called up from the tomb, shall reunite with the deathless spirit, and the man shall live on through eternity. What we call dying is only a momentary process. It is a flitting of the immortal tenant from the frail tent or tabernacle, which is so often racked with pain and waxes old into decay. Paul calls it a departure: "To depart and be with Christ." The spiritual tenant shuts up the windows of the earthly house before he departs; he muffles the knocker at the ear, so that no sound can enter; he extinguishes the fire that glows about the heart, stops the warm currents that flow through the veins, and leaves the deserted house cold, silent, and motionless. We, the survivors, bend over the deserted heart-house; but there is neither voice nor hearing. We kiss the brow, and it is marble. The beloved sleeper is sleeping a sleep which thunders or earthquakes cannot disturb.
But what is there in this slumber of the body which suggests any fear that the ethereal essence of the spirit has become extinct or even suspended its activities? When the mother lays her darling in its crib, she knows that sleep simply means rest, refreshment, and tomorrow morning's brighter eye, nimbler foot, and the carol of a lark in her nursery. When you or I drop off into the repose of the night, we understand that the avenues of the five bodily senses are closed for a few hours; but the mind is, meanwhile, as busy as when we wake. Death means just this: no more and no less.
Above all, they live a fuller, grander life, because they "sleep in Jesus" and are gathered into his embrace, and wake with him, clothed with white robes, awaiting the redemption of the body. In God's good time, the slumbering body shall be resuscitated and shall be fashioned like to Christ's glorious body—it shall be transformed into a condition which shall meet the wants of a glorified soul in its celestial dwelling-place. Truly, with this transcendent blaze of revelation pouring into the believer's death-chamber and his tomb—we ought never to sorrow as those who have no hope.
In this view of death (which is God's own view) how vivid becomes the apostle's exclamation, "I am confident and willing—rather to be absent from the body and to be present with the Lord." Who is it that is to be absent? I, Paul—the living Paul—I can be entirely absent from that poor tabernacle of flesh—and yet live! My body is no more Paul. Paul was entirely willing that the old scarred and weary body—might be put to sleep, so that he might go home and be present with his Lord. Then mortality would be swallowed up of life. "Go to sleep, poor, old, hard-worked body," the apostle seems to say, "and Jesus will wake you up in good time, and you shall be made like His glorious body, according to the working whereby he subdues all things unto himself."
Let us not be charged with pushing this Scripture simile too far, when we hint that it illustrates the different feelings with which different persons regard the act of dying. When we aresleepy—we covet the pillow and the couch.
When work is to be done, when the duties of the day are pressing on us, then the more awake we are—the better. Sleep then is repulsive. Even so do we see aged servants of God, who have finished up their life-work, and many a suffering invalid racked with incurable pains—who honestly long to die. They are sleepy for the rest of the grave—and the home beyond it.
Yet desire for death is not natural to the young, the vigorous, or especially to the servants of God who are most intent upon their high calling. These recoil from death, however saintly or spiritual they may be, or however strong their convictions are, that heaven is infinitely better than this world. It is not merely the natural shrinking from death (which the man Christ Jesus felt in common with us)—but the supreme idea of serving their God to the utmost possible limit. For Christ here, with Christ yonder—is the highest instinct of the Christian heart. The noble missionary, Judson, phrased it happily when he said, "I am not tired of my work, neither am I tired of the world; yet, when Christ calls me home, I shall go with the gladness of a boy bounding away from school. " He wanted to toil for souls until he grew sleepy, and then he wanted to lay his body down to rest and to escape into glory.
A dying-bed is only the spot where the material frame falls asleep. Then we take up the slumbering form and gently bear it to its narrow bed in mother earth. Our very word "cemetery" describes this thought. It is derived from the Greek word, which signifies a sleeping-place. Greenwood Cemetery is really a vast dormitory in which tens of thousands are laid to their last repose—some in their gorgeous environments of rosewood and marble, and others in the poor little trundle-beds of the paupers' plot. It is a mingled and mixed sleeping-place; but the Master "knows those who are his." Those who sleep in him—shall awake to be forever with their Lord.
On this tremendous question of the resurrection of our loved ones and our reunion with them, our yearning hearts are satisfied with nothing less than certainty. Poetic fancies are a cobweb; analogies from the sprouting of seeds and bulbs, probabilities, intuitions, and all philosophizings are too shadowy to rear a solid faith on. We demand absolute certainty, and there are just two truths which can give it. The first one is the actual fact of Christ's own resurrection from the death-slumber; the second is his omnipotent assurance that all those who sleep in him, shall be raised up and be where he is for evermore!
Those early Christians were wise in their generation, when they carved on the tomb of the martyrs "In Jesus Christ—he fell asleep.
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