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Romans 14:8-9
“For all the saints, Who from their labors rest,
Who Thee, by faith, Before the world confessed,
Thy name, O Jesus, Be forever blessed.”
“O blest communion, fellowship divine,
We feebly struggle, they in glory shine;
Yet all are one in Thee, for all are Thine.”
Today we are observing All Saints’ Sunday. Among the things we ponder today, as reflected in these stanzas from today’s first hymn, is the heavenly life which those who have gone before us in the faith now enjoy. We also consider the deep, mystic cords of Christian unity which cause us still to be “one body” with them.
On this day in particular, but truly on all days in which God’s Word is at work among us, we are renewed, by the gospel, in our faith: our faith in our one Savior Jesus Christ; and our faith in the one holy church of this Savior – the unity of which transcends even the divisions between earth and heaven; between bodily life and bodily death.
As Christians, we reject the notion that the dead are no more. Rather, their souls live on, awaiting their resurrection on the last day, even after their bodies are laid to rest in the earth. In the book of Ecclesiastes we read that at death “the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit returns to God who gave it.”
Regarding his own life and ministry, and his desire to be of service to the church, St. Paul writes to the Philippians:
“My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better. But to remain in the flesh is more necessary on your account.”
When the apostle’s mantle was finally laid down, he did then depart to be with Christ. And he is with him still.
Our Lord spoke truthfully when he said in St. John’s Gospel: “everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die.” The dead still live. Their bodies return to the elements of the earth for a time – until the day of resurrection – but their immortal spirits live on.
As Jesus and the penitent thief were facing their deaths together on Calvary, the Savior spoke these words to his forgiven child, as recorded by St. Luke: “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise.”
Sometimes, however, people may misapply the Biblical truth of the continuing existence of the saints in heaven, in ways that are not condoned by the Bible. A common practice among many is the invocation of the dead.
People pray to the saints, asking them for protection, for miracles, for spiritual strength, and in general for a whole lot of things for which they should actually be asking God. In Psalm 50 the Lord himself assures us:
“Call upon me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me.”
There’s nothing that God in his mercy is unable or unwilling to do for a troubled Christian, according to his true needs as God knows and understands those needs. There would therefore never be any valid reason to ask a saint for the kind of blessings that Holy Scripture tells us are to be sought from the hand of God alone.
The Biblical truth of the continuing existence of the souls of the dead can be similarly misapplied in the mistaken notion that the spirits of our departed loved ones become our “guardian angels,” who actively watch over us in the affairs of our life; and who, in unseen ways, prevent bad things from happening to us, or bring successes to us.
There are protecting angels, of course, who are sent from the Lord to guard us from spiritual and temporal dangers. But the souls of departed human beings do not become angels.
Angels are a distinct kind of spiritual creature. In comparison to the angels, who are very busy, God’s human saints are at rest in the next life. As we read in the book of Revelation:
“‘Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on.’ ‘Blessed indeed,’ says the Spirit, ‘that they may rest from their labors…’”
Those who have been well catechized in the teachings of Scripture, and of our church, will not likely be tempted to embrace these mistaken beliefs. But there is yet another possible misapplication of the Biblical truth of the continuing existence of the faithful departed that may not be so easy for us to resist.
It is a great trial to lose a child, a spouse, or a parent to death. The grief that accompanies such losses can be hard to bear. For Christians, though, the comfort of God’s Word can and does sustain us in such times.
And one of the things to which a grieving parent, spouse, son, or daughter, will cling in such times, is the Biblical assurance that those who die in Christ do in fact live on, and that they are in heaven even now. These are the saints who are dearest to us.
But the Christ-centered faith of a bereaved Christian can be tested and strained, if he or she begins to yearn for a reunion with the deceased relative in the next world, in a manner that begins to overpower and overshadow the true basis for our heavenly hope. Listen again to St. Paul:
“My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better.”
Christ Jesus is our heavenly hope. He alone has saved us from what would otherwise be an eternity of separation from God. He reconciled us, who were by nature children of wrath, to our heavenly Father, so that we are now children of God who know his love.
In his atoning death as our substitute under the judgment of the divine law, Jesus redeemed us, and was the propitiation for our sins. He has forgiven our sins, and still richly forgives them.
In his resurrection, our Savior opened for us the way of everlasting life. Through faith in his gracious promises, we know that in him we will indeed live forever.
Consequently, no one but Christ deserves our highest loyalty. No one but Christ deserves our deepest devotion.
Any loyalty or devotion that puts something or someone in a higher position than Christ – in our hearts, and in our aspirations – is a dangerous idolatry. As recorded in St. Matthew, Jesus soberly declares:
“Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.”
When you reflect on the joys that you hope to experience in heaven, what, or who, do you think of first? At the emotional level, if not at the intellectual level, for whose companionship do you chiefly yearn?
Is it the Lord – who purchased and redeemed you with his own blood – who comes to mind first? Or is it someone else?
It’s not wrong to cherish the memory of departed loved ones. It’s not wrong to continue to love them even when they are gone. But it is wrong to love them first, to love them best, to love them most.
You will not be ready to join your loved ones in heaven until your desire to do so is in its proper perspective: within and under your desire to be with Christ, to know Christ’s embrace, and to experience Christ’s unending fellowship in a realm where sin and death are no more.
“Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.”
But in our human weakness, how can we muster up within ourselves that kind of undiluted love for God? How can we make ourselves have a love for him that is as strong and undistracted as it needs to be? This is more than we can do!
Yes, it is more than we can do! Just as we could never save ourselves by our own works, or atone for our sins by our own sacrifices, so too we cannot love Christ, as he deserves to be loved, by our own strength.
Our love for him is, rather, his gift to us. St. John says in his First Epistle:
“In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. … We love because he first loved us.”
You don’t really get yourself ready for heaven, and for the joys that your heavenly fellowship with Christ will bring. Christ gets you ready. He loves you, and he manifests his love whenever he gives himself to you in forgiveness and in his sustaining presence in your life.
He doesn’t demand love from you as a condition for his love, but he creates love in you by loving you first. St. Paul expresses it very well in his epistle to the Romans:
“God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person – though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die – but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
As the Epistle to the Hebrews guides us, we – in humility and hope – look to Jesus, “the founder and perfecter of our faith.” And the prayer of David, in Psalm 86, is accordingly our prayer:
“Teach me your way, Lord, that I may rely on your faithfulness; give me an undivided heart, that I may fear your name.”
If your love for Christ has been weak, Christ is answering your prayer, and is strengthening that love here and now, through the restoring grace of his gospel. If your devotion to Christ has been unsteady and wavering, Christ is bringing that devotion back into focus, here and now, through the renewing power of his forgiveness.
If your heart has not been firmly anchored to Christ alone as its one and only hope, Christ is sending his Spirit once again into your heart: to reclaim it, to renew it, and to reinvigorate its faith in his saving promises.
And Christ himself, your divine-human Savior, will come to you most intimately in the Holy Communion of his body and blood: to unite himself to you, and to transform you from the inside.
In all these ways, by God’s grace, “we grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ,” as St. Paul writes in his Epistle to the Ephesians.
Now, Jesus certainly died for your loved ones, too. Those who trusted in him in this life, and who have passed beyond this world into the next world, are indeed now waiting, with him, for you.
We may and should look forward to seeing them again: but only because they are with Christ, who is their Savior and ours; and only because they belong to the same Lord to whom we belong, who has purchased us all with his own precious blood, and who has joined us together in the eternal fellowship of his holy church.
In the meantime, as we wait for the end of our own earthly pilgrimage, and as we look forward to being with the Lord in his heavenly kingdom, we can ponder these words from St. Paul’s epistle to the Romans:
“If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord. So then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s. For to this end Christ died and lived again, that he might be Lord both of the dead and of the living.”
“For all the saints, Who from their labors rest,
Who Thee, by faith, Before the world confessed,
Thy name, O Jesus, Be forever blessed.”
“O blest communion, fellowship divine,
We feebly struggle, they in glory shine;
Yet all are one in Thee, for all are Thine.” Amen.