1. Death is a Penal Evil. Why Then Inflicted on the Justified?
DEATH is undoutedly a penal evil; and not merely a natural law, as Socinians and Pelagians teach. This we have already shown by the Bible, (Gen. 2:17; 3:17–19; 5:3; Rom. 5:12, 14), and by the obvious reasoning, that the benevolence and righteousness, with the infinite power of God, would combine to prevent any suffering to His moral creatures while free from guilt. Man enters life now, subject to the whole penalty of death, including temporal physical evils, spiritual death, and bodily death; and this is the consequence of Adam’s fall through our federal connection with him. From spiritual death, all believers are delivered at their regeneration. Physical evils and bodily death remain; and inasmuch as the latter was a most distinctive and emphatic retribution for sin, the question is, how it comes to be inflicted on those who are absolutely justified in Christ. On the one hand, bodily death was a penal infliction. On the other hand, we have taught that believers are justified from all guilt, and are required to render no penal satisfaction whatever. (Rom. 5:1; Heb. 10:14, &c.) Yet all believers die?
False and True Answers
Now this question is very inadequately met by such views as these: That this anomaly is no greater than many others in the divine dealings; e. g., the continuance of imperfection and indwelling sin so many years in believers, or their subjection to the malice of evil men and demons. That the destruction of the body is necessary to a perfect sanctification; a thing shown to be untrue in the cases of Enoch, Elijah, the human soul of Christ, and all the believers who shall be on earth at the last consummation; or, that the natural law of mortality, and the rule of God’s kingdom, that men must “walk by faith, not by sight,” would both be violated, if so visible a difference were placed between saints and sinners, as the entire exemption of the former from bodily death. These are partial explanations. The true answer is, that although believers are fully justified, yet according to that plan of grace which God has seen fit to adopt, bodily death is a necessary and wholesome chastisement for the good of the believer’s soul. If this postulate can be shown to be correct, the occurrence of death to the justified man will fall into the same class with all other paternal chastisements, and will receive the same explanation.
Ground and Nature of Chastisements
Let us then recall some principles which were established in our defence of our view of the Atonement against Romanists, &c. First. A chastisement, while God’s motive in it is only benevolent, does not cease to be, to the believer, a natural evil. We may call it a blessing in disguise; but the Christian smarting under it feels, that if this language means that it is not a real evil, it is a mere play upon words. The accurate statement is, that God wisely and kindly exercises in chastisements His divine prerogative of bringing good out of evil. Bodily death does not cease to be to the believer a real natural evil in itself, and to be feared and felt as such. Second. Hence, chastisement is a means of spiritual benefit appropriate only to sinning children of God. It would not be just, for instance, that God should adopt chastisements as a means to advance Gabriel, who never had any guilt, to some higher stage of sanctified capacities and blessedness; because where there is no guilt there is no suffering. Third. Still, God’s motive in chastising the believer is not at all retributive, but wholly beneficent; whereas His retributions of the guilty are intended, not primarily to benefit them, but to satisfy righteousness. Here then is the distinctive difference between Rome and us; that we hold, while the sufferings endured in chastisements have a reference to our sinful and guilty condition, in the believer’s case they are neither paid by him, nor received by God, as any penal satisfaction whatever for guilt: that satisfaction is wholly paid by our surety. Heb. 12:6–10; Rom. 8:18–28; 2 Cor. 4:17: with Rom. 8:33; Ps. 103:12; Micah 7:19. Whereas, Rome teaches that penitential sufferings of believers go to complete the actual penal satisfaction for the reatum pœnœ, left incomplete by Christ.
How Compatible with Satisfaction for Sin
Fourth. The use of such means of sanctification is compatible with divine justice, although an infinite vicarious satisfaction is made for our guilt by our surety; because, as we saw, a vicarious satisfaction is not a commercial equivalent for our guilt; a legal tender such as brings our Divine Creditor under a righteous obligation to cancel our whole indebtedness. But His acceptance of it as a legal satisfaction was, on His part, an act of pure grace; and therefore the acceptance acquits us just so far as, and no farther than, God is pleased to allow it. And we learn from His word, that He has been pleased to accept it just thus far; that the believer shall be required to pay no more penal satisfaction to the broken law; yet shall be liable to such suffering of chastisements as shall be wholesome for his own improvement, and appropriate to his sinning condition.
Bodily Death an Edifying Chastisement
Now then, does bodily death subserve the purposes of a wholesome and sanctifying chastisement? I answer, most eminently. The prospect of it serves, from the earliest day when it begins to stir the sinner’s conscience to a wholesome seriousness, through all his convictions, conversion. Christian warfare, to humble the proud soul, to mortify carnality, to check pride, to foster spiritual mindedness. It is the fact that sicknesses are premonitions of death, which make them active means of sanctification. Bereavements through the death of friends form another valuable class of disciplinary sufferings. Now that death may be actually in prospect, death must actually occur. And when the closing scene approaches, no doubt in every case where the believer is conscious, the pains of its approach, the solemn thoughts and emotions it suggests, are all used by the Holy Ghost as powerful means of sanctification to ripen the soul rapidly for Heaven. I doubt not, that when we take into view the whole moral influences of the life-long prospect of our own deaths, the prospect and occurrence of bereavement by death of friends, the pungent efficiency given to sickness by its connection with death, as well as the actual influences of the closing scene, we shall see that all other chastisements put together, are far less efficacious in checking inordinate affection and sanctifying the soul: yea, that without this, there would be no efficacious chastisement at all left in the world. A race of sinners must be a race of mortals; Death is the only check (of the nature of means) potent enough to prevent depravity from breaking out with a power which would make the state of the world perfectly intolerable! Another reason for inflicting death on justified believers may be found in 1 Peter 4:12, 13. It is the supreme test of the power of faith. Death is the greatest of temporal and natural evils, abhorrent to the strongest instincts of man’s nature, and involving the maximum of natural losses and privations. If faith and grace can overcome this enemy, and extract his sting, then indeed have we a manifestation of their virtue, which is transcendent. As Christ, our Captain of salvation, gave that supreme evidence of His love and devotion, so it is most appropriate that His people should present the like evidence of the power of His Spirit and principles in them. It is thus we become “partakers of His sufferings,” and assist in signalizing His victory over death.
2. Death a Means of Glory to Saint, Unmixed Curse to Sinner
Yet, as the afflictions of the righteous differ much from the torments of the wicked, this is peculiarly true of their deaths. To the impenitent man, death is full of the sting of sin. In the case of the saint, this sting is extracted by redemption. There may not be the abounding triumphs of spiritual joy; but if the believer is conscious, he usually enjoys a peace, which controls and calms the agitations of the natural feelings recoiling from death. In the case of the sinner, the horror of dying is made up of two sets of feelings, the instinctive love of life, with the natural affections which tie him to the earth; and evil conscience with dread of future retributions. And the latter is often predominant in the sinner’s anguish. But in the case of the saint it is removed; and death is only an evil in the apprehension of the former feelings. Second: to the sinner, death is the beginning of his utter misery; to the saint it is the usher, (a dreaded one indeed) into his real blessedness. By it the death in sins and bondage of depravity are fixed upon the sinner irrevocably: but the saint is delivered by it from all his indwelling sins. Death removes the sinner forever from God, from partial gospel privileges and communions. But to the saint, it is the means of breaking down the veil, and introducing him into the full fruition and vision of God.
Dabney, R. L. 1878. Syllabus and Notes of the Course of Systematic and Polemic Theology. Second Edition. St. Louis: Presbyterian Publishing Company.