The Pulpit Commentary — Matthew — Volume 2 — Section 660

body olse'a living after death, When a man dies his life-work {a done. He lives, but he cnnnot cnrry on his work. Moses dies on Mount Nebo; nay, Moses lives; but he cannot carry on his work, and lead Israel through into the Promised Land. The artist is visited by the angel of death with the half-finished picture on his easel. The artist lives, but he cannot perfect the picture. Charles Dickens died with his work 'Edwin Drood' half written, and the plot undisclosed. Sir Edgar Boehm was caught away from his studio with the part-moulded statue before him. They live, but they cannot touch and finish their incomplete work. If the dead are active in some unknown sphere, they are certainly dormant in relation to all their earth-work. For them death ends all enterprise, But it was not so with Christ. Death did not end all. His redemptive mission was not closed with his death. He resumed his earth-work, After death he took it up age.in. Call it a picture, Jesus worked again at the picture. Call it a book, Jesus wrote on at the book. Call it the redemption of man from sin, Call it the sanctification of men unto righteousness. Jesus, living after death, goes on redeeming, goes on sanctifying. And the full convincemcnt of this fact is the real meaning aad purpose of our Lord's resurrection. It was forty days of showing us that he was at work again; of helping us to realize what his work was, and what his work would be for ever. Our dead Lord is not only alive, he is active in relation to his life- work. "Alive for evermore;" his power is thus symbolized, "He has the keys of hell and of death." Ill. The text declares the renewal of our Lord's commission, All power is given into the hands of Christ, but the only power Christ knows of or cares for is ,piritu.al power. What the world calls "power" was to Christ illusion, mockery, play. To be Earth-King of humanity presented no attraction to him. The power given to Christ is the spiritual power, for which alone he cared. It is power on the souls that we are, and not mere power over the bodies that we have, and the relations that our bodies can sustain. IV. How did Jesus come to have this spiritual power? It is easy to say that God g11,:ve it to him; but there must be some good reason why God gave it to him, and to no one but him. And it seems that God's giving was really this-sealing to him the power which Jesus himself had won; and putting Jesus in the place or office where his power could have free, full exercise. Christ's life on the earth was the moral discipline, the varied testing, the range of experiences, which prepared him for the trust of power to save which he now holds. Moral forces on moral beings are gained only through moral experiences. He who would save man must be man, must know man, must go at least a representative round of human experiences.-R. T. Ver. 19.-The threefold Na'TTl,IJ, "In the Name of the Father, a.nd of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." Sometimes the Name of the Lord Jesus only is mentioned in the formula. Here our Lord gives one Name with three sounds. Each separate Name giving a distinct relation of the one Being to men. Our Lord did not say, " in the names," but "in the Name." However we may present the threefoldness, we must keep it manifestly cousistent with the Divine unity. " The union of the three names in one formula (as in the benediction of 2 Cor. xiii. 14) is in itself a proof at once of the distinctness and equality of the three Divine Persons." The apostles were to go forth, and disciple all nations, that is, bring them all into the full joy of sonship with God, into which they had themselves been brought; and they were to receive their pledge and seal their sonship by baptizing them into the Name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost, The significance of the threefold Name is seen in the light of this recovered sonship of men. L TIIE N .ulE OJ' THE FATIIEB, WHO CLAlllS TIIE SoNSHIP, It is the relation to himself in which God set his creatures, 'l'hey are his children. He designed to give them fatherly care; he expected from them sonlike obedience. Men are sons of God, and they ought to have lived and served like sons. Man's sin lay in refusing his son- ship. But man's wilfulness could not affect God's claim. God still demands sonship of every child born in his image. II. THE NAME OJ' THE SoN, WHO SHOWS TIIE SoNsHIP, In his own earth-life of trust and obedience. Men who, in their wilfulness, refused their sonship, came at last to lose their sense of aonship; they needed to have the very idea recovered ; they  666 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST. MATTHEW. [OB. xxvm. 1-20,