Our Lord constantly teaches concerning those who believe in Him, (1.) That they are not condemned. They are no longer under the sentence of the law. (2.) That they have eternal life. That the effect of the union between Himself and them, consum- mated by faith, is that they partake of his life in a sense analo- gous to that in which the branch partakes of the life of the vine. As He lives always, those who partake of his life can never perish. And as He lives unto God, so the life of his people is a holy and divine life. That life, from its nature, is an unfailing source of blessedness. It purines, exalts, and glorifies. It is impossible that the souls in which Christ thus lives should remain in a state of misery and degradation, or in that dreamy state of existence in " the under-world " which so many of the fathers imagined to be the abode of the departed spirits of believers, awaiting the second coming of Christ. (3.) Our Lord promised that He would raise his people from the dead on the last day. It would seem, there- fore, to be involved in the nature of the redemption of Christ, and of the union between Him and his people, that when absent from the body they are present with the Lord. It is inconceivable that with the Spirit of God dwelling in them, which is the Spirit of holiness and of glory, they should sink at death into a lower state of existence than that which they enjoyed in this world. We ac- cordingly find that in the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, Christ says : " The beggar died, and was carried by the angels into Abraham's bosom." (Luke xvi. 22.) The implication is unde- niable that in his case the transition was immediate from earth to heaven. Still more explicit is the declaration of our Lord to the penitent thief, " To-day shalt thou be with me in paradise." (Luke xxiii. 43.) The word paradise occurs in two other places in the New Testament. In 2 Corinthians xii. 4, Paul says he was caught up into paradise, which he explains by saying that he was caught up into the third heaven. And in Revelation ii. 7, Christ says : " He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches : To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God." There can, therefore, be no doubt that paradise is heaven, and consequently when Christ promised the dying thief that he should that day be in paradise, he promised that he should be in heaven. It would, therefore, seem impossible that any who do not rest their faith on the fathers rather than on the Bible, should deny that the souls of believers do at death immediately pass into heaven. The fathers made a distinction between paradise and
728 PART IV. Ch. I — STATE OF SOUL AFTER DEATH.
heaven which is not found in the Scriptures. Some of them re- garded the former as one division of Hades, corresponding to the Elysium of the pagans ; others located it somewhere on the earth ; while others regarded it as a locality high up above the earth, but below the dwelling-place of God. These are mere fancies. The word heaven is indeed a term of wide application in the Bible as it is in common life. We speak of the fowls of heaven ; of the stars of heaven ; of our Father who is in heaven ; and of believers being the citizens of heaven. In each of these cases the word has a different sense. Whether paradise and heaven are the same is a mere dispute about words. If the word heaven be taken in one of its legitimate senses, they are the same ; if it be taken in an- other of its senses, they are not the same. It would not be in ac- cordance with Scriptural usage to say that believers are now in paradise ; but the Apostle does say they are now «V toU eVovpaviois (Eph. ii. 6), t. e., in heaven. Paradise, as the word is used by Christ and his Apostles, is the place where Christ now is, and where He manifests his presence and glory. Whether it is the place where He will finally establish his kingdom ; and whether all the redeemed, clothed in their resurrection bodies, shall there be gathered together, is a matter of which we have no knowledge, and in which we need take no interest. All we need know is that it is where Christ is ; that it is a place and state in which there is neither sin nor sorrow, and where the saints are as exalted and happy as, in the existing circumstances of their being, it is pos- sible for them to be. Whether any, in obedience to patristic usage, choose to call this paradise a department of Hades, is a mat- ter of no concern. All that the dying believer need know is that he goes to be with Christ. That to him is heaven.
In 2 Corinthians v. 2, the Apostle says : " We know, that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens." There are three ways in which these words, in con- nection with those which follow, are interpreted. (1.) Accord- ing to one view, the house not made with hands into which the believer is received at death, is heaven. (2.) According to an- other view the meaning of the Apostle is, that when our present body is dissolved the soul will not be found naked, but will be immediately clothed with another and more spiritual body suited to the altered state of its existence. (3.) That the new house or body intended is the resurrection body. The second of these interpretations is founded on a gratuitous assumption. It assumes