THE MAN WHO SHALL NEVER SEE DEATH – Charles Spurgeon
THE MAN WHO SHALL NEVER SEE DEATH
“Verily, verily, I say unto you, If a man keep My saying, he shall never see death. Then said the Jews unto Him, Now we know that You have a devil. Abraham is dead, and the Prophets, and You say, If a man keep My saying, he shall never taste of death. Are You greater than our father Abraham, which is dead? and the Prophets are dead: whom make You Yourself?” John 8:51-53.
Introduction: The Malicious Assault on Christ
In the previous part of this chapter, we hear the Jews, with malicious voices, assailing our blessed Lord with this bitter question, “Say we not well that You are a Samaritan, and have a devil?” How very quietly the Savior answered them! He did answer them because He judged it necessary to do so, but He did so with great patience and with sound argument—“I have not a devil; but I honor My Father.” Clear proof, this! No man can be said to have a devil who honors God, for the evil spirit from the beginning has been the enemy of all that glorifies the Father! Paul, who had not read this passage—for the Gospel of John was not written then—was nevertheless so filled with his Master’s spirit that he answered after a like manner when Festus said, “Paul, you are beside yourself; much learning does make you mad.” He calmly replied, “I am not mad, most noble Festus; but speak forth the words of truth and soberness.” This was a fine copy of our Savior’s gentle and forcible reply—“I have not a devil; but I honor My Father.” Brethren, whenever you are falsely accused and an evil name is hurled at you, if you must reply, “give a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear.” Be not heated and hurried, for if so, you will lose strength and will be apt to err. Let your Lord be your model. The false charge was the occasion of our Lord’s uttering a great Truth of God. On they rush, furious in their rage, but He flashes in their faces the light of Truth. To put down error, lift up Truth! Thus their deadly saying was met by a living saying—“Verily, verily, I say unto you, If a man keeps My saying, he shall never see death.” Nothing so baffles the adversaries of the faith as to utter with unshaken confidence the Truth of God. The Truth which Jesus stated was full of promise, and if they willfully rejected His promise, it became worse to them than a threat. Christ’s rejected promises curdle into woes. If these men, when He said to them, “If a man keeps My saying, he shall never see death,” yet went on reviling Him, then their consciences, when afterwards awakened, would say to them, “He that believes not shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him.” If the Believer shall never see death, then the unbeliever shall never see life. Thus the Gospel itself becomes “a savor of death unto death” to those who refuse it and the very word which proclaims eternal life threatens eternal death to the willfully unbelieving. I pray that, this morning, we may be put into a gracious frame of mind and may be so helped to keep Christ’s saying, that we may inherit this wondrous promise—“If a man keeps My saying, he shall never see death.” May the Holy Spirit specially aid me while I first speak upon the gracious character—the man who keeps Christ’s saying. Secondly, I would dwell upon the glorious deliverance—“He shall never see death.” Thirdly, taking the two later verses of my text, I would honor the great Quickener, for evidently, according to the Jews, our Lord was making much of Himself by what He said.
I. The Gracious Character of the Man Who Keeps Christ’s Saying
Observe, that the one conspicuous characteristic of the man who shall never behold death is that he keeps Christ’s saying or word. He may have other characteristics, but they are comparatively unimportant in this respect. He may be of a timorous nature; he may often be in distress; but if he keeps Christ’s saying, he shall never see death. He may have been a great sinner in his early life but, being converted and led to keep Christ’s saying, he shall never see death! He may be a strong-minded man who keeps a firm grip of eternal realities and therefore becomes supremely useful—but none the more for that is this promise true to him. The reason for his safety is the same as in the case of the weak and timorous—he keeps Christ’s saying and therefore he shall never see death. Divest yourselves, therefore, of all enquiries about other matters and only make inquisition in your own heart upon this one point—do you keep Christ’s saying? If you do this, you shall never see death.
Who is this man who keeps Christ’s saying? Obviously, he is a man that has close dealing with Christ. He hears what He says. He notes what He says. He clings to what He says. We meet with persons nowadays who talk about faith in God, but they do not know the Lord Jesus Christ as the great Sacrifice and Reconciler. But without a Mediator there is no coming to God. Jesus says, “No man comes unto the Father, but by Me.” His witness is true. Brothers and Sisters, we glorify Christ as God Himself. Truly, the unity of the Godhead is never doubted among us. And while “there is one God,” there is also “one Mediator between God and man, the Man Christ Jesus.” Forever remember that Christ Jesus as God-Man, Mediator, is essential to all our communion with the Father. You cannot trust God, nor love God, nor serve God aright unless you willingly consent to His appointed way of reconciliation, redemption, justification, and access which is only through the precious blood of Jesus Christ. In Christ we draw near unto God. Attempt not to approach unto Jehovah, who is a consuming fire, except through the Incarnate God. Tell me, my Hearer, is your faith fixed upon Him whom God has set forth to be the Propitiation for sin? Do you come to God in God’s own way? He will not receive you in any other! If you reject the way of salvation through the blood of the Lamb, you cannot be keeping the saying of Christ, for He says, “He that has seen Me has seen the Father”—and He says this of none else.
These people, next, making the Lord Jesus their All in All, reverenced His word and therefore kept it—they respected, observed, trusted and obeyed it. By keeping His saying is meant, first, that they accept His doctrine. Whatever He has laid down as Truth is Truth to them.
My Hearer, is it so with you? With some, their great source of belief is their own thought. They judge the Divine Revelation, itself, and claim the right, not only to interpret it, but to correct and expand it. In the fullness of self-confidence, they make themselves the judges of God’s Word. They believe a Doctrine because the light of the present age confirms it or invents it. Their foundation is in man’s own thought. In their opinion, parts of Scripture are exceedingly faulty and need tinkering with scientific hammers. The light of the Holy Spirit is to them a mere glowworm as compared with the light of the present advanced age. But he that is to share the promise now before us is one who believes the Savior’s Word because it is His Word. He takes the sayings of Christ and His Inspired Apostles as being true, because so spoken. To him, the Inspiration of the Holy Spirit is the warrant of faith. This is a very important matter—the foundation of our faith is even more important than the superstructure. Unless you ground your faith upon the fact that the Lord has spoken, your faith lacks that worshipful reverence which God requires. Even if you are correct in your beliefs, you are not correct in your spirit unless your faith is grounded on the authority of God’s own Word. We are to be disciples, not critics. We have done with quibbling, for we have come to believing. In this, our departed deacon stood on firm ground. By him, every teaching of the Word was accepted with a lively, child-like faith—and though tempted by the school of doubt—he was not in the least affected by its reasonings. To him, the Gospel was dear as life itself. As he did, so must we believe Christ’s doctrines.
Next, the gracious man trusts Christ’s promises. This is a crucial point. Without trust in Jesus, we have no spiritual life. Say, my Hearer, do you rely upon the saying of the Lord Jesus, “He that believes in Me has everlasting life”? Do you believe in the promise of pardon to the man that confesses and forsakes his sin—pardon through the precious blood of the great Sacrifice? Are the promises of Christ certainties to you, certainties hallmarked with His sacred, “Verily, verily, I say unto you”? Can you hang your soul upon the sure nail of the Lord’s sayings? Some of us rest our eternal destiny solely upon the truthfulness of Christ. When we take all His promises together, what a fullness of confidence they create in us!
“How firm a foundation, you saints of the Lord,
Is laid for your faith in His excellent Word!”
Furthermore, the gracious man obeys His precepts. No man can be said to keep Christ’s sayings unless he follows them practically in his life. He is not only teacher but Lord to us. A true keeper of the Word cultivates that spirit of love which is the very essence of Christ’s moral teaching. He endeavors to be meek and merciful. He aims at purity of heart and peaceableness of spirit. He follows after holiness even at the cost of persecution. Whatever he finds that his Lord has ordained, he cheerfully performs. He does not kick at the Lord’s commands as involving too much self-denial and separation from the world. He is willing to enter in by the strait gate and to follow the narrow way because his Lord commands him. That faith which does not lead to obedience is a dead faith and a false faith. That faith which does not cause us to forsake sin is no better than the faith of devils, even if it is so good—
“Faith must obey her Father’s will,
As well as trust His Grace:
A pardoning God is jealous still
For His own holiness.”
So now you see who the man is that keeps Christ’s sayings. That man receives, through the Word of God, a new and everlasting life, for the Word of God is a “living and incorruptible seed, which lives and abides forever.” Wherever the seed of the Word drops into a soil which accepts it, it takes root, abides and grows. “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” It is by Christ’s sayings, or by Christ’s Word, that life is implanted in the soul—by that same Word, the heavenly life is fed, increased, developed and at length perfected. The power and energy of the Holy Spirit which work through the Word are used as the beginning, the sustaining, and the perfecting of the inner life. The life of Grace on earth is the blossom of which the life of Glory is the fruit. It is the same life all along, from regeneration to resurrection. The life which comes into the soul of the Believer, when he begins to keep Christ’s sayings, is the same life which he will enjoy before the Eternal Throne in the realms of the blessed. We may know what keeping Christ’s sayings is from the fact that He Himself has set us the example. Note well the 55th verse, where Jesus says concerning the Father—“Yet you have not known Him; but I know Him: and if I should say, I know Him not, I shall be a liar like unto you: but I know Him, and keep His saying.” We are to keep our Lord’s saying, even as He kept His Father’s saying! He lived upon the Father’s Word and therefore refused Satan’s temptation to turn stones into bread. His Father’s Word was in Him so that He always did the things which pleased the Father. When He spoke, He spoke not His own Words, but the Words of Him that sent Him. He lived that the Divine Word might be executed—even on the Cross He was careful that the Scripture might be fulfilled. He said, “He that is of God hears God’s Words” and this was so truly the case with Him that He said, “My ears have You opened.” The Word was everything to Him and He rejoiced over His Apostles because He could say of them, “They have kept Your Word.” He, whose Word you are to keep shows you how to keep it! Live towards Him as He lived towards the Father and then you shall receive the promise He has made: “Verily, verily, I say unto you, If a man keep My saying, He shall never see death.” If love is the fulfilling of the Lord’s saying, our dearly-beloved but now departed friend kept the saying of Christ—for in that matter many Believers have done virtuously, but he excelled them all. He has not looked on death.
II. The Glorious Deliverance: “He Shall Never See Death”
Our Lord did not mean that he shall never die, for He Himself died and His followers, in long procession, have descended to the grave. Some Brethren are cheered by the belief that they shall live until the Lord comes and therefore they shall not sleep, but shall only be changed. The hope of our Lord’s appearing is a very blessed one, come when He may. But I do not think that to be alive at His coming is any great object of desire. Is there any great preference in being changed beyond that of dying? Do we not read that, “We which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep”? This is a great Truth of God. Throughout eternity, if I die, I shall be able to say I had actual fellowship with Christ in the article of death and in descent into the grave, which those happy saints who will survive can never know. It is no matter of doctrine, but yet, if one might have a choice in the matter, it might be gain to die—
“The graves of all His saints He blessed,
And softened every bed:
Where should the dying members rest,
But with the dying Head?”
How dear will Christ be to us when, in the ages to come, we shall think of His death and shall be able to say, “We, too, have died and risen again”! You that are alive and remain will certainly not have a preference over us, who, like our Lord, shall taste of death. I am only speaking, now, of a matter of no great moment, which, as Believers, we may use as a pleasant subject of discourse among ourselves. We grieve not that our Brother has fallen asleep before the Lord’s glorious appearing, for we are sure that he will be no loser thereby. Our Lord has said, “If a man keep My saying, he shall never see death,” and this does not relate to the few who will remain at His Second Advent, but to the entire company of those who have kept His saying, even though they pass into the grave.
III. The Great Quickener
Those Jews—what a passion they were in! How unscrupulous their talk! They could not even quote Christ’s words correctly. They said, “You say, If a man keep My saying, he shall never taste of death.” He did not say so. He said, “Shall never see death.” We may be said to taste of death as our Master did, for it is written that “He tasted death for every man.” And yet in another sense we shall never taste the wormwood and gall of death, for to us it is “swallowed up in victory.” Its drop of gall is lost in the bowl of victory. However, the Lord Jesus did not say that we shall never taste of death—neither did He mean that we shall not die, in the common sense of the word. He was using, to the Jews, words in that religious sense in which their own Prophets used them. The ancient Scriptures so used the word, death, and these Jews knew their meaning right well. Death did not always mean the separation of the soul from the body, for the Lord’s declaration to Adam was, “In the day that you eat thereof you shall surely die.” Assuredly, Adam and Eve died in the sense intended, but they were not annihilated, nor were their souls separated from their bodies for they still remained to labor on earth. “The soul that sins it shall die,” relates to a death which consists of degradation, misery, inability, ruin. Death does not mean annihilation, but something very different. Overthrow and ruin are the death of a soul, just as perfection and joy are its life forever. The separation of the soul from God is the death penalty—and that is death, indeed.
The Jews refused to understand our Lord, yet they clearly saw that what Jesus claimed tended to glorify Him above Abraham and the Prophets. Hidden away in their abusive words we find a sense which is instructive. It is not the greatness or the goodness of a Believer that secures his eternal life—it is his being linked by faith to the Lord Jesus Christ, who is greater than Abraham and the Prophets! The man keeps Christ’s saying and that becomes a bond between him and Christ—and he is one with Christ. Because of their Lord, the saints live and the living of the saints by Him brings to Him glory and honor. His life is seen in every one of His people—like mirrors, they reflect His Divine life. He has life in Himself and that life He imparts to His chosen. As the old creation displays the Glory of the Father, so the new creation reveals the Glory of the Son. Believers find their highest life in Christ Jesus their Lord—and every particle of it glorifies Him. It is also to our Lord’s Glory that we live by His Word. He does not sustain us by the machinery of Providence, but by His Word. As the world stood out into being because God spoke, so do we live and continue to live because of Christ’s Word. That which He taught, being received into our hearts, becomes the origin and the nourishment of our eternal life. It is greatly glorifying to Christ that, by His Word, all spiritual life in the countless myriads of Believers is begotten and sustained. It is clear that the Lord Jesus is far greater than Abraham and all the Prophets. Their word could not make men live, nor even live themselves. But the saying of Jesus makes all live who receive it. By keeping it they live—yes, live forever! Glory be to the name of Him who quickens whom He wills!
A sweet inference flows from all this and with that I conclude. The glory of Christ depends upon the not seeing of death by all who keep His saying. If you and I keep His saying and we see death, then Jesus is not true. If you, believing in Jesus, gaze on death, it will be proven that either He had not the power or the will to make His promise good. If the Lord fails in any one case, He has lost the honor of His faithfulness.
O you trembling, anxious souls, lay hold on this—
“His honor is engaged to save
The meanest of His sheep.”
If the saint of God, who has won thousands for Jesus, should, after all, perish, what a failure of Covenant engagements there would be! But that failure would be just as great if one of the least of all those who keep our Lord’s Word should be suffered to perish. Such a loss of honor to our All-Glorious Lord is not to be imagined! Therefore if one of you who are the least in your Father’s house do really trust in Him—though you are encumbered with infirmities and imperfections—He must keep you from beholding death! His Truth, His power, His immutability, His love are all involved in His faithfulness to His promise to each Believer. I want you to take this home with you and be comforted. Yes, and if I have some foul transgressor here this morning—the grossest sinner that ever lived—if you will come to Christ, lay hold upon His gracious saying—keep it and be obedient to it—you shall never see death! There is not a soul in Hell that can ever say, “I have kept Christ’s saying and I have seen death, for here I am.” There never will be such an one, or Christ’s Glory would be tarnished throughout eternity! Keep His saying and He will keep you from seeing death!
How eagerly did my departed friend long for the conversion of those who came to the Tabernacle! He was never satisfied while any were unblessed. He had great longings. He loved revivals and missions. Tidings of souls saved stirred his inmost soul. Oh, that his prayers, while he was with us, may be answered now that he is gone from us! He not only lived among us, but he lived in our hearts! He needs no praise from me—his praise is in all the Church. He will require no monument—all your hearts are his memorials. Never can I forget my beloved fellow worker either in time or in eternity! Beloved, the real William Olney has not seen death, although with many tears we must lay him in the grave next Wednesday. Pray much for me—my loss is not to be measured. Pray much for his dear family, whose loss cannot be repaired. Amen.