A Devotion from Clarence E. Macartney

“He is not the God of the dead, but of the living.”
—Mark 12:27

In the Bible, the nature of the life to come is not so clear as the fact of the life to come. Yet we are not left without hint as to what the nature of that life will be.

The Bible tells us that our personalities persist, go on. The Sadducees, who did not believe in angel or spirit or resurrection, once came to Jesus with that question about the seven-times-married woman who had survived all her husbands. The Sadducees wanted to know whose wife she would be in the Resurrection. Jesus told them that they misconceived the nature of the Resurrection and the future life. He reminded them of what God said to Moses at the burning bush: “Have you not read, … ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.’ God is not the God of the dead but of the living.” Personality, the you, the me, goes on.

The Bible tells us that the future life will be a life of great power and endowment—the “powers of the coming age.” Paul said our bodies in the life to come will be like the resurrection body of Christ. If so, what an organ of expression we will have and what a platform of existence on which to stand!

Since we are to have so wonderful an organ of life and expression, it follows that we will have some great and high use for such a body and such a spirit. Here in this life all the noblest human work is done in connection with ignorance, suffering, sorrow, vice, and sin. But one day all those things are to pass away. What, then, will be the work of redeemed souls? What has Moses been doing since God buried him on Nebo’s lonely mountain? What has Elijah been doing since the day he went up to heaven in a whirlwind? That we must leave to the infinite resources of God.

Further, the Bible tells us that the life to come will be a life of holiness. This we learn from one of those great “no mores” with which the Bible describes the heavenly life: no more sea of separation, no more night, no more fear, no more tears, and no more curse—that is, no more sin. We will do naturally and gladly what God wills. Then, with every evil cast out, clothed and in our right minds, we will stand before the Creator as God designed us at the beginning when he said, “Let us make man in our image.”