What would you want on your tombstone?

Posted on March 11, 2010 
Filed under Opinion

What is the resurrection to you? What part does it hold in your thinking?

NSW Moderator of The Presbyterian Church, Chris Balzer, wrote this for the Presbyterian magazine, Pulse:

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“A few months ago a friend and I ‘discovered’ the graveyard at Sofala NSW.

From my perspective, the most interesting inscription on a tombstone was this:

The dust of Vestry Walker, who slept in Jesus 28th August 1875, waits here (until) the morning of the first resurrection.

If you call yourself a Christian, would you be pleased at the thought that your relatives might use similar words on your tombstone? I would.

What theological insight those relatives of Vestry Walker had! Can you see the theology?  

1. What is in the grave? Just dust.

Vestry Walker is not there. If anyone went to the cemetery to talk to Vestry, he would not hear them. Where is he?

Remember that Jesus said to the thief on the cross: “I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise.” (Luke 23:43)

Do you join with the Apostle Paul in saying (and meaning it): “I am torn between the two: I desire to depart and be with Christ , which is better by far; but it is more necessary for you that I remain in the body.” (Philippians 1:23-24)

Oh that Christians in the year 2010 had the same theological understanding on this point as those in Sofala in 1875 when they commissioned Vestry Walker’s tombstone!

2. There will be a resurrection of the body.

Do you believe that? We believe this because Jesus’ body was raised. “But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. ….. Christ, the first fruits; then, when he comes, those who belong to him.” (1 Corinthians 15:20,23)

Christ is the first fruits of all his adopted brothers and sisters: he goes first, and they follow. We are to be raised bodily because Jesus first rose bodily, and all Christians are ‘in Christ’, united to Christ.

Of course, that final result of being ‘in Christ’ only happens because the Christian has always been ‘in Christ’. When you and I go to work, go home, go to bed, relate to our family, we are united to Christ. That’s why we need to be holy – because he is holy.

The same truth about the bodily resurrection of all Christians is found in 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17.

“For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever.”

We Presbyterians have a wonderful theological heritage in our Shorter Catechism. It is a beautiful and yet concise statement of Biblical theology. If only we knew and then believed the theology taught there, we’d be better Christians than we are.

Q. 37. What benefits do believers receive from Christ when they die?

A. When believers die, their souls are made perfectly holy and immediately pass into glory. Their bodies, which are still united to Christ, rest in the grave until the resurrection.

Q. 38. What benefits do believers receive from Christ at the resurrection?
A. At the resurrection, believers, raised in glory, will be publicly recognised and declared not guilty on the day of judgment and will be made completely happy in the full enjoyment of God forever.

If we modern Christians really believed these Biblical truths, imagine what the result would be!

1. If we really believed that only those who trust in Christ for their salvation will go to be with him after they die, then we’d be more involved in missionary work abroad. More of us would go ourselves, and more of us would financially support those who do go. It was for this reason that, in the late 18th century and the first half of the 19th century, thousands of Europeans left the comparative comfort and safety of their homes to preach the gospel in far away places, knowing that many of them would die there and never see their loved-ones in Europe again. The men knew that many of their wives would die on the mission field. The women knew that they would bury many of their children there.

2. If we really believed that only those who trust in Christ for their salvation will go to be with him after they die, then we’d be more involved in evangelism here in Australia, both where we live and in other places in our nation.

But, I fear that most of us have been seduced by the spirit of the age in which we live, an age which either believes and teaches that all people on earth, regardless of their attitude to Jesus Christ, will go to heaven, or believes and teaches that when we die, that is the end. There is nothing more. So, we might as well eat, drink and be happy in this life – because there is no other.

3. If we really believed that when you and I go to work, go home, go to bed, relate to our family, we are united to Christ, then our lives would be holier than they are. It’s no accident that Almighty God has said to his people: “Be holy because I , the LORD your God, am holy.”(Leviticus 19:2)

So, you be the judge: Were the relatives of Vestry Walker right or wrong?”

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The Rev. Chris Balzer is Moderator of The Presbyterian Church of Australia in NSW.

Published in Pulse, February 2010.