Your Children Will Return
August 5, 2008
Dear Friends,
There is nothing more devastating in life than the loss of a child. Even when parents are of advanced age and lose an adult child, it is a tragedy that can have lingering effects for the rest of their lives. Brethren afflicted with this loss may have had their faith challenged and wanted to know “why did this happen” and “what will happen to my child?”
I hope to offer true and lasting comfort to the believing parents of deceased children for I believe there is substantial evidence in the Bible that God will, in fact, raise these children from the dead to make their own choice in the Kingdom age. We cannot be dogmatic about these things, but we believe the evidence to be significant and strong.
Let’s start with the weakest evidence.
The apostle Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians that the children of believers are “holy.” He doesn’t specify what benefits accrue from such a status when he says,
For the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified by the husband: else were your children unclean; but now are they holy. (7:14)
All we can say dogmatically at this point is that there is a special status called “holy” or that they are “set apart” by God and that this new status occurs when one parent of a child believes. It is worth noting that the belief of the parent is the catalyst for this change in status before God.
The next verse we will consider is connects faith and resurrection of a child. The writer of the Hebrews tells us,
By faith Abraham, when he was tried, offered up Isaac: and he that had received the promises offered up his only begotten son, of whom it was said, That in Isaac shall thy seed be called: accounting that God was able to raise him up, even from the dead; from whence also he received him in a figure. (11:17-19)
The word accounting here in the Greek is logizomai. You may be able to figure out what the word means simply by looking at it as it is very close to the English word “logical.” In fact, that is exactly what it means. Abraham was able to figure out by logic that in order for God to keep His promises, God would need to resurrect his son from the dead. The key step is not that he figured it out; it is that once Abraham did reason it through it didn’t remain an intellectual proposition, but that he believed it. Once again, there is a connection between faith of the parent and a special status of the child. This time, however, we add a new connection and that is resurrection.
It is interesting that one of the key features of the Bible is for people to believe like Abraham. One of the most important things that Abraham believed was that God would (not “could”) raise his son from the dead. It made sense to Abraham that this was so and he believed it to the point of going to the brink of killing his son.
We will pick up here next week realizing that so far we have accomplished little except laying some groundwork.
Have a great week,
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