Section 1116
3. The third article of Job’s faith is his own mortality and dissolution
He knew and believed that he should die, return to the dust, and be consumed by worms. Though he puts an if upon man’s dying in one place, if a man die; (Job 14:14) yet it was no question with him, whether he would die or no, for in the same chapter he says, man that is born of a woman is of few days and full of trouble; he cometh forth like a flower, and is cut down; he fleeth also as a shadow, and continueth not: Man dieth and wasteth away; yea, man giveth up the ghost, and where is he? (Job 14:1, 2, 10) Nor had he any doubt about his own mortality and death, he knew that God would bring him to death, and to the house appointed for all living; (Job 30:23) he looked for it, he expected it in a little time; when a few years are come, says he, then I shall go the way whence I shall not return. (Job 16:22) Death is the fruit of sin; God threatened it in case of disobedience to his will; it entered into the world by it, is the just wages of it; and since all have sinned, none are exempted from it, or what is equivalent to it; It is appointed unto men once to die; no man can secure himself from it, or hath power over the spirit to retain the spirit; neither hath he power in the day of death; and there is no discharge in that war, neither shall wickedness deliver such who are given to it. (Ecclesiastes 8:8) Such who are hardened in sin, and would out-brave death and hell, who say, we have made a covenant with death, and with hell are we at agreement; their covenant with death shall be disannulled, and their agreement with hell shall not stand. (18) And indeed, the righteous are as liable to the stroke of death as the wicked; Your fathers where are they? And the prophets, do they live for ever? (Zechariah 1:5) It may, perhaps, seem strange, that these should die, since Christ has died for them, and abolished death, and him that had the power of it: And indeed, though they do die, they do not die like other men, there is a difference between the death of the righteous and of the wicked; Christ by dying has took away the sting of death, removed its curse, and turned it into a privilege and blessing; death is yours: (1 Corinthians 3:22) It is not inflicted on them as a penal evil, or by way of punishment for sin, but that they may be entirely rid of it; and that when their bodies are raised immortal, incorruptible, spiritual and glorious, these, with their souls, may enjoy an eternity of happiness. Death is here expressed by a destruction of the body by worms, and by a consumption of the reins; after, or besides my skin, worms will destroy this body, and my reins will be consumed within me. [5307] Death is properly a separation of soul and body; the consumption of the body in all its parts, internal and external, skin and reins, is the fruit and effect of death and the grave; where the body lying a little while, is subject to corruption and rottenness. Now by this destruction of the body we are not to understand an annihilation of it, for though the body returns to dust, and sees corruption, yet it is not reduced to nothing. The dead indeed are not; they are not in the land of the living, existing among, and conversing with men, as formerly, yet they are in being. God will destroy not only meats, but the belly; not as to its substance, but as to its present use, when it will be no more employed in the service it now is. If the body was annihilated by death, Christ would lose part of his purchase, yea, part of his mystical self, and the Spirit his dwelling-place; for the bodies of the saints, as well as their souls, are bought with the price of his blood, and are members of him, and temples of the Holy Ghost. Besides, the resurrection would not be properly a resurrection, but a new creation. [5308]