A Meaningful ‘You’

“I myself will go down with you to Egypt, and I will also bring you up again, and Joseph’s hand shall close your eyes.”

Human beings long for transcendence.

The Bible teaches it. God has “put eternity into man’s heart”. Paul says God rewards those who through patience in well-doing seek immortality, and that reward is the eternal life they are seeking.

Observation also confirms it. Death is a universal reality, but few men welcome it, believers or unbelievers. I’ve seen the panic in their eyes. I’ve heard it in their voices. The idea that there might be no more “me” in the universe is intolerable.

Let me assure you, it was intended to be intolerable. Longing for transcendence is not only ordinate, it’s honorable. When you lose that desire, you become sub-human. You violate your own design and mock your Designer.

Searching for Meaning and Comfort

The materialist analyzing God’s promise to Jacob quoted above would be quick to point out that either God failed to keep that promise, or else he kept it in a way that, at least to an unbeliever, would be less than perfectly satisfying. God said to Jacob, “I will bring you up again”, meaning back from Egypt to Canaan. There are only two possible ways in which that promise might have been biblically fulfilled, and neither involved Jacob ever seeing the land of promise again with his own eyes. That’s a feature, not a bug, and it’s right there in the promise: “[Your son] Joseph’s hand shall close your eyes.”

That’s what happened. Jacob died in Egypt, after much fanfare and two chapters of family drama and prophetic observations on his deathbed, in the presence of his beloved son Joseph, exactly as promised.

Let me ask, in what sense could we reasonably say that the word “you” in the phrase “I will bring you up again” predicts anything Jacob should have found meaningful or comforting? Nothing the average unbeliever would acknowledge as “Jacob” ever came back. That unique being departed this world from Egyptian soil. The physical husk that formerly was home to his soul or spirit (or whatever it was that made him him) was embalmed over forty days and carted up to the cave of Machpelah in state, where his family mourned over him for seven days. But at that point Jacob the man was long gone. In the absence of evidence to the contrary, materialists would conclude he simply ceased to exist.

A “You” That Matters

The Christian happily affirms that Jacob came back in more than one very real sense. There is indeed a meaningful “you” in that promise to Jacob. God is no fraud. He keeps his word, and he keeps it in ways all will agree are perfectly satisfactory. Christians claim a hope of transcendence just like Jacob’s on the basis of Christ’s promise, “I go and prepare a place for you.” Sure, it’s a promise made to his disciples, but subsequent scripture makes very clear all who truly follow Christ as his disciples did will share their destiny.

So then, what is this “you” that has so much meaning, and how does it contrast with the expectations of those who do not know Christ?

Well, there are two biblical ways God might have fulfilled his promise to bring Jacob back to Canaan. Neither would mean much to the materialist, but they mean quite a bit to those who know and love the God of Jacob, and both involve the transcendence we are all seeking.

Raised in Glory

First, Jacob’s body came back. Materialist and Christian alike agree that Jacob wasn’t in it in any meaningful sense, but we part ways when we consider the eternal destiny of Jacob’s remains.

The materialist has to acknowledge that while Jacob’s embalmed body deteriorated more slowly than the average corpse, it still began to decay, and it did so fairly quickly notwithstanding all the efforts of the Egyptians. By now it is surely gone, returned to the earth, providing nutrients for microorganisms and enriching the soil. For the materialist, there is no more Jacob, and no meaningful “you” in God’s promise.

The Christian says, “Wait a minute”, and flips in his Bible to 1 Corinthians 15, where he finds the apostle Paul speaking about the resurrection process like the end product of a seed or a kernel going into the ground. The “seed” is man’s physical remains, sown in dishonor, but in the hope of transcendence, to be raised in glory in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet, imperishable and immortal. Imagine that! A God who can make something great out of the worn-out shells we leave behind, often after decades of use and abuse. “The dead in Christ will rise”, meaning their decayed bodies. (Their spirits, of course, are already with the Lord.) If you think about it, that’s so like him. When the Lord Jesus fed the 5,000, he used a little boy’s lunch to do it, and the leftovers filled twelve baskets. He takes something wholly inadequate to the task, then works glory with it.

So then, God still has a purpose for the detritus of Jacob, however atomized or dispersed it may currently be. He will remake it in the image of his Son, turning Jacob’s “five loaves” into a glorious harvest bearing fruit for eternity. So the Christian affirms that Jacob indeed was brought up again to Canaan, and he awaits the last trumpet today along with all who believe, in hope that his body, soul and spirit will one day be reunited and transformed into glory. Blessed hope!

Raised with Company

Secondly, Jacob’s children came back. That’s biblical too, isn’t it. When God promised Abraham or Jacob, “I will make of you a great nation”, neither had any expectation that the promise would be fulfilled personally or in their lifetimes; it couldn’t possibly. Nevertheless, that assurance meant something significant to the patriarchs. It meant transcendence. For Jacob, the prospect of his great-great-grandchildren realizing the promise was as good as getting it himself. By faith, they were an extension of him.

To be fair, materialists like to talk about “living on through others” too, maybe because it’s the only kind of transcendence they can hope for, other than maybe negotiating their way through the digestive system of worms. So they pass on little pieces of their acquired wisdom to their children in hope of living on through them in some abstract sense, though they will certainly not be conscious of it if they do. I recall a mother sitting at our dining table over forty years ago, as her teenage daughter complained about her failed relationships. “Well dear,” she opined, “you have to go through plenty of frogs before you find your prince.” You will have to be the judge of whether that mother was passing on anything that transformed her daughter’s life for the better or through which we might say she “lived on”.

Again, this is not the case for the believer. Abraham, it’s written, “is the father of us all”. How is that true? Abraham’s true children, both physical and spiritual, partake of the faith of Abraham, an offering pleasing to God — in fact, without faith it is impossible to please God. All who believe the promises of God show that they have the spiritual genetics of Abraham. He lives on in us. Likewise, all who share Jacob’s faith partake of Jacob, those of us who value the promises of God so keenly we would lie, cheat or steal to acquire them, though such shenanigans are never necessary to accomplish the purposes of God; those who would wrestle with angels if given opportunity, or hobble around like cripples for the rest of our lives if it meant getting a blessing. Like Abraham and Jacob, we transcend when we pass on truths and values to be preserved for eternity in Christ, especially when we do it at personal cost. Paul did it without even getting married and having children. Timothy was his “true child in the faith”.

The Christian is not just to be raised in glory, but to be raised with glorious company.

Coming Back Twice

So then, Jacob came back to Canaan twice, once physically, and once by proxy through his children, both times in justifiable hope of transcendence according to the promises of God.

Is there a meaningful you or a meaningful me? The materialist cannot produce one. He is a trivial, random part of an unfeeling cosmos with no telos. The Christian can. He knows he is an eternal being raised with Christ and destined for everlasting reward in fellowship with all those who share his faith, and especially with the One who is its basis.