He left his entire estate to the University College Hospital in London, with one stipulation: that his body be preserved, dressed in his finest clothes and wearing a hat, seated in one of his favorite chairs, and placed where it would be in attendance at every hospital board meeting.
His body can still be seen in a large mahogany cabinet in the hallways of the University five days a week. So to this day, when it is time for the annual meeting of the administrators, the cabinet is rolled into the board room, and the chairman of the board, in calling the roll, says, “Jeremy Bentham, present but not voting.”
Bizarre, yes. But in spite of all his efforts, Jeremy Bentham has remained dead for more than 180 years.
Charles Spurgeon once said, "The child of God knows his good works do not make him acceptable to God for he was acceptable to God by Jesus Christ long before he had any good works." Closer to our time, Andy Stanley has observed, "The New Testament comes right out and says what the Old Testament implies: No one will reach God by being good."
You see, the most righteous person on the face of the planet still has to depend on the finished work of Christ for salvation. The Scripture says that all our righteous deeds are like filthy rags when compared to the righteousness of God. All of our best efforts to live “good” lives, to be righteous before God and others, are like a dead body propped up in a mahogany cabinet. There is no life there. There is no vitality. There is only darkness and death.
And that is what we were before Christ. Ephesians 5:8 tells us "For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light." We were dead, as dead in our spirits as Jeremy Bentham is in his body. "But now" we have been given life through Christ! We should live that way, so we do not have to prop up our dead works of religion as if they were Bentham's body.
The Good News is that through Christ, we can have life, and have it abundantly. Is that your testimony today?
--Rocky Henriques, www.uticabc.com