O Death, Where Is Your Sting?

The death of a father and grandfather in a head-on automobile accident, the death of a local business man after a year-long bout with cancer and failing kidneys, the death of a twenty-nine year old mother after two years of battling Hodgkin’s disease, the death of a twenty-year old, only son, in an automobile accident. These have been in our family’s personal experience during the Thanksgiving and Christmas season. Beyond this circle of death are the scores killed weekly in Iraq and within the last week the tens of thousands in southern Asia swept into eternity by killer tidal waves. Still other headlines stand gloomily in the background; Baghdad blast that kills 29, fetus-snatch suspect appears before Judge. Bad news is nothing new, but sometimes it reaches deafening proportions with death always standing there with its sickening grin. The king of terrors ultimately silences every tongue, snatches children from their parents, severs marriages, and leaves incalculable grief in its wake. The poet, Shelley, grasps the reality of death, “Death is here and death is there. Death is busy everywhere, all around, within, beneath, above is death and we are death.”

If your worldview is defined by belief in human evolution, death is reduced to various forms of road-kill. Naturalism views death as the extinction of personality and individuality. If we are matter and nothing else, death is merely the exclamation point at the end of a hopeless life. The dirty little secret of humanists (those who view God as a wish-fulfillment) is the cold assertion, as stated in the Humanist Manifesto II, “…there is no credible evidence that life survives the death of the body.” To Eastern Pantheistic monism (Hinduism and Buddhism) death is framed in terms of karma (you are getting what you deserve) and reincarnation (recycled existence without any pardon for sin). The bleak summation of a monistic interpretation of reality is that “no human being in the sense of individual or person survives death.” According to an Islamic worldview, death takes one either to paradise or hell based upon good works weighed out by Allah.

When we invite the Christian worldview into the room with the Bible as its final authority, we are given the truth about death. God decreed that death would reign as the penalty of sin (Gen. 1:27, 28; 2:17; Rom. 5:12; 6:23; 7:13). Adam and Eve were created able not to sin. They were warned that death would come if they disobeyed God. Satan denied the possibility of death (Gen. 3:4). The Evil One always wants us to avoid the reality of death. Adam and Eve experienced death when they willfully disregarded God’s command and ate the fruit from the tree of good and evil (Gen. 3:7, 19; 5:5). A state of spiritual death occurred immediately. Physical death began its ugly work. The curse of sin and death enveloped the entire creation. Man, the sinner, gave himself over to rebellion against his Creator (moral evil). Nature fell under the bondage of decay (Rom. 8:19-22). The earth groans (natural evil). The animal creation became red “in tooth and claw.” Cats eat birds, weeds take over the garden, and drought and blight kill crops. Tornadoes destroy property and lives, mosquitoes bite and infect with malaria, earthquakes move the ground, and tsunamis sweep away property and lives.
Is there any hope for this curse-ridden creation and death-plagued humanity? There is. The irony is that the end of death is found in death. The death of Jesus Christ is the moral and spiritual center of the universe. The death of death has occurred in the death of Jesus Christ (Rev. 21:22, 23; Heb. 2:14; 2 Tim. 1:10). Spiritual death (the separation of man from God) is abolished through faith in Christ (Eph. 2:1-3). Physical death is defeated through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead (1 Cor. 15:20-28; Jn. 5:21-28). The second death can have no power over the believer because of his union with Christ (Rev. 20:6; Rev. 2:11). By submitting to death Jesus Christ triumphed over it. The sting of death has been removed by His atoning death. Freedom from the fear of death is found through repentance and faith in Jesus Christ.

When we look into the faces of those who have been brutalized by death, the love and compassion of Christ should flow from us. We will reach out in mercy to help relieve the physical pain and misery. We will give of our resources. We will show up in some way to help. We cannot remain as bystanders offering theological explanations. We will be moved to support those in the body of Christ who are near the human devastation. We will increase our efforts to take the gospel of Jesus Christ of those who have survived and who will one day themselves die. They must know that the sting of death has been removed in Jesus Christ.

Dr. Howard E. Dial
Berachah Bible Church