What Is the Christian’s Comfort in Death?

God’s Word describes death as a fearful consequence of man’s rebellion against God. Even before our first parents’ fall into sin, our Creator warned Adam in no uncertain terms that the consequence of transgressing His holy law is death: “Of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die” (Gen. 2:17). What kind of death did Adam and Eve suffer after they broke God’s law?

Immediately after pronouncing judgment against Adam, Eve, and the deceiving serpent—and cursing the whole created order on account of Adam’s first transgression—God “drove out the man” (Gen. 3:24) from the garden of Eden, lest he partake of the tree of life “and live forever” (Gen. 3:22). Being creatures, Adam and Eve were sentenced to a physical death, and the immediate application of that sentence took the form of an unnatural separation from their Creator’s life-giving presence. As with all unnatural separations, this one stung.

There is a sting to death, and that sting is alienation from God due to sin, but there is comfort in the gospel. The good news of salvation is that the God who levied judgment and cursed the ground also provides the cure in Christ, His only begotten Son, the promised seed of the woman who crushes the head of the deathly deceiver (Gen. 3:15). As the Apostle Paul writes: “The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Cor. 15:56–57). Christ is the great Reconciler between God and man (Col. 1:20–22) and the great Victor over sin and death.

There is great comfort available even in death, but never apart from Christ. The Bible powerfully highlights three dimensions to the comfort available to Christians as we reflect on death, especially when death is imminent.

1. Christ is supreme over death.

First, Christ is supreme over death. Isaiah characterizes death as a suffocating blanket of darkness covering all mankind, prophesying,

And he will swallow up on this mountain
the covering that is cast over all peoples,
the veil that is spread over all nations. (Isa. 25:7)

But Christ is greater:

He will swallow up death forever;
and the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces,
and the reproach of his people he will take away from all the earth;
for the Lord has spoken. (Isa. 25:8)

This is a sure word and declaration from God: He will not only neutralize the power of death, but He will swallow up death itself forever, which leads us to the second point.

2. Christ has resolved mankind’s crisis of alienation.

Second, Christ has removed the reproach of His people in the sacrificial shedding of His blood on the cross. The book of Hebrews records,

And just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment, so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him. (Heb. 9:27–28)

Christ has resolved mankind’s crisis of alienation. Furthermore, Christ not only satisfied the just wrath of God and washed our sins away by His blood, but He “redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us” on the cross (Gal. 3:13). He purchased us by His blood and paid the penalty for our sin to present us to God as His own precious and prized possession. We are not our own, and we certainly are not under the power of death. We belong to God in Christ.

3. We are secure in Christ.

Third, by the power of God we are translated from the kingdom of darkness (and death) and brought into His marvelous light (and life): “He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins” (Col. 1:13–14). And nothing—not even physical death—can snatch us out of His hand. Jesus said:

My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand. (John 10:26–29)

In life and even through death, we are secure in Christ.

Conclusion

There is much mystery in death, and the shadowy notions we have now of what we will experience when it comes time for us to pass into eternity can be unsettling. One writer reflected poignantly: “The great mystery of death, how it swallows up the lesser mysteries of life which are so perplexing! Reader, in that narrow hour we shall touch them all; and the great revelation will come next after, in the light of the Throne.”¹ But for the Christian, the comforting promise is that what awaits us after death is an eternity of blessedness in the life-giving presence of God, at whose “right hand are pleasures forevermore” (Ps. 16:11).