Death is not a subject on which most of us want to linger, for it is the enemy of the life we love. Today, Sinclair Ferguson explains how Christians are to think of death, that we may face this foe with hope in our risen Lord.
Welcome again to Things Unseen. And if you’re a new member of our podcast community, perhaps I should say that each week we reflect on a particular topic that’s important for our daily Christian lives. And I probably should add that if you happen to have joined us this week, we’re thinking about something profoundly serious, but something the masters of the spiritual life have always regarded as supremely important. It’s the subject of the four last things, and today we’re thinking about the first of them: death.
It’s not a subject in which most of us want to linger, although your lawyer may remind you that it’s important to do that. And there are actually good reasons for not wanting to think about it, and the chief one is that you don’t want it to happen because you love life, and you love the people in your life. And life is such an amazing gift from God. We didn’t choose to have it. We didn’t contribute to its beginning. Even our parents didn’t know who they were going to get. But we love being alive, and if we’re Christians, we do actually love the world in which we live because it’s God’s creation. And we also see people who go through enormous trials, privation, suffering, and yet they still love life because they love the Lord, and they love being in the world He made.
I find it one of the most fascinating things about God’s common grace that people who seem to me to be quite unpleasant individuals still are given the privilege of loving life. We have an inborn love for and concern about our world, and other people, family, and friends mean so very much to us, and we don’t want to lose that. We are made to love life; not to hate it.
When we no longer love life, something has become disordered either in our bodies or, perhaps, in our minds. And death itself, by definition from a biblical point of view, is a disorder. Sometimes we read of someone famous who died of natural causes. But nobody dies of natural causes—death is not natural according to Scripture; it’s unnatural. It’s disruptive of the created order. It’s an enemy of the life that God created human beings to enjoy. And because of that, it’s quite natural for us to hate death because it leads to disintegration. That’s why Paul says in a magisterial statement in Romans 5:12 that sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin. That’s why we all die: sin—Adam’s sin, others’ sin, our sin, my sin.
Sin is the sting of death, and its sting injects corruption into our mortal bodies. We were wonderfully created out of the dust, given the breath of life, created as the image of God, but it’s as though we’ve received a lethal injection that means death will work its way into every particle of our physical being and we will disintegrate into the dust from which we came. And when we love life as Christians and learn to think properly about death, then we do hate it for what it is in itself and for what it does. We’re going to die. Our bodies are going to disintegrate. The future for our bodies is bleak—and it’s worse than bleak for someone who isn’t a believer.
It seems to me that the person who says that they love life but that they view death with equanimity must be self-deceived. So, I’m not really so surprised when I read the famous poem by the Welsh poet, Dylan Thomas, in his agony about the way his father died:
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
How wonderful it is when the gospel of Jesus Christ bursts onto the stage as a message of hope as well as faith and love. How blessed the day when Jesus’ death drew the sting of death. How blessed the day when in His resurrection, death was defeated. And how blessed will be the day of His return, when He will finally destroy death—the day, as Revelation 20:14 tells us, when death and Hades will be thrown into the lake of fire, never to appear again. That’s why for believers who die, death that is our enemy also becomes an entrance into life eternal with Jesus Christ, who has conquered death.
And friends, that means that when we breathe our last, we will be able to say to those we love in Christ: “I go gently into this good night to be with Christ. I love you, and I will see you in the morning.”
