The Death of Death

I hate death. It is an enemy. No matter how many euphemisms we employ to distract us from its insidious reality, the fact remains that when loved ones “pass,” “depart this life,” or “fall asleep,” they are taken from us. They die. Relationships that we cherish are disrupted. Life as we have grown to know it irreversibly changes. Real loss results.

That is why I do not want a “celebration of life” when I die. I want a funeral. Death, in all its ugliness and unnaturalness, should be appropriately protested. It was not part of God’s original creation.

The truth is that death is a malevolent intruder that mocks both life and the Giver of life. Solomon recognized this, and it caused him to publish his meditations on this painful reality:

Then I said in my heart, “What happens to the fool will happen to me also. Why then have I been so very wise?” And I said in my heart that this also is vanity. For of the wise as of the fool there is no enduring remembrance, seeing that in the days to come all will have been long forgotten. How the wise dies just like the fool! So I hated life, because what is done under the sun was grievous to me, for all is vanity and a striving after wind. (Eccl. 2:15–17)

It is no wonder that the Apostle Paul calls death an enemy. It is the “last enemy.” The longer you live, the more familiar that enemy becomes. Not only that, but also the final battle with that enemy grows closer with each passing year.

Fortunately, Christians do not face death alone. Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, has gone before us. He has faced and defeated death. Each of the four Gospels describes our Savior’s battle with death in graphic detail. The three years of His public ministry were preparation for that cosmic conflict. Every event, every teaching, and every step that Jesus took was along the path that led to Calvary.

As He entered Jerusalem the Sunday before His crucifixion, Jesus spoke of the necessity of His impending death. With the cross only a few days in front of Him, He said: “Now is my soul troubled. And what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? But for this purpose I have come to this hour” (John 12:27). He was born to face death.

And face it He did, in all its repulsive, destructive fury. On the cross, Jesus experienced the agonies and shame of death. His body was torn. Oxygen stopped reaching His organs. His blood stopped flowing and His heart stopped beating. After committing His spirit into the hands of His Father, “he breathed his last” (Luke 23:46). He died.

The visible realities of Jesus’ crucifixion and His physical death are the ones that resonate most with our senses. Watching someone die is a sober, grief-inducing experience. There is a last breath. A final heartbeat. A moment when death overtakes life. Jesus experienced that. Yet the physical trauma was not the most significant reality of His death. As has been well said, the soul of Jesus’ suffering was the suffering of His soul.

Scripture has a variety of ways to describe the internal suffering that death inflicted on Jesus. The fourth and final Servant Song found in the book of Isaiah (52:13–53:12) focuses on the painful experience that the Messiah must endure. Words such as “griefs,” “sorrows,” “stricken,” “smitten,” “pierced,” “crushed,” “oppressed,” “afflicted,” and “grief” are used to depict the agonies of our Lord in His crucifixion. They primarily describe not His physical suffering but “the anguish of his soul” (53:11) that He must experience to fulfill His mission.

On the night that Jesus was betrayed, He labored in prayer in the garden of Gethsemane as He awaited His betrayal and arrest. Hours from having a crown of thorns pressed on His head and being nailed to a cross, knowing what He was facing, Jesus prayed, “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will” and then, “My Father, if this cannot pass unless I drink it, your will be done” (Matt. 26:39, 42).

Why such graphic language by the prophet? Why such plaintive petitions by Jesus? After all, other men have faced unjust death—even the humiliating and torturous death by crucifixion—without such expressions of agony. Was the death that Jesus experienced different from that of other men?

Indeed, it was—not because He experienced less than others who die but because He experienced much, much more. Because of who He is (His person) and what He was accomplishing (His work), Jesus’ death is unique. Others die as mortal sinners. Jesus died as the eternal, sinless Son of God who became flesh. Others die as a consequence of the sin in which they participate as members of a fallen race. Jesus died as the only man who knew no sin (2 Cor. 5:21) but who chose to lay down His life to take away the sin of the world (John 1:29).

“The wages of sin is death” (Rom. 6:23). God made that clear to Adam when He warned him not to eat of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil in the garden of Eden, “for,” God said, “in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die” (Gen. 2:17).

The question can legitimately be asked, “Why didn’t Adam and Eve immediately die the day they ate the forbidden fruit?” God judged them, showed grace to them, and provided forgiveness for them before exiling them from the garden. But He did not immediately bring their lives to an end. Why not?

We can understand the answer to this question when we consider that the Bible teaches that we all face three kinds of death in this world. They all result from sin. First, sin brings spiritual death by separating sinners from God’s favor. Second, sin results in the decay leading to physical death when the soul is separated from the body. Third, eternal death results when a spiritually dead person experiences physical death. At that point, the sinner is cast into hell to endure everlasting punishment for sin against God.

Adam and Eve immediately experienced spiritual death when they ate the forbidden fruit. The wonderful fellowship and communion that they had enjoyed with God was broken by sin. They immediately became spiritually lost, in need of being found, and spiritually dead, in need of spiritual life. Furthermore, their sin caused the seeds of physical death to be planted in their lives. Though they did not immediately die physically, from the moment of their disobedience they began the process of physically dying. Life as they had known it would now one day come to an end. What is even more tragic, because of their spiritual death and certain impending physical death, the prospect of eternal death loomed over them.

All this is what sin does. It separates us from the life of God. It brings death. Every cemetery you drive by is a testament to that original sin that sprouted in the garden of Eden and has since permeated Adam’s race in every age. As Romans 5:12 says, “Sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned.”

We rightly teach our children, “In Adam’s fall, we sinned all.” As our representative, Adam plunged the whole human race into sin when he fell. That is why funerals exist. That is why friends and loved ones, as well as you and I, face physical death.

That is also why each one of us came into this world spiritually dead. Sin separates us from God’s favor. Sinners must be reborn by the power of God’s Spirit so that they can turn away from sin and trust the Lord Jesus for salvation. Until our sin is dealt with, until it is forgiven, we remain spiritually dead, in need of new spiritual life.

Spiritually dead people are headed toward physical death, which, apart from the saving grace in Christ, will result in eternal death. All this is because of sin. For death to be destroyed, sin must be overturned.

That is exactly why the Son of God took on flesh. As Hebrews 2:14–15 explains:

Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery.

God became man to set us free from the power of sin, Satan, and death.

Jesus Christ, by His life of obedience to God’s law, secured the spotless righteousness that God requires of every man, woman, and child. By His death on the cross, He atoned for the sins of His people, canceling the debt and condemnation that their sin incurs. By His resurrection from the dead, Jesus conquered death. As Peter put it on the day of Pentecost, “God raised him up, loosing the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it” (Acts 2:24). It was not possible because He was and is the God-man.

All that Jesus accomplished through His life, death, and resurrection is freely given to those who believe. Through sheer grace, God saves anyone and everyone who trusts Jesus as Lord. That grace, Paul says, “has been manifested through the appearing of our Savior Christ Jesus, who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel” (2 Tim. 1:10). By His life, death, and resurrection, Jesus “abolished” death. He destroyed it. He deactivated it.

Why, then, do believers still die? They don’t—at least not spiritually or eternally. Though believers were once “dead in our trespasses,” by the power of the gospel God has “made us alive together with Christ” (Eph. 2:5). Further, because we believe in God’s only begotten Son, we will “not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).

Certainly, physical death—the separation of our bodies from our souls—still awaits us. But even that dimension of death has been defanged. By Jesus’ bodily resurrection from the dead, our Lord has demonstrated that He has defeated physical death, too. His resurrection guarantees the resurrection of all who by faith are “in Christ” (1 Cor. 15:20–23).

When a believer dies, his soul is transported into the presence of the Lord while his body returns to dust. This is what it means to be “away from the body and at home with the Lord” (2 Cor. 5:8). Physical death ushers the soul of a believer in Christ into the immediate presence of Christ. This is why Paul could say, “For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain” (Phil. 1:21). Believers have Christ now through faith. Upon physical death, their souls will have more of Christ, since faith is no longer needed to behold Him. In that disembodied state, they remain until the day of Christ’s return, when their “perishable” bodies will be raised to be “imperishable” (1 Cor. 15:42; see vv. 35–49; 1 Thess. 4:13–17).

This understanding of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus transforms how those who trust Him understand and face their own death. Physical death, though still “the last enemy,” is a defeated enemy for Christians. Death cannot destroy believers because our Savior has destroyed it. It immediately delivers us into the presence of Christ, where we will await its final, ultimate banishment on the day of the resurrection of our bodies in Him.

So with the Apostle Paul, every Christian can say:

When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written: “Death is swallowed up in victory.” “O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?” The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. (1 Cor. 15:54–56)

Christ has taken away our sin and fully satisfied the just demands of the law. One Puritan referred to death as leaving the land of the dying and entering the land of the living.

The nineteenth-century evangelist D.L. Moody expressed this confidence when he wrote in his autobiography:

Someday you will read in the papers that Moody is dead. Don’t you believe a word of it. At that moment I shall be more alive than I am now. I was born of the flesh in 1837, I was born of the spirit in 1855. That which is born of the flesh may die. That which is born of the Spirit shall live forever.

Indeed, Christians will live forever because the death of death is certain. The Captain of our salvation has defeated it. Like a mortally wounded animal, it still thrashes about, but the day is coming when even the last vestiges of it will be completely removed. On that day, our Lord will make everything new. On that day, there will be a new heaven and a new earth in which only righteousness dwells (2 Peter 3:13). God Himself will live personally and directly with His people. There will be no more “mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” God Himself “will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more” (Rev. 21:4).

So at my funeral, I hope that those who gather will, in addition to protesting death, also appropriately mock it as a defeated enemy. Though it has done its worst, it does not and cannot have the last word. Jesus has secured forever the death of death by His life, death, and resurrection.

Therefore, in Christ and with Christ, the destiny of every believer is this: though we die, we most assuredly will live.