Death, Where Is Your Sting?
A Pastoral Reflection on Preparing to Die Well.
J. R. Herschell
Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust [Adam], we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven [Jesus].
I tell you this, brothers: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality. 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. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
1 Corinthians 15:49-56 Esv
Death is an utterly strange thing. No matter who we are, we will someday die. No matter who we love, they will all someday die. We live in a virtual reality of sorts until someone close to us swims across the river which John Bunyan labeled as “the river of death” in his famous Pilgrim’s Progress. When the one we loved has gone, when the love remains but they’ve moved on, it is then that we are thrust back into the truth that many of us don’t like to read about, think about, ponder on, or wade into very far - the simple truth that we will all die.
Ten out of ten people will have a last coffee (tea, or drink they loved), a last outing, a last hug from that family member they hardly got together with, a last Christmas, a final time where they will share with someone about their dreams, goals, and plans for the days they assume will come. Finally, should they be a believer, a last time in worship with the church where they hopefully gained some ground in their preparation for their last day; that day when they would meet the Lord face to face.
Christian’s among other things, have become known through the ages, not for living longer than non-believers, not for a life less troubled than non-believers, but for dying better than those who have no hope. The ability to die well is that otherworldly grace, shared in by those who know and love the Lord, which has single-handedly confounded many a non-believer throughout Christian history. If you were about to be thrown to the lions, or sawn in two, or burned alive because you would not “curse the Christ” as Polycarp and many others were instructed to do, you would need to know - among other things - how to die well; how to look up as you were about to die just as the Spirit filled Stephen did - to see the Lord before you always, even then in your last moments, so as to be unshaken (Psalm 16:8).
One story that seems to have grabbed me of late, which moved me to the point of tears even as I sat in the middle of the coffee shop where I was writing about it, is that of Reverend John Harper, a man who lost his life when the Titanic sank. On that cold night which was the 14th of April 1912, there were over fifteen hundred people that went into the icy waters, and only six of these were rescued on lifeboats. Among these people who went into the waters, was a man by the name of John Harper (39). Harper was a Baptist Pastor who was the first pastor of Paisley Road Baptist Church in Glasgow, Scotland. Under his care, the church had quickly grown from twenty-five members to over five-hundred. After this, Harper had moved to London to pastor Walworth Baptist Church. By 1912, Harper was a widower with a six year old daughter.
It was at this time that Harper was heading to the Moody Church in Chicago to minister a second time, following his trip there in the previous year. On this particular trip, his daughter and sister were with him, who both managed to get on board one of the lifeboats when the Titanic hit the iceberg. After loading his daughter onto one of the boats with the other women and children, Harper went with the remaining passengers into hypothermia inducing cold water. John, who was fortunate enough to be wearing a life-jacket, happened across a young man gasping for air on some debris. Between breaths, John said to him, “are you saved?” The young man, who was stiffening under the assault of the cold water, said to him that he was not.
When Harper heard the response of the man, saying that he was not saved, he took off his life jacket, and put it on the young man he encountered with the accompanying words, “here then, you need this more than I do.” Without wasting any time, Harper then tried to lead him to Christ. He then swam away to other people to try and lead them to the Lord in his final minutes. His last call that was heard, as he gasped for his final breaths, was a loud cry, “believe in the name of the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved!” Just moments later, he fell beneath and under the water, where he died. Before his death, the young man whom he had given the jacket to, gave his life to Christ.
John was, in his life and death, just like his master - a good shepherd, who lays down his life for the sheep (John 10:11-18). He preached his last message, but God’s pulpit for his final sermon was not in the Moody Church of Chicago, but between the icy waves of the North Atlantic Ocean.
I think about death quite often. Not in a depressive, melancholic type of way, but soberly and with a single conviction that seems, on occasion, to echo into the very fibres of my being - that I will one day stand before Christ. I will give an account of my days, my actions, my deeds, my flock (my own family and those others entrusted to my care), concerning my level of obedience to his call. If a Christian does not ponder the day which is coming, or tries too hard to evade death, having the same fear as those without Christ, I would lean towards suggesting that they are likely still un-formed, ill-equipped, or at worst still among those without the hope of the Gospel altogether.
When a teacher begins to teach students, they will always look at the learning outcomes, the dates of the assessments, and will begin to set these times before the students in order to help them be the most prepared, should that teacher have any legitimate sense of competency in that field. Pastors are called, along these lines, to help equip and prepare the flock to die well. Knowing that their days are numbered (Cf. Psalm 90:2, Psalm 139:16), and that their time is any time (John 7:6). Those who are ready to die do not salute an emperor, like a gladiator in the colosseum, but rather commend themselves to God with a clean conscience sprinkled by the blood; a circumcised heart, and a with a ready prayer to offer in those final moments - should they be given time to pray it - “receive my spirit Lord Jesus” (Acts 7:59). The Christian is one ready to die because they have already died.
What a sweet thing it is to think of death and have no fear of dying. When a soul has truly been united with Christ in a death already died, and raised together with Him in a resurrection already achieved, there is no fear of what is to come. The one who has died, and has been raised with Christ retains no dominant fear of dying. On the contrary, it is the one who is living and has not yet died; the one who loves their own life that fears death, who loses that which they have tried to keep (Matthew 16:25).
One of the most wonderful aspects to a true Christian faith, is a fearlessness about passing through the river of death. Most people are not ready to die. Most people fight for more time. I couldn’t if I wanted to begrudge this position. It is a most natural thing, because as I said before and will say here again - it is an utterly strange thing to die. The breath of God in us wills us on, but the curse of Eden does not let any escape without returning to the dust. I say this of course with the exception of Elijah and Enoch - albeit there are some eschatological views which suggest that they will return for a natural death at some point too. Furthermore with an exception towards those who will not sleep but will be changed in a moment when Christ returns to rule and reign and the dead in Christ rise, followed by those still living, to meet him in the air in that great inauguration ceremony shared in by both heaven and earth. Without exception everywhere else it seems, “It has been appointed once for man to die, and then the judgement.” (Hebrews 9:27)
The Christian does not labour for more time, but to be spent well when their time comes; to be ready at any time to meet the Lord; to be unlike the halfdrunken cup which is wasted - but instead, to have been fully poured out for the Lord and his work. There may yet remain a small voice of worry in the soul of a person who lays on a hospital bed and finds themself short of breath, or with colder feet as the blood moves to keep vital organs functioning, but there is a louder voice which soothes the mind and settles the stirring heart from its worries. It is the voice of the good shepherd, who having been through the river of death himself, does not only show the way of life, but the way of dying well. Our Lord knows exactly where we should enter, when to take us across, and how much grace we will need to make our own journey.
Heaven is not the hope for the Christian, the resurrection of the dead is the hope. Paul said that he stood trial because of his “hope of the resurrection of the dead” (Acts 23:6). The day of the Lord is the day of the new body. If there was no resurrection for the Christian, then the believer who suffered physically and lost their lives early through martyrdom would have suffered great loss. Indeed one might argue why it would be necessary for Christ to die a physical death, if physical lives or bodies were not at stake. Christ died a physical death because the second death is a physical death. Conversely, eternal life granted by God and receievd for those found in Christ, will be lived in eternal ressurected bodies.
“Truly, truly, I say to you, an hour is coming, and is now here, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live. For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself. And he has given him authority to execute judgment, because he is the Son of Man. Do not marvel at this, for an hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and come out, those who have done good to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment.”
John 5:25-29 Esv (emphasis added).
In Philippians 3, as Paul was discarding all the things which he had previously had security in, his Israelite heritage, zeal, righteousness under the mosaic law, and his religious excellence, his motivation for doing this seems to have been two fold:
a. That he may gain Christ and be found in Him (on the day of the Lord).
b. That He might know Jesus and the power of his resurrection.
Paul’s clear hope in this passage is as he states, to attain the resurrection of the dead, not to get to heaven. Now we know Heaven is real and that those who are absent from the body go to be with the Lord (2 Cor. 5:8). Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5, that for him it was more desirable to depart and be with the Lord, to enter heaven to be with Christ, but that he remained for a time for the sake of the disciples who needed him.
Heaven is a place of waiting, not a place of permanent residence. Angels were made for Heaven and they visit earth, humanity was made for earth and those in Christ visit heaven. Just as we have taken on the nature of Adam’s earthly body, so we also will take on the nature of Christ’s heavenly body - which is a real and physically resurrected body that both Mary and Thomas (among others) touched or held on to (Cf. John 20:17, 24-29). Think about this for a moment - that right now in heaven there is a resurrected man who stands and sits at the right hand of God (Cf. Colossians 3:1, 1 Peter 3:22, Mark 16:19, Acts 7:56). Christ did not die so that we would have a mansion in the sky, or stay in heaven forever. Jesus himself is only there until his enemies become his footstool (Cf. Psalm 110:1, Acts 2:34, Hebrews 1:13). The early disciples clearly understood that heaven had to receive Jesus for a time, until the time comes to restore all things (Acts 3:20-21) at which point he will return in the same way that he left, coming on the clouds of heaven (Acts 1:11). When Jesus returns we will receive a resurrected and imperishable body just like his. This is what Peter calls our living hope - the resurrected and resurrecting Christ (the one who is already raised and will raise us too).
What the Christian hopes for is their heavenly dwelling, and that is their resurrected body (2 Corinthians 5:1-18). The disobedient will suffer a real and physical second death in the lake of fire (Revelation 20:15), but the true believer (the obedient) will be delivered from it, and clothed with a body that is fitted to endure for eternity on the renewed earth. It is in the renewed heavens and earth, where we will forever be with the Lord (Revelation 21:3).
This becomes significant for those of us who have witnessed others die; those of us who have watched someone waste away in front of us. When I burried my sister (32) earlier this year, her body had been broken for some time. She had suffered from severe epilepsy since we were children. I watched her gasp for air with a blue face on many occasions, fall to the ground in public places in sudden convulsions, and struggle in her last months with a broken shoulder that moved her into immense pain whenever she had another seizure. Many had prayed for her healing and I was one of these, and yet we did not see it. I have seen other people healed, but she was not. Without going too deep into the providences of God, I suppose my primary point here is to highlight that many people began to say that she was in a new body in heaven. As well meaning as this was and is, it is not yet the case that she has a new body. Her body is still buried, and her spirit is with the Lord. But one day, her new body will come out of the grave and be re-united with her spirit. When Jesus cried out to his Father on the cross, he said these words,
“Father, into your hands I commit my spirit!” And having said this he breathed his last.
Luke 23:46 Esv
Jesus was quoting from Psalm 31, which has an amazing gem of truth there if we would care to read the very next line,
Into your hand I commit my spirit;
you have redeemed me, O Lord, faithful God.
Psalm 31:5 Esv
Our Lord’s final hope, as he yielded his spirit and left his body behind, was that God had already redeemed his life and would certainly raise him again. This is what Peter meant when he said,
Therefore let those who suffer according to God’s will entrust their souls to a faithful Creator while doing good.
1 Peter 4:19 Esv
Yielding his body to a rugged Cross was the highest good that anyone was ever able to do, and Jesus did this in the hope of a life redeemed. His spirit did not need redemption, as it had not been the part of him punished or afflicted, but his body which would sleep until the third day. Let us remmeber that sins are committed in the body, and the sinner is then judged in the body for what they have done (Cf. 2 Corinthains 5:10, John 5:29, Romans 2:6). That is why it was essential that God send his son in the likness of sinful flesh to be judged as the sinner in the flesh (Cf. Romans 8:1-4).
The word redeemed in Psalm 31 is pāḏâ which means to ransom; to rescue. Jesus entrusted his spirit to God in the hope that his body would be rescued from its mangled state.
This is the hope for the Christian as they prepare for death, a certain assurance: that on their dying day, they can entrust their spirit into the hands of the Father, and to the Lord Jesus, but not without the hope that their body will one day be rescued from the grave too.
As Jesus died He knew that God had already rescued his body from decay. For us then, today, or tomorrow, or 50 years from now, whenever our time comes, we can die our death in the knowledge that we will be with the Lord in paradise, on that same day (Luke 23:43). Furthermore, in our death, as we look down at our hands or feet for the last time, we can be assured that there will certainly come a day when the ground we are buried under will break again and a new and better version of whatever this body is, will rise up from it. Just as that stone moved from the grave on Easter morning, the ground will also one day give way to the dead in Christ who will rise first, before those who are still living will meet him in the air. In the meantime, we can entrust ourselves to our creator. We can do good, and live ready. Harper was not afraid to die, and I think it a good ambition to be ready to face such a sudden death, as easily as he, for the glory of Christ and with the goal of saving any and all, by any and all means. For all those who have lost one they loved, you can rest well knowing that they are with the Lord if they loved him, but their body - will someday be rescued as well. Do not fear the decay of a loved one’s body. It is only a seed, by something much more glorious will spring up from the same place where it has been planted.
Until that day, we can continue to pray, “come, Lord Jesus.” (Revelation 22:20).
Amen.
(Death, Where Is Your Sting? Is an excerpt from an up and coming book entitled: “Water For The Branches Of The Vine” - J. R. Herschell)
