The Bible does
not want us to be ignorant of death, because it is the final foe to be
defeated. Paul emphasised the fact that we are not to be in the dark about any
of the great truths contained in the Scriptures as he wrote: ‘My goal is that
they [i.e. Christians] may be encouraged in heart and united in love, so that
they may have the full riches of complete understanding, in order that they may
know the mystery of God, namely, Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures
of wisdom and knowledge.’ (Colossians 2: 2 – 3)
Louis Berkhof
commented: ‘Death is not a cessation of existence, but a severance of the
natural relations of life. Life and death are not opposed to each other as
existence but are opposites only as different modes of existence.’[1]
In the Bible,
there are many pictorial images of life and death. In the book of Job, life is
depicted as a breath (7: 7), a swift messenger (9: 25), a flying eagle (9: 260,
and an intangible passing shadow (14: 2). In comparison, death is compared to a
crushing of a moth (4: 19), the harvest crop being gathered in (5: 26), a
vanishing cloud (7: 9), and a tree being chopped down (14: 7 – 11).
Christians
should be the realistic people, facing death and embracing our mortality. We
are reminded: ‘It is better to go to the house of mourning than to go to the
house of feasting, for this is the end of all mankind, and the living will lay
it to heart.’ (Ecclesiastes 7: 2)
Although
Christians are not impervious to death, much research has shown that they do
live fourteen years longer than the general population. It is not to say that
Christians have divine intervention, otherwise they would not die at all, but
it is because they generally live healthier lifestyles, are less likely to
drink or smoke too much or be sexually promiscuous.[2]
However, death
is a common experience (with the exception of Enoch [Genesis 5:24] and Elijah
[2 Kings 2: 11 – 12]) for we are told ‘Just as man is destined to die once, and
after that face judgement…’ (Hebrews 9: 27). Thomas Cranmer reminds us in the
words of the funeral service in the Book of Common Prayer: ‘In the midst of
life we are in death, earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, in sure and
certain hope of the resurrection.’ However, for those who love God, we should
experience the freedom from death for we are told that Jesus makes ‘free those
who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.’ (Hebrews 2:
15)
Jessalyn Hutto
has observed: ‘For many of us, the effects of the fallen world seems like a
distant theological concepts that carry little weight in everyday life. As a
result, we live with expectations befitting pre-fall Eden, rather than a
sin-broken Earth. We expect to live healthy, fulfilled lives…Our hearts yearn
for the creation to function as God intended it to, and thus we don’t naturally
expect pain, discord, or death. Yet this is exactly the inescapable
inheritance we’ve received from our first parents.’[3]
Later in her
book, Ms Hutto continued: ‘Suffering is not unique to Christians, but the way
we experience it differs greatly from the way that the rest of the world does.
The Bible says we have been united with Christ in his death and resurrection
(Romans 6: 5; 2 Corinthians 4: 10; Galatians 2: 20) and that we, as his church,
are members of his body (1 Corinthians 12: 27; Ephesians 5: 23). The unity
between Jesus and his ransomed people greatly affects the way we suffer because
it means we do not suffer alone. We face loss, pain, and death as those loved
and comforted by our holy Saviour. Jesus tasted death (Hebrews 2: 9) and
experienced grief partly for the purpose of personally sympathising with us.’[4]
In a survey by
Dying Matters, the respondents were asked to choose what would be the most
important factor in having a ‘good death.’ The response was that 33 per cent
would like it to be ‘pain free’, 17 per cent would want family and friends with
them, one in seven wanted to retain their dignity, whereas only 5 per cent
selected having their religious or spiritual needs met. Indeed, 60 per cent of
the respondents ranked the issue of religious or spiritual needs last of the
six options.[5]
It is opinion
of many people to echo the oft-repeated words of Woody Allen: ‘I don’t mind
dying; I just don’t want to be there when it happens.’
Other people
want to find ways to avoid thinking about death. The oldest method is to ‘eat
drink for tomorrow we die.’ (Isaiah 22: 13) A W Tozer stated: ‘I believe that
entertainment and amusements are the work of the Enemy to keep dying men from
knowing that they’re dying.’
Other people
are more fatalistic as expressed by Albert Camus in the book The Outsider:
‘Life isn’t worth living…given that you’ve got to die, it obviously doesn’t matter
exactly how or when.’
It seems
contrary to the viewpoint of Quintus Tertullian: ‘it is a poor thing for anyone
to fear the inevitable.’
There is
uncertainty from a human perspective as to how and when we will die. I have
come across more Christians who are not looking forward to the method of death
rather than its actual occurrence. Gardner C Taylor has commented: ‘We have not
been promised a smooth voyage, but God does promise us a safe landing.’
There should be
something of a spiritual nature at our departing that will be passed onto
future generations. Thomas Cranmer commented: ‘Every man desireth, good people,
at the time of their deaths, to give some good exhortations that others may
remember after their deaths, and be the better thereby. So I beseech God grant
me grace, that I may say something at this my departing, whereby God may be
glorified and you edified.’
My life is but a weaving
Between my God and me.
I cannot choose the colours
He weaveth steadily.
Oft times He weaveth sorrow
And I in foolish pride
Forget He sees the upper
And I the underside.
Not ‘til the loom is silent
And the shuttles cease to fly
Will God unroll the canvas
And reveal the reason why.
The dark threads are as needful
In the Weaver’s skilful hand
As the threads of gold and silver
In pattern he has planned.
He knows, He loves, He cares,
Nothing this truth can dim.
He gives the very best to those
Who leave the choice to Him.
In a study
mentioned in the Journal of Gerontology, it was revealed that atheists had a
notably increased chance of dying over a six year period than those who are
religious. A commentator wrote in response: ‘Crucially, religious people lived
longer than atheists even if they didn’t go regularly to a place of worship.
This study clearly suggests there is a benefit in pure faith alone – perhaps
this religiousness works by affording a greater sense of inner purpose and
solace in grief.’[6]
We have a
Gospel that is full of hope as we follow the Saviour who has gone through death
and returned to assure us that it is conquered. The New Testament tells us:
‘Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet
inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles
are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them. So we fix our
eyes not on what is seen, but what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary,
but what is unseen is eternal. We know that if the earthly tent we live in is
destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built
by human hands.’ (2 Corinthians 4: 16 – 5:1)
When Benjamin
Franklin was 23 years-old, he wrote an epitaph that encapsulates the essence of
the Christian’s future experience of bodily resurrection:
The body of
Benjamin Franklin
Printer
Like the
cover of an old book,
Its contents
stripped of its lettering and gilding,
Lies here,
food for worms.
But the work
shall not be wholly lost:
For it will,
as he believed, appear once more,
In a new and
more elegant edition,
Revised and
corrected
By the
Author
It is true that
not all people have that assurance. It is told that, when she was a young child
in Holland, Corrie ten Boom worried about her own death and whether or not she
would have enough courage when the moment finally came. Her father. Papa ten Boom,
knew of her fears and calmed her heart with these words: ‘Corrie, when I am
going to take you on the train, when do I give you the ticket?’ ‘Just before we
get on board,’ came the reply. Papa ten Boom continued: ‘That’s right. Dying is
like taking a trip to see the Lord Jesus. He will give you whatever you need
just when you need it. If you don’t have the courage now, it’s because you
don’t need it now. When you need it, the Lord will give it to you, and you
won’t be afraid.’
We can be
assured as in the words of the hymn, ‘How firm a foundation’:
How firm a
foundation
You saints
of the Lord
Is laid for
your faith in
His
excellent word;
What more
can He say
Than to you
He has said,
To all who
for refuge
To Jesus
have fled?
‘Fear not, I
am with you,
O be not
dismayed,
For In am
your God
And will
still give you aid:
I’ll
strengthen you, help you,
And cause
you to stand,
Upheld by My
righteous,
Omnipotent
hand.’
‘When
through the deep waters
I call you
to go
The rivers
of sorrow
Shall not
overflow;
For I will
be with you
Your
troubles to bless
And sanctify
to you
Your deepest
distress.’
‘When
through fiery trials
Your pathway
shall lie
My grace
all-sufficient
Shall be
your supply;
The flame
shall not hurt you,
My only
design
Your dross
to consume and
Your gold to
refine.’
The soul
that on Jesus
Has leaned
for repose
I will not,
I will not
Desert to
his foes.
That soul,
though all hell
Should
endeavour to shake
I’ll never,
no never
No never
forsake.
There is
positivity in the way that Christians live on this earth, knowing that they are
going to heaven, as in the words of the song ‘My heart is filled with
thankfulness’:
For every
day I have on earth
Is given by
the King
So I will
give my life, my all
To love and
follow Him
When Christians
die, although it is a time of sadness as they are leaving those people they
love on earth, it is paradoxically a time of rejoicing as they go to meet the
Lord they love. The psalmist expressed it like this: ‘Precious in the sight of
the lord is the death of his saints.’ (Psalm 116: 15)
Just before his
death by his Nazi executioners, the German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer said
to a friend: ‘Death is the supreme festival on the way to freedom.’
It is a
sentiment agreed with by Lilias Trotter, who wrote in Parables of the Cross
(2007): ‘Death becomes a beginning instead of an ending, for it becomes a means
of liberating a fresh life.’
This certainty
had been stated by the seventeenth century poet John Donne who wrote: ‘When one
man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated intio a
better language.’ He put these sentiments into one of his poems:
Death, be
not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and
dreadful, for thou art not so;
For those,
who thou think’st thou can overthrow,
Die not, poor
Death, nor canst thou kill me.
Death is the
bookend to birth as Tony Campolo succinctly pointed out: ‘When you were born,
you cried and everybody else was happy. The only question that matters is this
– when you die, will you be happy when everybody else is crying?’
There is
poignancy as we face death. In the closing comment in the book of Deuteronomy,
it states: ‘Moses died there in Moab, as the Lord had said.’ (34: 5) The
original Hebrew actually reads: ‘Moses died…with the mouth of the Lord.’
It is a phrase that the ancient rabbis translated as ‘with the kiss of the
Lord.’ It is reminiscent of a parent saying goodnight to a child before seeing
them in the morning. Another picture could be that of Jesus Christ as the
Bridegroom kissing His Beloved goodnight before seeing them in the brightness
of a new dawn.
John Donne
expressed this eloquently: ‘One short sleep past, we wake eternally,/And death
shall be no more; death, thou shalt die.’[7]
Billy Graham
spoke of his certainty on the other side of death: ‘I’ve read the last page of
the Bible. It’s all going to turn out all right.’ He also said: ‘I know that
soon my life will be over. I thank God for it, and for all He has given me in
this life. But I look forward to Heaven.’
James Dobson
summed up his hope by declaring: ‘The final heartbeat for the Christian is not
the mysterious conclusion to a meaningless life. It is, rather, the grand
beginning to a life that will never end.’
C S Lewis
described his hope as he approached death as ‘a seed patiently waiting in the
earth: waiting to come up a flower in the Gardener’s good time, up into the
real world, the real waking. I suppose that our whole present life, looked back
on from there, will seem only a drowsy half-waking. We are here in the land of
dreams. But cock-crow is coming.’[8]
A saint from an
earlier age, John Newton, had as his final words on earth: ‘I am still in the
land of the dying; I shall be in the land of the living soon.’
The true
Christian hope can be found in the One who said ‘I am the resurrection and the
life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone
who lives and believes in me shall never die.’ (John 11: 25 – 26). Jesus is the
same Person who died and then defeated death by His resurrection.
We know that,
if we have knelt before the cross and submitted to Jesus as our Lord and
Saviour, we shall stand before the throne of God. It is then that we can say
with the apostle Paul: ‘Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is
your sting? The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.’ (!
Corinthians 15: 55) We can look clearer than than we do now at the Redeemer who
saved, saves and will save us from sin and death: ‘thanks be to God! He gives
us victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.’ (v. 56)
There is the
surety that is expressed in the opening of the Heidelberg Catechism (1563):
Question: What
is your only comfort in life and death?
Answer: That I
am not my own, but belong with body and soul, both in life and in death, to my
faithful Saviour Jesus Christ.
[1]
Louis Berkhof, Systematic Theology (The Banner of Truth Trust,
Edinburgh, 1958) p. 668
[2]
‘Religion ‘can add 14 years to lifespan’,’ 24 April 2011, www,scotsman.com
[3]
Jessalyn Hutto, Inheritance of Tears: Trusting the Lord of Life When Death
Visits the Womb (Cruciform Press, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 2015) p. 30
[4]
Jessalyn Hutto, Inheritance of Tears: Trusting the Lord of Life When Death
Visits the Womb (Cruciform Press, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 2015) p. 65
[5]
John Bingham, ‘Faith no more: Britons no longer consider turning to God in
death,’ Daily Telegraph, 18 May 2015, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/11611621/Faith-no-more-Britons-no-longer-consider-turning-to-God-in-death.html
[6]
Tom Knox, ‘The tantalising proof that belief in God makes you happier and
healthier,’ Daily Mail, 18 February 2011. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1358421/The-tantalising-proof-belief-God-makes-happier-healthier.html
[7]
John Donne, ‘Divine Poem X’ in Selected Poems (ed. John Hayward)
(Penguin Books Ltd, Harmondsworth, Middlesex, 1977) p. 170
[8]
Letter to Mary Willis Sherburne, 28 June 1963
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