A death of a family member recently occurred in our church's fellowship. This prompted me to write about something we all experience. Most people if indeed not all believe something happens at death even if they say that nothing happens, that the person ceases to exist. That statement is a statement about something, and that "something" is a statement about existence. All this opinion making is a faith or belief statement. No one has ever come back to tell us what to expect except one, the Lord of life, the one who has conquered death. He didn't give us a lot of specifics about the experience but more importantly he gave us promises because, well, we know death is pretty final. But the Christian has hope in Jesus Christ. The non-Christian has just pure speculation and fear.
The Bible, as the very word of God and of Christ Jesus as the Holy Spirit directed the human authors to write it, gives a broad understanding about death in many places. This is where confessions and creeds help us because they summarize the Bible's teachings found in many places about particular subjects. Creeds and confessions aren't the word of God but they are helps. In that vein I want to look at the Westminster Confession of Faith chapter 32 as a helpful guide to what the Bible teaches and what the Christian believes. Here is help for you when you face this inevitable experience in your life.
The chapter begins, "The bodies of men, after death, return to dust, and see corruption:..." The Christian believes what the Bible teaches in Genesis 3:19 that God promised Adam and his posterity that he/they would die and their bodies return to the dust of ground from which they were taken because of Adam's sin. "The wages of sin is death..." (Romans 6:23). This is the first point about death. Death isn't natural in the sense that is a necessary part of God's creation. It is the common experience and is the natural affect of sin but death didn't have to be a part of our experience. In fact, before there was sin there was no death. The presence of death reveals the presence of sin (Romans 5:12).
Secondly, death is not just physical. There is a spiritual death. In fact we are born physically alive but spiritually dead (Ephesians 2:1-3). It is by the gospel promise, faith in Jesus Christ alone, that God makes us spiritually alive (Ephesians 2:4,5)
Physical death results in the separation of the two component parts of a human being. At conception a union of a soul or spirit and a body is formed and person has being. Death is the violent separation of these two parts as a judgment for sin against a holy God. Because the sin of Adam is imputed to all human beings descending from Adam by ordinary means (Romans 5:12-14) that sin has corrupting effects on the physical bodies of all human beings and makes them subject to suffering, disease, and death. This is the third point we need to understand about death.
Even Christian believers die. Flesh and blood, these corrupted bodies, cannot inherit the kingdom of God (John 3:5,6: I Corinthians 15:42). Yet for the Christian believer, his death is not a judgment but an entrance into the holy presence of the risen Jesus Christ. Because of Christ's victory over death, God uses death as an act of his love to finally free believers perfectly from sin and misery experienced in this life in the union of their corrupted bodies (Isaiah 57:1,2; Revelation 14:13). This is the fourth point about death we need to understand. God uses an "evil," death, by his love for the good of his people. Christian believers being united to Christ are freed from sin and misery at death.
Here we see God's grace in the face of the terminal condition we all face. We all know and experience the corruption at work in us due to sin. The amazing grace is that God turns the death sentence of sin into a blessing in Christ by his love for us in Jesus Christ. We can chose to ignore death but it will come. We can pretend to have no fear of death but death will take your life, your loved ones, and all that you hold dear. It is relentless. The Christian has hope despite all this because Jesus has conquered death for him.
