Facing Death

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.

Our Resurrection in Christ

Doubtless there were many sermons preached on Easter Sunday, April 20. I did preach on the theme from I Corinthians 15. While I think that recognized religious holidays give pastors an opportunity to preach and that such holidays give churches an opportunity to share the essentials of the gospel, I think there is great benefit in the position that every Sunday is “Resurrection Sunday” and that the Christian Sabbath is the great day of week. It is a promise of the believer’s rest in Christ (Heb 4:1-10).

The idea of the Sabbath that Jesus taught that “…the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath,” relates to the promise of the resurrection and our union with Christ Jesus by faith. I am referring to the immense and often under rated benefit of the Christian believer’s union with Christ or, as it is commonly referred to, one’s relationship with Christ.

John Calvin argues thoroughly in his commentary on I Corinthians 15 that there is “a mutual and reciprocal result” established from Christ to us and from us to Christ. Behind Paul’s argument in that chapter, stands the reasoning that if Christ has risen then believers will be raised and if Christ has not risen then believers will not be raised. Equally, if believers are raised then Christ must be raised and if we are not raised from the dead then Christ has not been raised. He even goes so far to reason that “Christ did not die or rise again for Himself, but for us…” and he states further that Christ’s resurrection finds its purpose not in himself but in its result of the resurrection of his own members.

There is a connection or rather a union here. This is a relationship but more than a relationship defined in the common sort of way of an emotional connection. Nor is the believer’s relationship with Christ merely economical where we simply get things (salvation, justification, redemption, resurrection, heaven, etc.) from Jesus. As real as emotional and economical benefits in Christ are, something more profound is expressed.

What we should understand is that our relationship with Jesus by faith is one of union or identity. Christ’s death becomes the death of the believer by faith. Christ’s resurrection becomes the believer’s resurrection by faith. By this I do not mean to imply that ours is merely a spiritualized death or resurrection. No, we must truly die to self and our body of sin must die yet the penalty of death for sin is fulfilled by Christ for us so that our death is not penal (see Westminster Larger Catechism Q85). The essence of the substitutionary atonement is that Christ bears the believer’s sin, its guilt, and its required punishment for them. In this faith union believers are also sharers in his resurrection. As surely as he was raised from the dead believers will be bodily raised from the dead too. Indeed, the purpose of the resurrection of Jesus is the resurrection of believers in him. Christ has entered into his glory. Believers, by their faith union in him, enter into their share of his glory. The great Sabbath Rest is pictured and promised at every public Sunday/Sabbath worship. You see, every Christian Sabbath is Resurrection Sunday.

Christ was raised for us! (Romans 6:1-14)

Trumpets

In my devotional reading from Numbers I was reading about the Lord’s command to Moses for him to make two silver trumpets, “…for calling the assembly and for directing the movement of the camps.” (Numb. 10:2). Now this was an eminently practical method of communication at that time. Yet, my mind wandered to the reference of trumpets as a means to call the assembly in the Bible.

There are nearly twenty verses in the English New Testament that refer to the trumpet or its sounding. If you are thinking most of these refer either to the voice of Christ or the last trumpet when Christ returns you are correct. Perhaps the most famous of those is I Corinthians 15:52, “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.”

As God ordered Moses to create the sounding trumpets to call the people of God together was he foreshadowing the promise of the last trumpet, the final call? Isn’t that the believer’s fondest hope? We are still pilgrims wandering in the wilderness of sin in this life (I Peter 2:11). We don’t live under the Mosaic administration but we wait for the sounding of the trumpet to call us to assemble together before the Lord (I Thessalonians 4:16).

I can’t help but think that God was setting the stage for the final trumpet call in that command for Moses. We are the people of God. He calls us to worship him every Lord’s day but that day is only a promise of the Sabbath rest to come (Heb 3:16-4:10). That Sabbath will be ushered in by the final and glorious trumpet call. Will you be ready? Will you hear it and rejoice?