RETHINKING DEATH - WHY DID HE HAVE TO DIE

RETHINKING DEATH – WHY DID HE HAVE TO DIE?

 

“Therefore let no man glory in men. For all things are yours; Whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come; all are yours.”  1 Cor. 3:21-22

Because of sin death was the outcome. Christ was here to save people from death imposed at the fall which was better defined as separation both physically and spiritually from God. With admittance of their sin they come back to God for His direction as well as the healing of the emotion, physical, and intellectual destruction from their fall. "Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that hears my word, and believes on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life" (John 5:24).

The Creator has power over death and in Luke 7:22-23, Jesus vindicated His ministry in the face of John the Baptist's question by revealing His power against the realm of death: the dead are raised, the demons are cast out, the lame walk, the deaf hear, the blind see.

He further reveals His power over death by coming out of the grave after three days. Jesus overturned death in the community and ran toward His own death (I must go to Jerusalem); He agonized over His fate in Jerusalem and wished it were already accomplished; He announced with word and deed the Resurrection Age, but He could not completely welcome His own accursed death which resurrection would vindicate. Above all else, death in the Synoptic Gospels is interpreted by the paradoxical death of the Servant who found life through the means of death.

And then look at what He says concerning death as a “gift” for the believer. It is one of the gifts given to the Christian in 1 Cor. 3:21-22.  “Therefore let no man glory in men. For all things are yours; Whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come; all are yours.” Yes, death is one of the "all things.”

What fills the heart with fear in the presence of death, either our own death or that of our loved ones? See 2 Tim 1:10-11. “But is now made manifest by the appearing of our Savior Jesus Christ, who hath abolished death, and hath brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.” Of which I am a preacher.

The resurrection is the very heart and center of Christianity (1 Cor 15:14). The resurrection was the vindication of all He said in His various teachings (Rom. 1:4). He taught that the supreme thing in human life is the spirit "Be not afraid of them that kill the body and have no more that they can do." (Matt. 10:28). Men listened and refused to believe that truth. They crucified Him eventually for making it. As far as His own essential spirit life He said "I lay down my life, that I may take it again." (John 10:17). I will go up to that which men call death, and you shall see Me die, but I, the essential spirit will take hold of My body, and bring it back again that you may behold it. His enemies said, "We remember that that deceiver said, while He was yet alive, 'After 3 days I rise again” (Matt. 27:63)--and if He never rose they were quite right, He was a deceiver; but the resurrection demonstrates the truth of His own teaching, that in the economy of God the spirit life is independent of the body, is able again at the time appointed to reclothe itself with the body, because it is the dominant factor in personality. The value of the resurrection in the mission of Christ is that of its perfect vindication of Himself, of His teaching, of His power.

                I therefore know that my sins are forgiven for that is the value of the resurrection to me personally. By that resurrection I know that the Cross is the means by which my sins are forgiven. It is the demonstration of the possibility of a holy life for me because He said, "I lay down My life, that I may take it again," and later said "I lay down My life for the sheep." That 2nd laying down of His life is the communication of life whereby we become holy. If He rose not, it is a false dream. By that resurrection there is assurance that there is life beyond. It is that thought that this verse treats.

                The central fact of the gospel according to this verse is the appearing of our Savior Jesus Christ. The central fact of that appearing is the resurrection. Here the resurrection is described as the abolition of death, victory over death. He moreover declares that, by the way of the resurrection, life and incorruption were brought to light in the gospel.

                Death is abolished by that illumination. That illumination results from that abolition. Fear of death is not only widespread but also universal. The fear of death still abides among the children of God. Death is still the last enemy to be overcome. There is a sense in which this fear haunts us and abides even after we have seen life and immortality brought to light in the gospel.

                What are the reasons of this fear? What fills the heart with fear in the presence of death, either our own death or that of our loved ones? First of all, let us remember that even if we believe man is immortal, it is still true that death is the passage from the familiar into the unfamiliar. We do not know what lies beyond; it is the journey taken that no man returns. We have all felt the terror of that as we have stood by the side of the loved one about to cross over. It is the leaving of the familiar and the reaching of the unfamiliar. It is the severing of associations, and the ending of fellowships. It is the interruption of plans and purposes, and the cessation of work. These are the things in which men find themselves in revolt. These are the things which make men afraid. These are the reasons why man does so perpetually and so persistently fight against death. That is why it is an enemy.

                What is the reason of these reasons? What lies beyond all this? How are we to account for it? This same apostle in his Corinthian letter dealing with the subject of resurrection makes this affirmation, "The sting of death is sin." The fear of death is the last activity of the conscience. Conscience deadened, hardened, seared, acts in the presence of death. Conscience asserts continuity, and in a moment fear takes possession of the soul. Do not misunderstand me at this point. I do not say that fear of death is the fear of punishment for sin in the next world. Conscience asserts continuity, and when the spirit contemplates continuity after this strange dividing line of death, and believes that death is nothing but the passing on from the familiar to the unfamiliar, the severing of old associations, the ending of old fellowships, the interruption of plans and purposes, the cessation of endeavor, then the soul is in revolt, the emotions are stirred with fear, but why? Because through sin man has lost vision of himself, of the meaning of his life, and of the things that lie beyond; because man looking out at death is blind and cannot see death as it really is in the economy and purpose of God. All the reasons which I have assigned for fear, which are true reasons are, nevertheless, false as in themselves. Death need not be, nor ought to be, the passage from the familiar to the unfamiliar; Death is not the severing of association, the ending of fellowship; it is not the interruption of plan and purpose, and the cessation of endeavor; unless all these things are out of harmony with the ages and with the God of the ages, and the purpose of the ages. If a man shall live out his life of 3-score years and ten simply in the realm of the dust, or even if a child, or a youth shall so live, as the result of faulty teaching of fathers, mothers, teachers, all these reasons for fear are there.

                Now the declaration of the text here in this verse is not that Christ destroyed death, but He abolished it. The statement is that He made death idle by bringing life and incorruption to light through the gospel. This Greek word is translated in other places in the New Testament, "made of no effect." That is the true thought here. He made death of no effect. He made death null, void, and empty. He has emptied death of all that filled the heart with fear.

                How was this done? What was the way He accomplished this fact? First of all, His own personal resurrection He abolished death. I am not dealing at all with that infinite mystery of the Cross which preceded resurrection. It was not in the hour of resurrection that He made atonement. It was in the act and article of death that He atoned. In His resurrection, He, the permanent, the continuous, the spirit, the essential, took His body out of the tomb, leaving the grave clothes absolutely undisturbed, and leaving the stone still in its place. The grave clothes were not, as we have sometimes interpreted the story, folded up tidily in one place; they were in the actual wrappings in which they had been placed about His body; the napkin was not with the grave clothes, but in a place by itself, apart, exactly where it had been about His sacred head. He had left the grave clothes unmoved, every fold as it was around His body; and the stone still there. It was when John and Peter saw those undisturbed grave clothes that they believed He had risen. If they had seen the grave clothes carefully folded and smoothed, they would have thought someone had stolen the body; but when they saw them wrapped as they had been about the body, still there and the body gone, they believed. An angel rolled back that revolving stone that men might see that He was not there. In that article of resurrection He, the permanent, persistent spirit, the essential Jesus as Man, took again that body, and by the touch of His Spirit so transformed it that it was no longer subject to the laws which are only of the material, but became the spiritual body of which Paul speaks in his great Corinthian letter in chapter 15. Thus in resurrection He abolished death, made it null and void, made it of no effect. He demonstrated for all time the fact that there is a life that can and will master death eventually, even on the physical plane.

Again look at what He says concerning death as a “gift” for the believer. It is one of the gifts given to the Christian in 1 Cor. 3:21-22.  “Therefore let no man glory in men. For all things are yours; Whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come; all are yours.” Yes, death is one of the "all things.”