This was always going to be the hardest topic in this series to write about. Even the mention of losing someone we love touches a nerve for us. Few of us can have escaped the experience, regardless of how old we are. And it can occur in more than one way, something which few of us reckon on but is nevertheless true. This post will deal with the more obvious way we lose loved ones - when they pass out of this life and into eternity. But those who have ever cared for or loved sufferers from Alzheimer's disease, from certain accidents or conditions or medical treatments that result in a fundamental change of the individual's personality will understand that this, too, is a way in which we lose loved ones. The body remains but the person we knew and loved has gone. We'll look more at that circumstance in the next post.
It's hard enough when those we love move further away geographically - when we can't be in contact with them as easily or as often as we once were. But at least we know they are still here "with us" in a real sense. We can video chat, pick up a phone, write an email or even put pen to paper. The knowledge that we can do these things is comforting, even if we follow through all too seldom. But these other losses we are talking about here are far more wrenching and far-reaching to deal with. Let's consider first, then, the subject of losing loved ones through their death.
Death is irrevocable. Death is irreversible. Death, we know instinctively, is wrong. And while we may be able to push back the more personal implications into the recesses of our minds quite successfully for lengthy periods (despite the almost daily headlines about celebrities or others who have died) the death of a loved one brings the reality and the horror home to us with an inescapable force. Somehow, the passing of a loved one often shocks us and even surprises us. Up to that point, we intellectually understood that it might happen, while simultaneously, at a deeper level, rejecting its possibility. Somehow, no matter what age a loved one is when they die, it feels like we (and they) have been robbed of a few extra years of their life.
In this whole series, we have traced "loss" back to the Garden of Eden and seen how the choices Adam and Eve made introduced the concept of loss into a creation which knew nothing of it. Then we have looked at what loss is like for an unbeliever, how the Gospel mitigates that loss for God's children on earth, and how that loss is turned to gain in heaven. We'll do the same for this subject. As an aside, we are never nearer the heart of the gospel than when we consider what Christ has done in regard to what Scripture calls "the Last Enemy" (death) through His life, His own death on the cross and His resurrection.
There are no plainer words in which God could have spelled out to Adam and Eve what would surely happen to them if they disobeyed Him and ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil:
Genesis 2:15–17 The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. 16 And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, 17 but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”
Satan deceived Eve into believing that God had been lying to them, and she persuaded Adam so that they both ate. Up to the moment that the determination to eat the fruit was firmly resolved in their minds and hearts, Adam and Eve were not subject to death themselves. They were sinless possessors of life from God with nothing in them that could have interrupted their enjoyment of Him for all eternity. But most likely before they even bit into the fruit, at the instant they set their hearts in rebellion against God, the reign of death over Adam and Eve and all their children was ushered in. That's right. Adam's action sealed the fate of all his descendants. You should hear the gavel crashing down on the sounding block, and the verdict of "guilty" being ratified for all the sons and daughters of Adam and Eve at that moment in the garden. Since Adam represented us in his attempt to overthrow the reign of God in his life, we are born with the same aversion to God's rule that he had. Since the just punishment for the sin of Adam and Eve was death, and we are guilty of the same sin, death reigns over us too as the righteous consequence for our sin against God.
We have said it before but must repeat it here. The death of Adam and Eve was comprehensive. On the day of their offence, just as He promised, God carried out the most significant part of their sentence and cut them off from His presence - they died spiritually. But also beginning at that time, the decay and degradation of their bodies that would result in their physical deaths was set in motion. So catastrophic was the act of rebellion by our parents that the whole universe came under bondage to decay as a result.
From this review, we should understand why we all know at some level that death is wrong, and that it should have no place in the creation of the God Who has life in Himself. It never belonged here. It is a monstrous blemish on God's once "very good" universe.
The account of the fall takes very few words on the pages of Scripture, but its consequences and implications for man, and their complete reversal by God, take the whole of the rest of the Bible to expound.
The writer of the book of Ecclesiastes, endowed with more wisdom and wealth than anyone else, devoted himself, his talents and his resources to discover (in the words of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy) the "Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, The Universe, and Everything." It was a momentous task, and he left no stone unturned in his zeal. When he reached the end of his research, though, his conclusion was anticlimactic (even more so than "42"): he found that there is no answer to these things for the person who refuses to acknowledge God and to live for Him. Life is meaningless. It has no purpose. It is nothing more than atoms and molecules moving around in random ways and achieving nothing of lasting significance.
So those who do not come to know God in this world have never truly been alive. Their bodies live and they enjoy many good things from God but all the while they are cut off from Him and therefore they are like Adam and Eve when first evicted from Eden - spiritually dead. What the writer of Ecclesiastes really found out is that life without knowing the God we were made to enjoy is a living death.
And that is why Jesus came - to restore lost meaning and purpose to His chosen ones, by breathing new life into them and reconciling them to God. The sinless Son of God lived a sinless life in this sinful world. He earned for His people a spotless righteousness that would become theirs upon them placing their faith in Him. Then He died an excruciating death on the cross, satisfying the demands of God's law concerning the sins they committed. With His righteousness credited to them, and their debt to the law fully canceled, Jesus broke the power of death over them. He showed this in His resurrection. It was impossible, says Peter, for death to keep its hold on Him:
Acts 2:24 God raised him up, loosing the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it.
He hushed the law's loud thunder! The debt of our sin was fully paid by Jesus and there was nothing in heaven or earth or below the earth that could keep Him dead! When we trust Him to save us from our sins, we become united with Him and our debt is canceled too. Therefore, there is nothing that can keep us in the grave either - we must rise to new life! He is the "Death of Death, and Hell's Destruction", as one hymn gloriously puts it!
Why is death so very painful for unbelievers?
We have seen that we attempt in this world to replace the good things we had in Eden but lost in the fall with man-made knock-offs. Faced with having no relationship with God to give us meaning, what do we do? We look for meaning elsewhere - in status, wealth etc., and not least in relationships with others (which are therefore fundamentally self-centered) We are driven to fill our overwhelming need for meaning and purpose. So when a loved one dies, who has played a critical, central role in supplying meaning to our lives - the role that God should have and that only He can fully satisfy - we are undone. One of the first questions to enter our minds when we are bereaved is often "what about me? - what will become of me?" Roughly translated, I think it means, "where will I find the meaning that I need and that this loved one supplied to me?" What can now fill that hole? The pain is all the greater since there is a total absence of certain future hope in most worldly philosophies. The loved one is gone forever.
How is the pain of death mitigated for believers?
The situation is very different for the believer. His/her relationship with God has been restored. The Lord more and more fully occupies His rightful place in their lives (as they are made more and more like Jesus). They derive their meaning and their purpose in Him and are not selfishly looking at relationships with loved ones to partly or completely perform that function. That is by no means to say that our relationships with loved ones are now unimportant - which is not at all the case. But it is to say that they are pursued with different motives (of selflessness) and occupy a proper place in our lives relative to our relationship with the Lord. Furthermore, if the loved one who dies is a believer, we who remain can know with absolute certainty that in a few short years we will be re-united with them in heaven.
How is death here turned to gain in glory for God's children?
And it is in heaven where we will fully understand the wonder of what Jesus did on the cross, and how it is that even the last enemy, death, is turned into gain for us! There, we will see Him as He is. There, we will be made like Him. There, we will be reunited with all those who have trusted Him to save them from their sin. There, everything will be made new. There, there will be no more mourning or weeping, no more pain or sorrow. There, we will realize with a new clarity that all our purpose and meaning is ultimately found in Him, even when it comes though the precious gifts He keeps on giving us, such as those we love. And nothing will ever interrupt the joy and the fullness of that place and that experience, because it focuses on and flows from the One Who lives forever and saves to the uttermost! This is gain indeed! And for this reason, Scripture speaks of death as a portal to future glory, and even as a gracious gift that God has given us!
