The death of death

Heavenly Father we thank you for your living and powerful Word. Help us by your Spirit to hear it and believe it. Renew our minds.In Jesus’ name, Amen.

An online BBC article a while ago said:

It’s hard to grasp what a solid reality the afterlife was to most British people before the 20th century.

That’s right, and it’s a terrible indictment of how far we’ve fallen away from robust Biblical Christian faith. If we’re going to recover that kind of confidence, then the teaching of 1 Corinthians 15 is vital for us. Its theme is the reality and power of the saving death and resurrection of Jesus and our resurrection that follows from it. We’ve been looking at this over the last few weeks, and after a break we’re back for the final section of the chapter (1 Corinthians 15.50-58). You can catch up online with the rest of this series if you missed it. I intend (somewhat eccentrically perhaps) to make my way backwards through this passage. So here’s my first point:

1. Without a robust hope of resurrection we’ll move when we should stand still and we’ll stop when we should keep going

That’s a mouthful of a heading, I know. It derives from 1 Corinthians 15.58. As I said, I want to start at the end. Here’s that verse:

Therefore, my beloved brothers [and sisters], be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labour is not in vain.

There are two images here. There’s the image of the follower of Christ, steadfast and immovable, standing his or her ground, holding the line. The reason that’s difficult is that there are all kinds of pressures pushing us to move off the ground of faithfulness to Christ and his word. Satan uses all the tactics he can think of. We latch on to the attractions of sin that promise so much and deliver so little. The Godless world around us both entices us and bullies us to conform to its ways. So the pressure we face to move off the foundation of Jesus is very great, but we mustn’t budge. There’s also the image of getting on with the work – going places for God, and those same pressures from the world (the flesh and the devil) are working very hard to stop us working for Jesus. So Paul says on the one hand stand firm – let nothing move you, and on the other hand always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord – let nothing stop you. Why not? Because you know that all this hard work for the cause of Christ is not in vain. That is, you already know what the end result of all your work is going to be.

How? Well, that takes us back to the first word of this verse: Therefore. That is, “Because of everything I’ve said in this chapter so far”, stand firm and keep going. And what’s he been saying? We can sum it up in one word: RESURRECTION. That’s our hope in a nutshell. Resurrection. And that’s what motivates us to faithful following of Jesus in the face of otherwise overwhelming pressures. Now that’ll make sense to you if you’re a believer, but some of you here will have no clear hope of resurrection at all. Let me say a word to you. Some of you, as you look towards death, will simply anticipate darkness. If that’s you, and if deep down you yearn for an alternative to a future of black darkness, then please take a long hard look at Jesus, who said of himself that he is the light of the world. Others of you won’t be certain. You just have vague notions of some kind of existence beyond death but it’s all incoherent and unclear in your mind. To you I would say that we don’t need to be vague and unclear, because there is one who has uniquely been through death and come back to tell us what lies beyond. And that, of course, is Jesus. So find out from him what the truth is.

What we all need in the face of the difficulties of life and the reality of death is a robust hope of resurrection. Admittedly it’s a long time ago now, but I remember well the year when Vivienne and I were engaged. In many ways it was a hard time for us. But what enabled us to get through it was the knowledge that the difficulties of the engaged state were temporary. Before long we’d be married and those difficulties would end. And so they did. Plenty of new difficulties came along, of course, but that’s another story. All the difficulties of engagement are just a distant memory for us now. The knowledge we all have as believers of our future resurrection life is what enables us to get through our hardships now. However severe those hardships may be, they are temporary. The great reformer John Calvin, commenting on this chapter, said:

If the resurrection hope was taken away, the whole structure of religion would collapse in ruins, as if the foundation had been torn out.

Without a robust hope of resurrection we’ll move when we should stand still and we’ll stop when we should keep going. That’s the first thing.

2. It is Christ who gives us the hope of resurrection in the face of death

Look up now to 1 Corinthians 15.56-57. Here they are:

The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

God is God. He made us. He is Lord. He knows what is best for us. That’s what he’s set out in his law – the maker’s instructions. We owe it to God to live according to his law. We even owe it to ourselves if we know what’s best for us.

But at the heart of our troubles is that we don’t want God to be God. We’d rather that we ran our own lives without reference to him. And that’s what we do, and that’s sin. So the due penalty of the law falls to our account. And there’s the sting, that’s what makes death deadly because the wages of sin is eternal death. The price of our sin is that all we have to look forward to is hell not heaven. Or, that would be case but for Jesus. In a way that’s wonderful beyond words, Christ has drawn the sting. When he poured out his blood for us on the cross, he was dying the death we deserved. He was paying what we owed. Then after his death, on the third day, he rose from the dead into a transformed resurrection life. By so doing he made sure that death itself would be buried for ever. The resurrection of Jesus was what Paul calls back in 1 Corinthians 15.23 the firstfruits. Those who belong to him will share in the resurrection that he has pioneered.

Randy Alcorn’s book Heaven is a systematic, very helpful and inspiring discussion of what the new heaven and the new earth will be like according to Scripture. He says:

The physical resurrection of Jesus Christ is the cornerstone of redemption – both for mankind and for the earth. Indeed without Christ’s resurrection and what it means – an eternal future for fully restored human beings dwelling on a fully restored Earth – there is no Christianity.

The resurrection hope that we have is entirely dependent on Jesus. It comes through him alone. He it is who gives us the victory. It is Christ who gives us the hope of resurrection in the face of death. But how are we going to experience that? That brings me to my next heading:

3. We need to understand the stages on our journey to The Kingdom of God

What does Paul have to say about this? Take a look now at 1 Corinthians 15.50-55:

I tell you this, brothers: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. Forthe trumpet will sound, andthe dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality. When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written:“Death is swallowed up in victory.”“O death, where is your victory?O death, where is your sting?”

To understand what’s going on there, we need to be clear on the answers to three questions:

i). What’s the situation for us now?

We are mortal humans (both body and soul) and our home is here on this decaying earth for this stage of our lives. It’s not that we are human souls who have temporarily taken up residence in earthly bodies like renting a holiday cottage. Our bodies are as much us as our souls. To be human means to be body-and-soul.

ii). What happens when we die?

To understand that, we need to know that, in some way that’s beyond our ability to grasp clearly, there is another place, separate from this cosmos we inhabit but just as real even though we cannot see it. The Bible calls that other place heaven, and heaven is the dwelling place of God. At the ascension, the risen Jesus went to heaven. That is where he is now: at the right hand of God. There with him are the angels. When we die trusting in the death of Jesus for our sins, our dead body remains here, but our soul is taken to heaven to be with Christ. This is a temporary state, with body and soul separated by death. This heaven, separate from earth, is not our permanent home. It is not our final destiny. The apostle Paul calls this stage sleeping. This is the sleep of death. I’ve got round to reading a biography I was given last Christmas, of the clergyman-poet John Donne. He used this image of sleep in his poem Death Be Not Proud, which ends:

One short sleepe past, we wake eternally,And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die.

There’s a lot we don’t know about this intermediate state. But we do know that if we’ve put our trust in Christ, then when we die we’ll be safe with Christ. And we’ll be waiting. What for? That’s the third key question. So:

iii). What does the future hold?

There is a day when Christ will return to this world, this earth, from heaven where he is now. We don’t know when that will be, but we do know that day is getting closer all the time and it could be soon so we need to be ready for it now. When Christ returns he will, as it were, bring heaven with him. The last trumpet will sound. The angels will accompany him. So will the souls of all those who’ve already died trusting in Jesus and are sleeping. Read 1 Thessalonians 4.13-18 for more on that. And that will be the day of resurrection. From 1 Corinthians 15.51-52:

We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, 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.

Those who’ve already died will be raised from death, body and soul, as Jesus was. They’ll enter into a new resurrection existence, body and soul. Those still alive here on that day will be transformed into this new resurrection existence without passing through death, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, as Paul says. 1 Corinthians 15.53:

For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality.

And this whole world, this earth, this cosmos will itself be raised from death and renewed. As Paul says in Romans 8.21:

…the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.

Creation itself will be renewed into a glorious new resurrection existence which will be a fitting home for all the countless millions of resurrected people of God. Heaven and earth will be united eternally, and God and his people will live together in peace and joy.

Joni Eareckson Tada is an American Christian woman who broke her back many years ago in a diving accident when she was seventeen. She has been paraplegic ever since. It takes her and her carers two hours just to get her up in the morning and ready for the day. Next week she celebrates her 75th birthday. She says:

Somewhere in my broken, paralyzed body is the seed of what I shall become. The paralysis makes what I am to become all the more grand when you contrast atrophied, useless legs against splendorous resurrected legs. I’m convinced that if there are mirrors in heaven (and why not?), the image I’ll see will be unmistakeably ‘Joni,’ although a much better, brighter Joni.[Heaven, Zondervan publishing, Joni Eareckson Tada]

We saw last time how Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15.49:

Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust [that’s Adam], we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven [that’s Jesus].

We will be like the risen Christ. The new heaven and earth will be the perfect physical and eternal home for the vast number of redeemed and resurrected people of God. That will be the fullness of God’s blessing. We will enjoy feasting and fellowship with the rest of God’s people. And we will enjoy God’s good creation – with all the best, we might say, of town and country. All the best of earthly life will be present and transfigured. Everything we’ve put on hold for now to serve the Kingdom of God we’ll be able to enjoy. Personally I’m looking forward to building some spectacular bridges. And going mountaineering – which I’m far too scared and decrepit to do this side of the new heaven and earth. But above all, we will see God directly in the face of Jesus, and we will glorify him and enjoy him for ever.

We desperately need the hope that comes from this amazing God-given resurrection vision in 1 Corinthians 15. Given all the pressures on us from the world, the flesh and the devil, unless we have this robust hope of resurrection we’ll move when we should stand still, and we’ll stop when we should keep going. 1 Corinthians 15.58 again:

Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labour is not in vain.

Let’s pray:

Heavenly Father we praise that you that in Christ you have given us the victory. Thank you that Jesus who died for our sins and was buried has been raised from the dead as the firstfruits of our resurrection. Thank you for the living hope we have in him of eternal life in the new heaven and earth. Please strengthen this hope in us. Fill our minds and hearts with this hope, so that we will stand firm and always give ourselves fully to your service until your Kingdom comes. In Jesus name. Amen.Where, O grave, is your victory?Where, O death, is your sting?Eternity is won for meBy heaven's eternal King.[Ben Slee © Christ Church Mayfair 2015]

That’s the chorus of our next song – so let’s rejoice in our resurrection hope as we sing this together. Please stand.