I Wonder What Happens to Us When We Die?
This is our theme this coming Sabbath as we close out our series “Wonders of the Faith.”
I once attended a “wake” where one of the family members pretty conspicuously refused to be in the room with the open casket. I circled around to see how he was doing, and discovered he was an oncologist by profession. He admitted to me that he struggled dealing with death and his mantra was “Life is for the living!”
Woody Allen famously stated: “I’m not afraid to die, I just don’t want to be there when it happens.”
Our culture is known for being a “death-denying” culture. We tend to feel more comfortable avoiding the subject of death and dying.
To a degree, it is healthy to be afraid of death. This fear can help keep us alive—and we need to have a healthy sense of caution about the unknown. However, it is not healthy to try and ignore the subject of our own death. All of us are going to die—there are no exceptions. It’s healthy and important to face the fact that one day we will die.
Biblically speaking, death is separation. There are two parts to death: spiritual and physical. In Genesis 2:17, God tells Adam and Eve that in the day they eat the forbidden fruit, they will “surely die.” Adam and Eve fall—they eat the fruit—but physical death did not occur immediately. God must have been speaking about spiritual death—the separation from God we see in Genesis 3:8. When Adam and Eve heard the voice of God, they “hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God.” The relational connection of open, comfortable, free relational fellowship had been broken.
Someone without a personal connection and relationship with God is spiritually dead. Paul describes it as “being alienated from the life of God” (Eph. 4:18). Before salvation, we are dead spiritually, but through the new birth, Jesus gives us life: “And you He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins” (Eph. 2:1).
The book of Revelation speaks of a “second death” which is final (eternal) separation from God. Only those who have never experienced new life in Christ will partake in the second death (Rev. 2:11; 20:6; 21:8).
It is healthy to not want to die! It is also a great blessing to know Christians have nothing to fear from death. We know by faith that what the Scripture says is indeed true: “Nothing can separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord!”
I hope you’ll join us this Saturday as we look to the Bible for more answers and as we celebrate those whom have chosen to give their lives to Christ through baptism!
Your pastor,
Duff
