DEATH: A Harsh Truth; A Changeable Fact

She flipped the switch on the panel – the lights immediately evaporated from sight, and the sounds of the machines vanished. With the life-support no longer operating, it was now only a matter of time before the hospice patient’s life would end…but he did not go quickly. For thirty agonizing minutes – he struggled, gargling for air, jaw clenched, eyes shut, his face changing different hues of blues, purples, and ashen gray. He squirmed, twitched…his faithful wife and loving daughter wept, beseeching him to let go, “Just go, Daddy! Please, just go!” “it’s ok, sweetheart…it’s ok…” they begged him – hoping he could hear their supplications through his subconsciousness. Tears streamed down the hospice nurse’s cheeks. She’d never seen such a struggle to hang on through the pain and agony of his cancer ridden skeleton of a body. Finally, the gasping, the straining, the struggle…ceased. The once great, loving, caring husband, strong, delightful, protective father, and honest, successful, talented business man, after years of fighting, was at rest.

Why did he have to struggle? What was the point of all that suffering – the energy spent, the hours writhing in pain, medications, hospitalizations, tests, transfusions, surgeries…all over the course of an excruciating journey for over a year – battling for life, only to end in death… what for? And then, when the life support was removed, and it was time to go…he was forced to struggle even more – a body refusing to live, but a spirit refusing to die…and all the while – pain. Pain beyond measure; pain beyond comprehension, and loved ones helpless to do a thing about it – forced to watch their beloved wither away to dust. How could a God of endless love and kindness allow such atrocity to happen? And more specifically – how could He do this to His OWN! After all – this man was a legacy as a man of God – but this? This misery? Physical, emotional, mental, spiritual…how dare He?! Right?....

Death, and so often the torment that precedes it, is one of those agonizing truths of life that we are all burdened to confront in some fashion during our life’s course. I say “truths” because it is more than a fact: it is a precedent that is part of what it means to be human and living on this earth. Unlike facts, which are real, but subject to change, a truth doesn’t change, and death is a truth that won’t change in this era of our existence. Sometimes we face it when it is upon us, other times when it comes upon the ones we love. But whenever we are hit with its gruesome reality, we are forced to ask ourselves and our God, “Why does death have to happen at all?” Oh, we rejoice when the wicked die (Prov. 11:10), and when bad situations end. We’re happy when things we despise come to a close, and a lot of us love the change of seasons and the “beauty” of the Death of nature in every Fall and subsequent Winter. But putting it all in perspective, someone somewhere always grieves the death of each and everyone and thing that once lived. There is always sorrow with every “end” in some shape or capacity, either small or great…and this sorrow is birthed from that question every creature innately asks in his deepest part of being: “Why ‘the end’”?

Death is hard. It’s hard because we, human beings, animals, nature…we were not created to die. Not initially. It’s a truth now, but it wasn’t a truth when God said, “Let there be life,” in the beginning of all things. Death was a perversion of the life God said was good; and it came in through a serpent’s slithery words that ensnared the freewill of a woman and man, who were living in the eternity that they were supposed to enjoy forever. With Death came thorns, pain, hardship, and toil (Gen. 3:14-19). With it came deterioration, rot, disease, and interminable suffering. Death was not what we were made for – it does not exist within the Creator, the very Eternal Essence of Life. And we, His image-bearers, were supposed to emulate Him, our Father, in every way. Instead, we fell under the fatherhood of another, the one, who perverts every good thing our original Father had given us as part of our glorious existence. We became sons of sin, products of our father the devil, and with him, the consequence of Death (Jn. 8:34-47).

This is why Death is so hard to face, impossible to ignore, and one of the realities we do our darnedest to prevent and avoid: it wasn’t meant for us! We were not meant to die…EVER! And deep down…we know it. We know that this aging process is wrong, these lines aren’t right, our loss of vision and hearing, it isn’t supposed to be like this. That cancer, sickness, heart attack, Alzheimer’s, MS, the funerals; they’re all wrong. But, despite all our efforts to shake it - we can’t. We can’t prevent, sideswipe, manhandle, dodge the inevitable result of inheriting that morbidity gene as the illegitimate progeny of our charlatan father. We can’t because sin has consequences. Sin seeped into our very DNA as the lasting legacy our first parents passed on to the human race…us…

But there was a break in the vicious cycle. In the course of history, a “Second Adam” was born to a human woman, but with a different Seed in His blood, a Seed of a divine and eternal nature; a Man, Who came into our race to redeem mankind’s blood from its tarnished and arruined state that blocked him from having the eternal life he was supposed to experience. Jesus, Son of the line of David, a descendent of the Adam of Eden, came into the world with a different DNA, yet with the flesh of a mortal being. And this paradoxical Person did something we humans will never fully comprehend on this side of Death, something supernatural, “out of this world,” and altogether inconceivable. The Man with eternal DNA…died…He faced Death even when He COULD have avoided it! No sin penetrated His body: He had the genealogy to surpass all of its ramifications. Instead, Jesus faced Death and conquered it by rising again after Death. Within this sacrifice, this Death He took upon Himself – the Death of Adam’s human seed – something took place that redeemed the sting of Death’s curse, transforming it into a gateway that allowed humans to access the eternity they were initially created for in the first place!

“The Law of Righteousness demands that sacrifices must be made because of sin, (since sin must be judged with the consequence of Death). So, Christ went once for all into the Most Holy Place (where the Law is enforced) and freed us from sin and its consequence forever. He did this by offering His own blood…But Christ was sinless, and He offered Himself as an eternal and spiritual sacrifice to God. His blood, sinLESS, is much more powerful than any other blood, and is the only thing that can make our consciences clear. Now we can serve the living God and no longer have to worry about Death. Christ died to rescue those who had sinned to bring those, who believe in Him into a new agreement of a Fulfilled Law of Righteousness, the Law of Grace with its guarantee of God’s eternal blessings!” (Heb. 9:12-15 with para. from Rom. 6-8 and 1 Cor. 15 CEV; emphasis mine)

Death has been swallowed up in a victory that takes away its sting and foreboding (1 Cor. 15:53-57 GWT). The darkness of it has been nullified by a sinLESS blood sacrifice – a sinLESS Death that cancelled out its curse and made a brand new agreement of life for man to accept. For those who do, there is hope that now accompanies Death in spite of its harsh reality…after Death comes the eternity promised and now returned to us, albeit via an incredible price.

(sigh)…and while this is all wonderful and good and, in the words of the old hymn, a “Blessed Assurance,” – it was the long awaited response to answer the deception that cost the human race dearly…it still doesn’t remove that truth that ALL humans, yes – even the ones, who are “in the agreement” of the new Law, must die physically…and oftentimes painfully. If Christ took away the ultimate consequence of sin, which is Death – then why do our bodies continue to deteriorate and succumb to it? Why the disease – why the suffering – why does Death have to have a say even if it is “conquered”?

This is the perplexing question that, frankly…doesn’t have a satisfying answer. We don’t know all the whys: why Death has to be so…excruciating. Why the misery is permitted to last so long for many men and women of faith as they strain to breathe in their last gulps of air before their bodies expire. It still doesn’t seem right. After all, wouldn’t that be an incredible evangelistic tool? Those, who accept Jesus, also accept His immortality in body AND soul? If Christians were seen walking around in healthy, whole bodies that never deteriorated or expired, don’t you know that more and more people would come in droves to the altar of grace and repentance! But that’s not the case…not initially.

The thing is, our bodies, though saved from sin and redeemed from its other father, still contain remnants of its old nature, the flesh (Eph. 4:22-24) and THAT is what eats away at our bodies little by little, causing us to age, to be susceptible to disease, and to eventually physically die. Outwardly we waste away, but inwardly, we are being renewed day by day (2 Cor. 4:16). No one likes to hear that – but that’s the truth as well. Sin has consequences, and though our nature is changed when we are “re-adopted” by our original Father, we have to continually die daily to the habits of our old father, which will ultimately destroy the last remnant of it, which is the mortal flesh, in which the sin once indwelled.

But here’s the hope for the Adopted Ones: even so, our physical death will be reversed at some point in the future. Death is truly temporal! How do we know? Through Christ, we gained our access back into our original family line. He becomes the Father AND firstborn of all of us (Rom. 8:29-30; 1 Cor. 15:20 GWT), and as so, we follow His footsteps and example. Christ died only once, but THEN, He rose up again on this earth in His original body that has been glorified and made whole! This was a body that had never sinned, but by His choice became entrenched IN Adam’s sin in order for His sacrifice to cancel sin’s consequences. This body was our equivalent under the curse of sin and Death, but His Death nullified the lasting effects of Death on those, who sin, and as a result – He was raised and so shall we be! That’s the hope we have! When we cross that line to the other side, we taste Death’s sting, just like our Brother– but then, we will also taste the glory of what it is to spit Death in its detestable face – walking, breathing, talking, eating, and being in the body that was dead, but risen because it belongs to the bloodline of our Creator Father, Eternal Life…just as Jesus did (1 Cor. 15:52-54 GWT; Lk. 24).

Death is a truth we will confront…but in Christ, it becomes a FACT that we will conquer and overcome, a fact that will change! We will have the glorious opportunity to look back upon it as the thing that couldn’t hold us down because the Spirit of the One, Who was raised, lives in us, and He will raise us up again to enjoy the sweet taste of victory over the thing that taunted us every day we existed during our brief whisper of time we call our life (Rom. 8: 11). Death will not have the last say. Disease will not determine our fate – not really – not for the ones under Christ’s Grace Agreement. Not for Jesus’s “younger siblings” of God’s Adoption Contract under His new Law of Grace.

But that’s not all…there is something to the misery we endure. Jesus’s torture was the worst of all tortures.*But His great affliction earned Him the throne of Glory to rule over the universe for all eternity to come:

“Jesus, the source and goal of our faith, He saw the joy ahead of Him, so He endured Death on the cross and ignored the disgrace (and torment) it brought Him. Then He received the highest position in heaven, the one next to the throne of God.” (Heb. 12:2 GWT)

The greater His affliction, the greater the glory of His reward! And just like our Firstborn Brother – the greater our suffering prior to our confrontation with Death, the greater the Glory we will receive on the other side of it (Isa. 61:7), standing as triumphant winners, crowned with our Brother, the Great King of Glory (Jms. 1:12; 2 Tim. 4:8; Ps. 24:8-10).

“Our suffering is light and temporary and is producing for us an eternal glory that is greater than anything we can imagine. We don’t look for things that can be seen but for things that can’t be seen. Things that can be seen are only temporary. But things that can’t be seen last forever.” (2 Cor. 4:17-18 GWT)

Watching their beloved suffer and die as gruesomely has he did those last months (and moments) of his life was one of the most difficult experiences these two women had ever had to endure. However, they know that they know that they know that their husband and father passed through the veil of Death to a glorious reward that made up for every pain he encountered on the other side. And they also know…one day – that body that is now vacant, the very one that had endured so much agony – it will one day be raised, restored, and glorified – transformed into a body that will live forever, and never have to suffer Death, disease, or destruction again. THIS is the hope, THIS is the promise, THIS is the Truth that conquered Death’s hold.

“O DEATH, WHERE IS YOUR VICTORY? O DEATH, WHERE IS YOUR STING? Thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” (1 Cor. 15:55, 57 NASB)

* The very word “excruciating” is a derivative of the word “excruciatus,” a Latin term defined as “out of the cross.” In other words, our term for the worst kind of pain imaginable is founded upon the physical suffering Christ felt as He slowly died on the cross. P. Barbet. A Doctor at Calvary: The Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ as Described by a Surgeon. Translated by Earl of Wicklow. (Garden City, NY: Doubleday Image Books, 1953), 12-18, 37-147, 159-175, 187-208.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Barbet, P. A Doctor at Calvary: The Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ as Described by a Surgeon. Translated by Earl of Wicklow. Garden City, NY: Doubleday Image Books, 1953. The

Holy Bible in the following translations: Common English Translation © 2010, GOD'S WORD Translation © 2010, and the New American Standard Version © 2011. All references are to the NASB version, unless otherwise specified.