Part 1: Introduction | Part 2: Preparing | Part 3: The God of All Comfort | Part 4: Life (from Death) in the Body | Part 5: Joyful Grief | Part 6: Pain with a Purpose

It’s said that only two things are certain: death and taxes.

There’s not much I can say about the taxes part—other than that you should pay them (Ro 13.7)—but in this series we’ve seen a lot that the Bible says about death.

• It’s not part of the original design.
• It’s a temporary problem; it will be destroyed (1Co 15.54).
• In the meantime, we are in a position to take dominion over it, even as it appears to be winning.
  • We can prepare for it in ways that are eternally significant.
  • We can call on supernatural sources of comfort even as we face it.
  • We can tap into comfort from those God has kindly placed around us and organized for that purpose.
  • We can find genuine reasons to praise God even as we grieve.
  • We can become better people through the experience.
  • And we can use that experience to help others become better people as well.

We … exult in our tribulations, knowing that tribulation brings about perseverance; and perseverance, proven character; and proven character, hope (Ro 5.3-4).

Sin and death are facts of life. They’re nasty, they’re brutal, and they’re not fair. But they are not all there is, and they are not winners in the end. There is a God who is greater than our greatest enemies. He is stronger and wiser than we are, and He also good. In the valley of the shadow of death, you can trust Him. 

• You can trust Him to love you more than anyone else ever can. 
• You can trust Him to walk with you through the valley. 
• You can trust Him 
  • to make sense out of the senseless; 
  • to bring joy out of sorrow; 
  • to bring purpose out of pain. 
• You can trust Him to meet your eternal needs just as well as He meets your temporal needs. 
• You can trust Him now. You can trust Him forever. 

So trust Him. There is no peace, no joy, no forgiveness, no safety, no meaning anywhere else. And he has all those things in infinite supply.  

Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light (Mt 11.28-30). 

Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath no money; come ye, buy, and eat; yea, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price (Is 55.1).

As often as you go to that well, you will find fresh, clean water for your soul. 

Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
For those whom thou think’st thou dost overthrow
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul’s delivery.
Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,
And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well
And better than thy stroke; why swell’st thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally
And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.

John Donne (1572-1631)

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Part 1: Introduction | Part 2: Preparing | Part 3: The God of All Comfort | Part 4: Life (from Death) in the Body | Part 5: Joyful Grief

We’re willing to go through painful things if there’s a purpose behind the pain. Athletes do this all the time: they deny themselves foods and activities that might interfere with their training; they push themselves physically, through weariness and even pain, because they want something that makes the weariness worth it—a skill, or a new level of strength, or a precision of movement, or an extra microsecond of response time.

Our hypothetical athlete shows us that we’ll not only endure hardness, but we’ll choose to endure it, if we want the outcome aggressively enough.

One of the most significant things the Bible tells us about us is that we’re not random. God made us, and for a significant purpose—relationship with him. And he has designed us, individually, to fulfill that purpose. Further, every step we take, every phase of our lives, every incident along the way is designed to bring us to that good end.

Even the bad stuff. The hard things.

Peter spends a whole epistle (his first one) on that. Paul tells us that more concisely in 2 Corinthians 1.3-5—

³ Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, ⁴ who comforts us in all our affliction so that we will be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. ⁵ For just as the sufferings of Christ are ours in abundance, so also our comfort is abundant through Christ.

What’s Paul saying here?

God takes us through hard times for a purpose:

• He directs our path through a difficult experience.
• He comforts us throughout that experience—and the comfort is measurably enough to get us through.
• We learn of his comfort by the experience of it.
• Now we have something to teach others; when they go through a similar experience, we can empathize and share our experience with them and help them through.

We’ve all had the experience of having a well-intentioned friend say, “I know just how you feel,” when there’s no way in the world that he knows how we feel; he’s just trying to say something to make us feel better. But when we’re going through a ragingly hurtful experience, one unlike anything we’ve experienced before, and someone tells us his story—one like ours—we’re inclined to listen to him.

Hard times are a promotion, a new level of certification. They equip us for new levels of service; they put us in the position to help make the world a better place, and more importantly, to help make our brothers and sisters in Christ stronger believers.

I first learned this principle when my Mom died. She was one of those people that everybody liked; she was genuine and unassuming, with the ability to enjoy a social situation without being in the middle of it. When I was 28, she was diagnosed with advanced cancer—the surgeons took a look and just closed her up again—and she spent the next year dying a slow and painful death. One of my sisters cared for her for most of that year, and my other sister and I were with her when she died.

That was excruciating.

As her friends began lining up at the door with casseroles and words of consolation, I found myself learning a lot. Before, as I had stood in receiving lines at funeral homes, I had always wondered what to say. How do you make it all better? What’s the magic phrase that will solve this problem and take away the pain?

I learned that that’s not it at all. There’s nothing you can say to make it all better. It’s not about the words.

But you can be there. You can grieve with the loved ones. You can share memories of the impact the deceased person had on your life. Fond memories. Happier times.

The ministry of presence.

And that experience has rendered me a bit more useful and helpful, and a little less clumsy, around the grieving.

Pain with a purpose. Sometimes we would even choose it.

We’ll wrap this all up in the next post.

Part 7: Closing Thoughts

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Part 1: Introduction | Part 2: Preparing | Part 3: The God of All Comfort | Part 4: Life (from Death) in the Body

The universe, and the lives it contains, are not random. There is a Designer, and there is a design. There is purposefulness behind very blade of grass, every delight and disaster, every life, every death. As you would expect of a plan this big, the purpose is complex and multifaceted, but in the end, the overriding purpose is simple and direct.

Paul puts it this way:

• Whether, therefore, you eat, or drink, or whatever you do, do it all to the glory of God (1Cor 10.31).

God, as the Creator and Sustainer of all there is (Col 1.16-17), and the prototype for all life and particularly for all human life (Ge 1.26-27), is the only being worthy of glorification, of worship. Unless we live by this principle, nothing about the universe or the lives it contains—our lives—makes any sense. History is a long record of our ancestors’ trying to find meaning elsewhere and concluding that in the end it’s all meaningless.

How can death—yours or that of someone you love—bring glory to God? How can the God who is life be glorified by an apparent defeat?

In the very first chapter of the Bible, we’re told that every human being—every one—is in the image of God (Ge 1.26-27). Now, we know that just a couple of chapters later, Adam and Eve fall into sin, bringing a curse on all their descendants (Ge 3.6ff; Ro 5.12, 18-19), but we also know that this curse did not erase the image of God; it remained in Noah’s day (Ge 9.6), and it remained in James’s day (Jm 3.9), and so it remains in us today.

Everyone you know is in the image of God. That means that everyone you know should elicit your praise to God who made him. Of course we’re broken and sinful, but there are in all of us, regenerate or not, qualities that reflect the Creator and should provoke us to praise him.

Now, the better you know somebody, the more you know about his foibles, his failures, the eruptions of his flesh in pride or anger or lust or some other form of brokenness. But as deep as the corruption goes, deeper yet is that which is praiseworthy.

When you grieve over the loss of a loved one, you are driven by the loss to think deeply about the one you have loved. And in that person you will find evidences of God’s grace—

• Characteristics that reflect God’s image;
• Providences in his life that testify to God’s common grace;
• Providences that testify to God’s individual grace, to God’s love and care for him;
• If he was a believer, multiplied evidences of God’s spiritual care for him.

I suppose I should address the elephant in the room.

What if he wasn’t a believer? How can you glorify God then?

Well, to begin with, in everyone we can find those evidences of God’s image and providential care, and we can praise our kind and gracious God for those things.

But what kind of monster praises God for the reprobation of a loved one?

I’m not suggesting that you need to do that, or even that you should, though there are theologians who have implied or suggested such a thing.

I’ve been to a lot of funerals for believing loved ones, and to some for unbelieving loved ones. I don’t think people in the image of God can be dispassionate about the prospect of perdition for anyone. God certainly isn’t (Ezk 18.31; 33.11).

But I would say this.

God desires the salvation of the lost far more than I do, and he has resources far beyond what we know. The death process is unknown to us—Scripture has nothing of substance to say about it—and we are in the dark about those moments when the mind and the brain temporarily part ways. What does the unregenerate mind know and experience as it approaches death? What light shines? What decisions can be made, even at that late and fading moment?

The answer is, we don’t know.

But I’ve known God for many years, and I trust him with the fate of my loved ones. All of them.

I will praise him, in every death.

Part 6: Pain with a Purpose | Part 7: Closing Thoughts

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Part 1: Introduction | Part 2: Preparing | Part 3: The God of All Comfort

God takes care of his people. Because he is all-knowing, he’s aware of our struggles; because he is good, he cares about us as we struggle; because he is wise, he knows how best to meet our needs in those struggles; and because he is great, he can do whatever those needs require.

God is kind even to his enemies; those who curse God with every breath get that breath, and the life-sustaining oxygen it contains, freely from the hand of God, who designed their respiratory systems and freely provides all the oxygen they need, not just to curse him, but to go on living even as they do so. In his great Sermon on the Mount, Jesus—who in fact created oxygen, and lungs, and everything else (Jn 1.3; Col 1.16; Heb 1.2)—observed that “your Father who is in heaven … causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous” (Mt 5.45).

We call that “common grace.” God is kind to the most undeserving. But he is especially kind—gracious—to those who trust and rely on him, to his children, as any father should be (Ps 103.13-14). If you’re a believer, and you think back over your life, you will certainly see God’s provision and providence all along the path on which you have followed him.

One of the ways he has designed our walk with him and brought kindness and grace to us is by placing us into the body of Christ (1Co 12.13). When you were born again, Christ baptized you in the Spirit (Mt 3.11; Ac 1.5), and in that moment you were united with his body (1Co 12.13). That means a couple of things: first, that you are “in Christ,” with all that entails (Ro 8.1; 1Co 1.30; 2Co 5.17; Ga 3.28; Ep 1.3; 1Th 4.16; 1P 5.14), and second, that you are a member of “the body of Christ,” which is the church (Co 1.18, 24).

In an abstract sense, you and I are members of the church “universal,” the body of all believers since Christ’s earthly ministry, living and dead; that’s a powerful thought, that we’re united with Peter and Paul and Polycarp and Perpetua and Felicity and Luther and Calvin and Roger Williams and Jim Elliott and an innumerable host of people from every tribe and kingdom and language and nation, who will one day be assembled before the throne and worshiping together (Re 7.9-17).

But much more concretely, you are appointed to a visible body of believers, a local church (He 10.25), where God has providentially surrounded you with other believers who have just exactly the gifts you need (Ro 12.4-8; 1Co 12.4ff) to be strengthened in your walk with Christ. (And, conversely, you have gifts that they need, which you should exercise for their benefit; but that’s another post. Or two.)

So what does all this theology have to do with taking dominion over death?

God has designed, just for you, a local body of believers who are supernaturally gifted with exactly what you need as you face the death of a dear one or your own death—and, for that matter, any other need you have. When you need his comfort, his assurance, his strength, you can find it most easily not when you are alone in your bed in the dark of the night—although it is available there too—but you find it most easily in the fellowship of God’s people, who will use their gifts to minister that comfort to you (2Co 1.3-5). Gifts of mercy, of helps, of shepherding, of serving, of teaching, of exhorting. And faith, hope, love.

You don’t need to walk through this valley alone. Let God’s people share the journey with you.

Part 5: Joyful Grief | Part 6: Pain with a Purpose | Part 7: Closing Thoughts

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Part 1: Introduction | Part 2: Preparing

Once you’ve gotten ready to die, all kinds of things start to happen. And as the recipient of these things, you’re now in a position to take dominion over death—to start untwisting its perversion and turning it to good ends. For the rest of this series I’d like to suggest four ways to do that.

The first comes from your new status as a child of God (Jn 1.12). Since God is now your Father, you are the recipient of his affection, and you are under his care. If you have children, you know how you respond viscerally to their needs and cries for help, and how you weep when they weep. We do that because we’re in the image of God, and he does that.

Just as a father has compassion on his children,
So the Lord has compassion on those who fear Him (Ps 103.13).

Our Father is, as Paul tells us, “the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort” (2Co 1.3). It’s his nature to come to us in our loss and grief and frustration at the death of someone we have loved, and to bring us comfort.

And since he’s God, who knows all things and can do all things, he’s not going to be one of those well-intentioned comforters who awkwardly try to say something, anything, to make us feel better and often just make us feel worse.

Because he knows us perfectly, he knows perfectly how deep the hurt goes and how unfair it all seems. And he knows exactly what we need.

Here’s just a sampling of what he says to us—

• The Lord is near to the brokenhearted
  And saves those who are crushed in spirit (Ps 34.18).

•  God is our refuge and strength,
  A very present help in trouble (Ps 46.1).

• Do not fear, for I am with you;
  Do not anxiously look about you, for I am your God.
  I will strengthen you, surely I will help you,
  Surely I will uphold you with My righteous right hand (Is 41.10).

• Do not fear, for I have redeemed you;
  I have called you by name; you are Mine!
  When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;
  And through the rivers, they will not overflow you.
  When you walk through the fire, you will not be scorched,
  Nor will the flame burn you.
  For I am the Lord your God,
  The Holy One of Israel, your Savior (Is 43.1-3).

• My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness (2Co 12.9).

These are not just words, feeble attempts to make us feel better because the speaker is sad that we’re sad.

These are robust promises from the God who made—and kept—covenants with Adam and Moses and Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and David. And with his beloved Son.

He makes these promises, he means them, and he puts his incomprehensible power behind them and brings comfort and peace to you. He changes you from the inside out; he helps you in your trouble; he strengthens you; he upholds you; he protects you; he empowers you, not just to go on, stumbling into an uncertain and meaningless “new normal,” but to take dominion over this defeated enemy called death, to build castles from the rubble, to exchange beauty for the ashes (Is 61.3).

This isn’t just about feeling better—though that’s certainly part of it.

It’s about dominion.

It’s about the kind of supernatural power that turns defeat into victory, evil into good (Gn 50.20).

And when you’ve gone through something as crushing as bereavement with someone as great and good as your Father, the relationship becomes deeper than it ever was before.

And now even greater good lies ahead.

We’ll look further into that next time.

Part 4: Life (from Death) in the Body | Part 5: Joyful Grief | Part 6: Pain with a Purpose | Part 7: Closing Thoughts

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Part 1: Introduction

Last time we noted that death is certain for all of us—not just when there’s a pandemic—and that death is not the way things were originally designed. We raised a question: can our approach to death “work with the design and purpose of the universe to restore civil order even as the acrid smell of burning tires lingers in the air”? Can we take dominion over death?

I’d suggest that we can.

How do you take dominion over an enemy that will certainly defeat you?

Well, you start by getting ready for it.

I’m not talking here about dietary supplements or life insurance. The supplements, if they work at all, aren’t going to work forever, and the insurance is more about getting other people ready for your death than getting ready for it yourself.

No, I’m talking about really getting ready.

It’s coming, sooner or later. And when it comes, your life is going to change significantly.

You’re not going to fall asleep and pass into oblivion, temporary or permanent. You’re going to be alive, sentient, as much your personal self as ever.

And what kind of life you’re going to be living will have been determined by how you prepared for something you knew was coming.

So how do you prepare?

Interestingly, there’s someone who has defeated death—died and came back to life—and he was acting not just for himself, but on our behalf:

Since the children share in flesh and blood, He Himself likewise also partook of the same, that through death He might render powerless him who had the power of death, that is, the devil, and might free those who through fear of death were subject to slavery all their lives (Heb 2.14-15).

This God-man is not only strong enough to defeat death by wrestling past it to emerge triumphant from the grave, but he’s just as good as he is strong, and he purposes to share his victory with us.

With you.

He has provided a way for us to defeat this enemy just as he has.

But there’s a problem—with us, not with him.

Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God (1Co 15.50).

We need to be changed; we need to become a different sort of people. The first man became mortal because of his sin (Gn 2.16-17), and we find ourselves to be prone to sin as well. That sin—any taint of it, no matter how small or how infrequent—brings us short of the glory of God’s perfection (Ro 3.23) and thus under the power of death.

And you and I, no matter how hard we try, can’t be good enough to earn God’s favor (Ti 3.5; Ro 6.23). If we’re going to prepare well for death, we’re going to need the forgiveness of the one who has defeated it.

And remarkably, he’s willing—no, eager—to forgive us. “Whoever comes to me,” he said, “I will never turn away” (Jn 6.37).

So how do we come to him?

We repent (Ac 17.30)—turn our attitudes away from our sin—and we believe in Christ (Ac 16.31). That is, we decide we don’t love our sin anymore, and we trust Christ to forgive our sins based on the blood he shed for us. As Jesus himself preached in his earliest sermons, “Repent and believe in the gospel!” (Mk 1.14-15).

As you may know, the word gospel means simply “good news.” And this is good news indeed—that the sin that overpowers us can be forgiven not by our earning it, but freely, as a gift from the one who has paid for it himself; and that this forgiveness includes the crushing of death, again by his own powerful defeat of the father of death.

And what happens then?

When this perishable will have put on the imperishable, and this mortal will have put on immortality, then will come about the saying that is written, “Death is swallowed up in victory! O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?” (1Co 15.54-55).

Prepared.

But there’s much more we can do to take dominion over death.

Next time.

Part 3: The God of All Comfort | Part 4: Life (from Death) in the Body | Part 5: Joyful Grief | Part 6: Pain with a Purpose | Part 7: Closing Thoughts

Photo by Scott Rodgerson on Unsplash

As I write this, pretty much the whole world is living a restricted life due to a pandemic of COVID-19. There’s a raging disagreement about how serious it is and what measures, if any, should be taken to combat it. I’m not going to express an opinion on any of that, because I have no expertise in the field, and there are already so many other people without expertise shouting their opinions from the housetops that it’s getting increasingly difficult to find the useful information coming from actual experts, and I don’t want to add to the chaos.

Although I know several people who have been infected, no one I know has died. Yet. But with a global death toll in the millions and still climbing (I know, that’s disputed, too), lots of people have lost one or more loved ones and are dealing right now with the natural disorder of death, and the rest of us are under its shadow—as we would be even if there were no virus (Heb 9.27).

It’s worthwhile, then, to think about death and how we respond to it.

I’ve referred to death just above as a “natural disorder.” Let me explain what I mean by that.

Lots of biblical scholars have noted that humans were created in the image of God, which clearly includes dominion over the earth and its contents (Gn 1.26-30). As we all know, Adam’s choice to reject God’s will brought on him—and us—a curse that included resistance from the ground  (Gn 3.17-19). As we attempt to exercise dominion over the earth, our subjects now exercise perpetual rebellion against our leadership. Every tiny weed in our carefully tended gardens is a token of that rebellion. And the greatest evidence of it is that for every one of us, eventually the ground overthrows us, defeats us, and our lifeless bodies are given to its cold and unloving embrace, eventually to join it in its rebellion as our corpses become dust, tiny foot-soldiers in its ongoing rebellion.

Many have made this observation over the years, but I’m particularly thinking about it these days because I’ve sat on a dissertation committee for the past several months, and the newly minted doctor has reasserted these points in his fine work.

So death is not the way things should be. It’s the rubble, the burning tires, the rolls of barbed wire in the streets after days of rioting; it’s a deep and devastating departure from civil order, the way things ought to be.

How, then, do we respond when death inevitably comes to our households and to the households of those we care about?

Do we “rage, rage against the dying of the light,” impotent but determined to lodge our protest, effete though it is? Do we accede resignedly to the reality and just try to be as happy and comfortable as we can until the inevitable comes?

What does it look like to exercise dominion when your subjects are winning every act of rebellion? How do you take charge when the enemy is overwhelming and you know you can’t prevent your own defeat?

What do we do now?

I’d like to take a few posts to consider the biblical material that applies to this conundrum. (And no, I’m not going to use Romans 8.28—though we ought not to cast it aside just because people misuse it or use it tritely or sophomorically.) I hope to suggest a path forward for the bereaved, one that’s both realistic and constructive, and one that doesn’t rely on fairies at the bottom of the well, one that works not just because we can believe anything if we try hard enough, but because it’s true—it works with the design and purpose of the universe to restore civil order even as the acrid smell of burning tires lingers in the air and the rubble seems utterly chaotic.

We’ll start next time right where we ought to: at the beginning.

Part 2: Preparing | Part 3: The God of All Comfort | Part 4: Life (from Death) in the Body | Part 5: Joyful Grief | Part 6: Pain with a Purpose | Part 7: Closing Thoughts

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