Word of Salvation – Vol. 45 No.48 – December 2000
Our Death in the Death of Christ
Sermon by Rev MP Geluk
on Lord’s Day 16A (Q&A 40-43 Heid Cat)
Scripture Readings: 2Sam 18:31-19:4; 2Sam 12:13-23; Eph 2:1-10
Suggested Hymns: BoW 153; 51A; 116:1-3; 193; 9:1,5; 533
Beloved in the Lord.
The death of Christ is most central to our historic Christian faith. We will look at three aspects of Christ’s death:
1. Its essence
2. Its cause; and
3. Its results.
1. The Essence of Christ’s Death
What is death really? I have seen several dead people in my years as a pastor and I suppose one could say that the basic fact about death is that there is no life any more. A person who is sleeping or unconscious still breathes and you can see their chest rising and falling, but a dead person is lifeless. And a human death is again different to an animal death because with an animal you cannot observe a change in the colour of the face, as you do with a human.
Two or three generations ago, most people were offended if death was spoken of openly and frankly. People spoke of someone who died as having passed on or passed away. Young children were not told that someone had died but that he had gone away and wouldn’t be coming back.
Things have changed a bit since then. Nowadays you can go on an excursion to funeral parlours and crematoriums. Funeral directors make it their business to be kind and understanding and they speak about death as though it is the most normal thing that can happen to someone.
And, of course, many in our time would like to see euthanasia as a choice that everyone ought to have about their lives. The literally meaning of euthanasia is ‘a good death’. The only time Christians might say that death is good is when a believer, terminally ill and suffering much, is taken out of this life to heaven by God. In such a situation believers see death as a blessing. But many unbelievers want to end their discomfort resulting from terminal illness or old age and be left free to determine their own time of death.
But strangely enough, our increasingly pagan society is still troubled and shocked when someone in good physical health commits suicide. Christians, of course, regard it very sad and terrible whenever people take their own lives. We feel that the circumstances of life and death are best left in God’s hands for a number of reasons.
The Bible recognises God as the rightful authority over life and death. And death is not passing away into oblivion. The body may die but the soul lives on in heaven or hell. The Bible’s teachings about judgment and hell make us see the reality of unbelief and sin and it’s terribly sad to see people go to their death who have not been saved from their sins by the Saviour Jesus Christ.
We know that a death without Christ will mean an even greater suffering and loneliness than what may have been experienced in life before death. The death of someone who is not saved is not something peaceful, even though an unbeliever may happen to die peacefully. The Bible says that death is the outcome of mankind’s rebellion against God. Death is God’s curse that rests on sin. And where Christ has not removed that curse because of unbelief, then physical death becomes the final separation from God.
Now all that is really the essence of death. Death is not an escape into nothingness. In the case of an unbeliever, there is after physical death a terrible consciousness of being cut off from God forever. And to bring home that awful truth, the Lord Jesus told the parable about the rich man who died and found himself in hell where he was to spend eternity.
The pain a believer experiences when death has come to a close relative who is an unbeliever is vividly seen in David. When he heard of the death of Absalom, his son, then he was struck with deep grief and sorrow. We know from the Bible that Absalom was not a good son. He conspired with others in the murder of his brother Amnon. Absalom did that because Amnon had raped his sister Tamar, but it was not for Absalom to take the law into his own hands. His actions forced him to flee. When it had all settled down a bit, David allowed Absalom back into Israel.
But it wasn’t long after, that Absalom began to sweet talk to the people going to court to settle disputes. He told them that if he was king then he would be a better judge for them than his father. In that way he stole the peoples’ hearts away from David, who was king by God’s choice. When Absalom thought he had enough popular backing, he drove his father out of the country and seized the throne. He also showed a terrible contempt of his father by behaving immorally to his father’s concubines and letting Israel know that he had done this. It was a way of saying – I am doing what I please and David the king can’t do a thing about it. In all his evil deeds Absalom cared nothing about God.
Civil war followed and Absalom’s forces were defeated in a terrible battle where Israelite fought against Israelite. David’s general, Joab, killed Absalom without mercy, even though he knew of the king’s express wish to spare his son. When David heard of his son’s death, he was inconsolable. 2Samuel 18 describes how David grieved over the death of a son he loved, in spite of that son’s evil.
The depth of David’s pain can only be understood when we realise that David knew that his son died without being reconciled to God. And furthermore, David knew that all the terrible troubles in his family were a punishment from God on his own sins of adultery with Bathsheba and the murder of Uriah her husband. Nathan the prophet had predicted such consequences.
So here we have a window into the soul of a parent who knows his child died in his sin. Believers losing loved ones, who did not die in their sin because Christ has saved them, have a different grief. They rejoice that their loved one has gone to be with God in heaven, even though they also weep because they have to go on without their loved one.
Since Christ makes such a difference to the way we grieve over the death of loved ones, we should be clear in our faith as to what that difference is. This difference has to do with the death of Christ. The death of Christ for those who believe in Him can be expressed in one simple but profound statement. It has caused death itself to die! Yes, Christ’s death has caused death itself to die for those who believe in Him! When Christ died on the cross, then He killed death itself for all His people.
When someone who belongs to God through Christ’s saving work dies physically, there is a passing of their soul from this life into the presence of God in heaven. A believer’s death is only a death in the body.
As we said earlier, when the body dies, then we notice that it has become lifeless. If that dead body belonged to a believer, then we can say that real death did not occur. In someone whom Christ has saved, real death already died when that person began to believe in Christ. When we speak of real death, then we mean separation from God. Real death is the curse of sin. Real death is being cut off from God. You can also call real death spiritual death.
But when Christ saves a sinner from this spiritual, real death, He takes away this real death from the sinner who has become a believer in Christ. Christ replaces that spiritual death with eternal life. It’s a life sustained and controlled by God through the Holy Spirit. That is what a believer really is – someone who is made alive by Christ. That terrible real death, that spiritual death, cannot kill the believer anymore because Christ has killed that real death by His death. The Saviour killed it when He died on the cross 2000 years ago. And every time a sinner is saved, the effects of the Saviour’s death on the cross are there immediately for that believer, no matter in what age he lives.
You must now be able to see the difference between the death of the unsaved and the saved. The unsaved were already dead in their spiritual state, but whilst they were alive in the body, there was always the hope that they might believe the gospel of salvation. But when they keep on rejecting Christ’s offer of salvation, and continue on in their state of spiritual death, and then also die in the body, then they pass on into eternal death. They face God’s judgment on their sins without Christ standing in for them. They are doomed to eternal separation from God. We’re talking about hell now. I tell you, the unbeliever’s death is the real death. In it you have the essence of death. It is both terrible and frightening. And now you can even better understand David’s grief when he heard of Absalom’s death, for that son experienced the real essence of death.
But not so the believer. Not so those who are saved by Christ through faith. In the believer’s case, Christ has killed death already. That is what salvation really is. And, therefore, in the bodily death of someone belonging to God, the grief and sorrow is completely different. We are sad because we now have to live on without that loved one who has gone to be with the Lord. But we do not grieve as those who have no hope. In the case of the saved we do have a hope. This hope is that all the saved will rise in the general resurrection at Jesus’ coming, and all who belong to God will be together in their glorified, risen bodies, living forever in the presence of Christ on the new heaven and earth. We can be happy about that and we are happy that those who die in the Lord are always with Him. They already belonged to God here in this life and they continue to belong to God in heaven after they died in the body.
All this explains why David, just to come back to him once more, reacted quite differently when the child born from that adulterous relationship David had with Bathsheba died on the seventh day. Through the prophet Nathan God had told David that his behaviour had caused the enemies of the Lord to show utter contempt for God. Unbelievers now had good reason to ridicule God. They would have said: Look at that will you. God tells kings to live righteously and act justly and the king of Israel tells the people to do the same. But then this king David, who is married, lusts after a married woman, commits adultery with her and when the woman is pregnant he arranges the death of her husband, making it look like a casualty of war. He then marries the woman, and hopes he fooled everyone into thinking that her pregnancy began after they were married. But their child was born long before the nine months were up after their wedding. Well, if God allows that kind of immoral behaviour to go on among His chosen people, then I don’t care much for such a God.
And that’s how the enemies of God showed their contempt. But God did not condone the sins of David and Bathsheba. Therefore, their child died. The unbelievers could now not say that God is not to be feared. But the good thing was that David had repented. And God in His mercy took that child to heaven.
During the six days that the child was still alive, David pleaded with God to let the child live. He fasted and humbled himself before God. When God took the child on the seventh day then David washed, ate and went into God’s house and worshipped the Lord. And life returned to normal. Because he believed the child was with God, David, though he grieved that the child died, was glad that the child was saved from eternal death. But that kind of comfort David did not have when Absalom died.
In our first point, then, we looked at the essence of real death and of Christ’s death. We explained how real death is separation from God and that Christ came to kill that kind of death. And when He does that in those who believe in Him, then He gives them eternal life instead. It’s all beautifully put by the Lord Himself when He said, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies [i.e., physical death]; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die [i.e., real death)” (Jn.11:26).
2. The Cause of Christ’s Death
We can be brief here because the main things have been said already. Let me approach the cause of Christ’s death in the way Question 40 of the Heidelberg Catechism does. “Why did Christ have to go all the way to death?” Yes, why did Christ have to die that horrible death on the cross? Why could Christ not save us by His exemplary life? And by His wonderful clear teaching?
Let me first say that we very much need the example and teachings of Christ because they show us how to think and live to the glory of God. But Christ’s life and teaching alone can never save sinners from God’s just judgment. You see, with God it is either life with Him or death away from Him. It’s either fellowship with God or separation from Him. It’s either light with Him or darkness without Him. God is so pure, so holy, so just and so righteous, that for anyone to be with Him, in His presence, is having to be like Him. And that’s exactly the way it was in Paradise where Adam and Eve had perfect fellowship with God. But when they sinned, then that perfection was immediately broken. They had to leave God’s presence and Paradise was lost to them. It happened that way because God and sin cannot go together.
But that is not all. As we said, God is also life. And therefore separation from Him can mean only one thing – death. Think of a flower. It, too, is part of God’s creation. It grows. It’s alive. Its petals can have wonderful colours. And it can smell beautifully. But when the flower is cut off it is separated from its roots. It can’t draw nourishment any more. The cut flower will live on for a while because of the remaining moisture it still has, and if you put it in water the flower will continue to look good for a while. But in reality it was doomed from the moment it was cut off from its stem.
So also is all of mankind spiritually dead because in Adam, when he sinned, humanity was cut off from the living God. Like the cut flower the spiritual dead live on for a while, can even look beautiful and do wonderful things, but they are doomed just the same. It’s only a matter of time before the flower of life wilts and physically dies. And Christ’s example and teaching may help the dying to still do good things but it’s not going to restore life like it was in Paradise.
Now when we have understood that, then we can also begin to understand why God sent His Son to die for sinners. How can you bring a dead and dying humanity, cut off from God, back to life? We can’t do it. No matter how good we look, we are dead. So God sent Christ. He is perfect. There was no sin in Him. He has full and perfect fellowship with God. So in Christ there is no darkness and no death. But then God cuts Him off and Christ dies on the cross. His death was as real as when other people die.
But it was also worse. There was no reason for Christ to die because He had no sin. But God placed all the sins of all those whom He wants to save on Christ and that became the reason for the death of Christ. When Christ died then He was the guilty One, because the sins of others were on Him. He became a substitute for us.
Why did God do this? The answer the Bible gives is that God so loved us. God loves the sinner. He loves the unlovable. How God must grieve when some sinners reject His offer of salvation. Believers know something of that grief when loved ones die who knew of Christ but did not repent and believe. Nothing is so sad as when sinners reject the love of God in Christ and then die without repenting.
But how exactly did God transfer our sins to Christ? I don’t think we can fully answer that. The Bible teaches that God removes our sin and death by placing them on Christ. And then somehow our guilt is also gone. God looks on us as if we have never sinned. Now I don’t think anyone can really explain how that works, but miracle of miracles, God says it does work.
It’s like a twig from a tree that has been cut off and then grafted onto a branch from another tree. When it was cut off, then it was doomed to die. But by carefully grafting it back into another branch, the new branch will put its life into the twig and it lives again.
So then, the sinner in his unbelief is cut off from God and is dead spiritually. But when he repents and believes in Christ, then the sinner is forgiven and grafted into Christ, who makes him alive again. Christ has put His life in the sinner. It’s now as if he had never sinned. God has now made that sinner a Christian.
3. The Results of Christ’s Death
We must also be brief here because in other Lord’s Days to come the details are worked out further. We will just state the main things here. Because Christ’s death has made the believer right with God and because the resurrected Christ lives in the believer, the believer’s old self is no more. That part is gone.
We can put it this way. Christ has put His own life in the believer. Christ now lives in the Christian. The apostle Paul was inspired by the Holy Spirit to say it like this: “…I died (i.e., through Christ’s death) …so that I might live for God. I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal.2:20).
The believer, then, who believingly and trustingly takes hold of and accepts what Christ has done, will now want to live the way the living Christ wants all the saved to live.
And every believer knows what that is. It is to say ‘no’ to sin and ‘yes’ to righteousness. It is to close the door that leads to impurity and open the door that leads to holiness. It is to fight the evil desires of the sinful human nature and not be ruled by them. It is to be ruled over by Christ. It is to obey Him and follow Him. It is to love Him and serve Him. And the believer does all that out of thankfulness to God for saving him from death by the death of Christ.
Amen.