When Death Meets Its Match
The news reports these days are always depressing. The COVID-19 cases are increasing by the day. The death toll continues to rise. Though the spreading seems to be slowing, it is not slowing quickly enough. Both CNN and Fox News are posting the confirmed cases and the deaths like the money given in a Jerry Lewis telethon.
Two things happen when the confirmed cases and deaths from the Coronavirus mount like they have. First, the numbers become overwhelming and the massive impact on the nation and world weighs heavy on our hearts. We cannot comprehend that many people being sick or that many people dying. It’s too much.
Second, we lose sight of the fact that every one of those numbers, especially when we are counting those who have died in the pandemic, is a real person. A family has lost someone they love. A grandparent, parent, child, sibling, or friend is no longer in our lives. For those who have lost someone to the virus, the pain is immense and the sorrow is genuine and deep.
For all of us, death is all around us, and the thoughts of death are permeating our waking thoughts. If only we had a solution to death. If only we could somehow win a victory over death. If only…
This past weekend, we celebrated the only “if only” that could change the impact of death on our lives, the death and resurrection of Jesus. Good Friday and Easter Sunday forever changed the definition of death in our lives.
In Hebrews 2:14, we read the following: “…Jesus also shared in these, so that through his death he might destroy the one holding the power of death—that is, the devil.” Through His death, through Calvary, through the perfect sacrificial Lamb voluntarily taking our place, Jesus destroys the power of death in our lives.
Will we “die”? Yes, but the definition of death has changed. For us, death was mainly an end to life on this earth. But, in Christ death becomes mainly a beginning of our eternal life in heaven. So, death changes from an ending to a beginning.
And, death was a losing proposition because of everything we lost here. But, in Christ death changes to a winning proposition because of everything we gain in heaven by living in the presence of God forever.
Because of that first Good Friday and Easter Sunday, our experience of death and our understanding of death radically change. And because of the changes in death, Hebrews 2:15 is true in the life of a follower of Jesus: Jesus “free(s) those who were held in slavery all their lives by the fear of death.” In Christ, we are free from the fear of death.
COVID-19 is real. But what Jesus has done makes Christians face it differently. We are no longer in slavery to the fear of death.
(Response/Question? Email me at jeff.perkins@mbclife.org)