" CHRIST’S DEATH MAKES THE CHRISTIAN’S DEATH A GAIN ."

40. Q. Why was it necessary for Christ to humble Himself even unto death?
A. Because of the justice and truth of God[1] satisfaction for our sins could be made in no other way than by the death of the Son of God.[2]
[1] Gen. 2:17. [2] Rom. 8:3; Phil. 2:8; Heb. 2:9, 14, 15.

41. Q. Why was he buried?
A. His burial testified that He had really died.[1]
[1] Is. 53:9; John 19:38-42; Acts 13:29; I Cor. 15:3,4.

42. Q. Since Christ has died for us, why do we still have to die?
A. Our death is not a payment for our sins, but it puts an end to sin and is an entrance into eternal life.[1]
[1] John 5:24; Phil. 1:21-23; I Thess. 5:9, 10.

43. Q. What further benefit do we receive from Christ's sacrifice and death on the cross?
A. Through Christ's death our old nature is crucified, put to death, and buried with Him,[1] so that the evil desires of the flesh may no longer reign in us,[2] but that we may offer ourselves to Him as a sacrifice of thankfulness.[3]
[1] Rom. 6:5-11; Col. 2:11, 12. [2] Rom. 6:12-14. [3] Rom. 12:1; Eph. 5:1, 2.

44. Q. Why is there added: He descended into hell?
A. In my greatest sorrows and temptations I may be assured and comforted that my Lord Jesus Christ, by His unspeakable anguish, pain, terror, and agony, which He endured throughout all His sufferings[1] but especially on the cross, has delivered me from the anguish and torment of hell.[2]
[1] Ps. 18:5, 6; 116:3; Matt. 26:36-46; 27:45, 46; Heb. 5:7-10. [2] Is. 53.

Scripture Reading:
Genesis 5
Luke 23:38-56

Singing:  (Psalms and Hymns are from the "Book of Praise" Anglo Genevan Psalter)
Psalm 116:1,2,3
Psalm 6:2,3
Psalm 90:3,4,5
Hymn 51:6,7,8
Hymn 56:1,3 & Psalm 16:5

Beloved Congregation of the Lord Jesus Christ!

I doubt that too many of us spend a lot of time thinking about death. Most of us, after all, are young, and so, in the nature of things, have other things on our minds. And that’s healthy.

Yet, brothers and sisters, the Lord God has been pleased to reveal this and that about death. Since every part of God’s revelation is important for us and necessary, we need to make it our business to know what God has said on this topic. In fact, the matter of what God has said about death becomes the more important when we realize what our culture is thinking and doing about death. For on the one hand our culture wants to minimize death and downplay its sting; one sees evidence of that in the promotion of euthanasia in our land as well as in the skeletons and other death images on the t-shirts of the nation’s youth. On the other hand, our culture is scared of death, and that comes out in the desire to extend life at all costs, to fight off death as long as possible. Those two, the minimization of death on the one hand and the fight against death on the other, are, of course, two sides of one coin; such is the fear of death that people make a joke of it in their efforts to avoid facing death’s bitter reality.

In the midst of this culture the Lord tells us what death really is, tells us too what our Lord Jesus Christ has done about death. His Word teaches us that death is the payment God requires for sin, and since the payment isn’t enough death remains for the unbeliever a horrible reality; death signifies entry to hell. But not so for the child of God. Since Jesus Christ has paid for sin, death is no longer our payment for sin, but signifies entrance into God’s presence in heaven.

I summarize the sermon with this theme:

1. The cause of death
2. The defeat of death
3. The purpose of death

The paradise God made in the beginning did not know death. That death nevertheless entered God’s beautiful world makes death a foreign thing, an enemy.

Where death came from? God had said to Adam and Eve on the day He made them that they could eat of every tree of the Garden, with the exception of the one. God added that "in the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die" (Gen 2:17). Death would follow their eating of the tree simply because their eating would be sin. This connection between sin and death is repeated elsewhere in Scripture. I read in Ezekiel 18 that "the soul who sins shall die" (vs 4). And Paul says in Rom 6 that "the wages of sin is death" (vs 23). God has placed a direct link between those two concepts. You cannot speak of sin without bringing up death as its penalty, its consequence. And you cannot speak of death without bringing up its cause, the fall into sin.

Adam and Eve ate of the forbidden fruit. As God had ordained, they died the moment they sinned. No, they didn’t die physically; their heart didn’t stop beating. Rather, they died spiritually. By disobeying God, Adam and Eve broke the covenant bond God had established with them, and joined Satan’s side, established a bond with Satan. Being on Satan’s side, having a bond with Satan, is what Paul calls "dead in sin" (Eph 2:1,5). You see, ‘life’ according the Scripture is not simply that one breathes, or that the heart beats. ‘Life’ is a much deeper concept, is in fact that one has communion with God. ‘Life’ is that the covenant bond with God is active, is vibrant. But by disobeying God’s command, Adam and Eve broke that covenant – and thereby broke the bond with God, became "dead in sin". So it was that when they heard the sound of God coming in the cool of the day, they hid themselves. They were scared of God, dead with respect to God, spiritually dead.

Physical death followed many years later. Gen 5 tells us that Adam lived 930 years, "and he died" (vs 5). In fact, that’s a refrain throughout Gen 5; for each generation we read those disturbing words, "and he died" (cf vss 8, 11, 14, 17, etc). Physical death invariably comes so that the body must return to the dust from which it was taken. The penalty God placed on the fall into sin cannot be escaped; all must die. Resist though one will, stay physically fit, inject medicines, etc, ultimately does not help; "it is appointed for all men once to die," and so it happens. Though men lived some 900 years before the flood, the end for all was the same; "and he died." Moses was years later inspired by the Lord to write that "the days of our lives are seventy years; and if by reason of strength they are eighty years" (Ps 90:10) – and we die. There are no exceptions. What today is so strong, so muscular, so fit, becomes weak tomorrow. And the weak peter out, we die…. It is the bitter fruit of our disobedience in Paradise. Sin, death: those two can’t be separated.

Or can they? Gen 5 mentions one exception to that sad refrain about death. Though of every generation it is said that "he died", it is said of Enoch that "he was not, for God took him" (vs 24). This man was a sinner like anybody else, responsible for his transgression in Paradise and his transgressions day by day. Yet he did not die! How is that possible? Surely it means that you can separate sin from death, death from sin! And so it is, brothers and sisters. That brings us to our second point:

The day came when Jesus of Nazareth hung on the cross of Calvary. After experiencing hellish agony –rejection by men and God alike- He "cried out with a loud voice" and said, "Father, into Your hands I commit My spirit." What, my brothers and sisters, happened next? Can you recall? You will tell me, I think, that then Jesus died – and so we can add Jesus’ name to the list of Gen 5; "Jesus lived 33 years, and He died."

Did He? Some of you have been at a deathbed, have seen a man die. What happens? A man of strength is overcome by illness or old age, and the result is that gradually he becomes weaker and weaker…, until finally he just peters out…. That is, death comes along to take him, and he can’t fight it anymore; he dies.

Did Jesus do that? It’s not, congregation, what the Bible says. I read in Luke 23 that after He committed His spirit to His God, Jesus "breathed His last" (23:46). John says that Jesus "gave up His spirit" (19:30). Both Luke and John avoid the phrase so common from Gen 5 that "He died". They avoid the phrase because Jesus didn’t peter out, didn’t slide into a coma so that death came along and took Jesus. No, for Jesus death was a decision, was an action. At His time, He sovereignly gave Himself to death. Consider the following factors:

· We read from Luke 23 that Pilate placed an inscription over Jesus on the cross proclaiming, "This is the King of the Jews." Pilate meant this as a farce, meant it to poke fun at the Jews. Yet there was definite truth in the proclamation of the sign. Since Jesus remained true God, He was sovereign King even on the cross. In fact, He remained sovereign Master of death as well.

· We read that one of the criminals crucified with Jesus challenged Him to "save Yourself and us." Could Jesus do it? Most certainly He could. He had the power to hop off the cross any time. That’s exactly why the criminal’s words form a temptation for Jesus; He was powerful to do what the criminal wanted – and so escape the agony of the cross.

· I read in vs 46 that Jesus "cried out with a loud voice." The dying don’t cry out with a loud voice (unless one is being killed, and that’s not the case here). The most the dying can do is whisper…. But Jesus has strength.

· Jesus says in vs 46, "Father, into Your hands I commit My spirit." Here, too, is action. Jesus does something, consciously, deliberately hands over His spirit, His soul to God in heaven. I know, David in Ps 31 spoke the identical words (vs 5), and we may voice these words too on our death beds, but for us these words are a resignation; we see death approaching, we can’t fight it anymore, and so we give in, resign ourselves to the inevitable, and so commit our spirit to our God. But in Jesus’ situation there is nothing of resignation; on the lips of the Son of God on the cross of Calvary these words contain decision, contain authority, action.

Jesus "breathed His last," says Luke, and that does not mean that Jesus just petered out, that He slipped into a coma and death took Him away. Rather, Jesus made a conscious decision now to die. He was master over death, now decided to breathe His last, and so gave Himself to death at a point of His choosing. As Jesus Himself said in Jn 10:

"My Father loves Me, because I lay down My life that I may take it again. No one takes it from Me, but I lay it down of Myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again" (vss 17f).

This, my brothers and sisters, is a remarkable thing. God had laid a connection between sin and death so that all who sinned invariably had to die; death was the penalty on sin, death was payment for sin. Jesus was the Sinner, for all our sins were piled onto Him. So He had to die. But see, Jesus dies in a way different from any other person! Others die as victims to death. Not so Jesus; He died as master over death. Why the difference? That, of course, is because through His suffering He had atoned for sin. Recall: after the three hours of darkness He cried out on the cross that "it is finished" (Jn 19:30). So death for Jesus was no longer payment for sin, no longer curse from God over sin. So God did not send Death either to take Jesus anymore.

Given, then, that sin was paid for, why did Jesus still die?! Hebrews 2 puts it like this: "through death [Jesus] might destroy him who had the power of death, that is, the devil" (vs 14). That is, instead of Death coming along to take a weakened Jesus along with him to the realm of the dead, the sovereign Christ on the cross took hold of Death and determined to go with Death for as long as He wished. Because He took hold of Death and so breathed His last, He could also rise from the dead and begin breathing again. He is master over death; the power of death is broken, destroyed.

It is a point, brothers and sisters, that must be clear in our minds. For all of us it’s true that we are victims of death, that Death is stronger than we are, that we have to go along with Death. That is the penalty of our fall into sin; ultimately we have to give in to Death, submit to Death. But not so Jesus! He gives Himself to Death at His time. More, Death is His servant, Death must serve His purposes.

From His position of strength over Death, the Lord Jesus Christ could change the reason of death for the child of God. The connection God placed between sin and death meant that death was the consequence of sin, more, that death was man’s payment for sin. But because of our sinfulness and brokenness, our payment was never adequate; neither Adam or Noah or Abraham or Moses or any of the Old Testament fathers could present their own blood as adequate payment to God for sin. That is why all those who died without faith in the coming Savior woke up after death in the agony of hell; Death was the certain entrance to hell.

But because Christ paid for sin, no sinner needs to offer his own blood to God anymore. In that equation where sin leads to death, sin is gone because sin has been paid for. That’s why death is no longer the payment for sin. That is also why Paul can say to the Corinthians that "Death is swallowed up in victory." For, he adds, "the sting of death is sin," but sin is taken away! (15:54ff).

Here, congregation, is also the delightful gospel of Jesus’ burial. Joseph of Arimathea took the body of the dead Jesus down from the cross. That involved removing the hands and feet from the nails, touching the body, carrying the body to the tomb. All of that gave ample time to observe that the look in Jesus’ eyes was vacant, dead, that the temperature of the body was the temperature of death, that rigor mortis had set in. Had Joseph observed that the body was warm, that rigor mortis had not set in, he most certainly would not have buried it. Here is a witness that Jesus was really dead.

And that’s gospel! Christ had paid for sin. Yet He sovereignly gave Himself to death that –as Hebrews 2 says- "through death He might destroy him who had the power over death, that is, the devil." And that chapter adds that thereby Jesus "release[d] those who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage" (vs 15). No longer is death for the child of God his payment for sin! That link God placed between sin and death is severed! Christ changed the reason for death. That change of reason for death was foreshadowed already in Gen 5 with the reference to Enoch not dying. He did not die, but instead "God took him" (vs 24) because this would be the new purpose of death; instead of being payment for sin, death would be for Jesus’ sake the means by which God would bring His own into eternal glory. In a world where the cold reality proclaimed that all men die, God spared Enoch the humiliation of death in order to proclaim to all the world that God in Christ would break the link between sin and death – and so all the world of Enoch’s day was confronted with the gospel.

That brings us to our third point:

Why, congregation of the Lord, do we still have to die? If Christ has paid for sin so that death is no longer the payment for sin, why does God not simply let us live on and on? It strikes us as desirable – especially if we have lost loved ones….

Note, beloved, the way we answer that question in the Catechism. Answer 42: death "puts an end to sin and is an entrance into eternal life." Here are two factors. The first is that death "puts an end to sin." The point here is that life on this earth remains a vale of tears. We all experience it; life knows pain, be it suffering because of illness, be it suffering because of disappointments with people. Children are received with joy in one’s youth, but those same children can be cause for deep concern and disappointment later on. And what shall we say of the pain caused by apostasy in the world around us, and weaknesses in the church…. More, the older one gets, the more one’s own weaknesses become evident, and bother you…. Shall we then live on and on? No, beloved, there is profound mercy in God’s decision to relieve His people from the trials of this life. "The days of our lives are seventy years," long enough to complete the task of raising the next generation of covenant children, and God relieves us of the sufferings that characterize this vale of tears. Through Death as His tool, God "puts an end to sin" in the lives of His beloved.

Yet God does not use death only to put an end to sin. Death does not put one into a non-existence, into a world of nothingness free only from pain and suffering. Death "puts an end to sin," yes, and at the same time "is an entrance into eternal life." ‘Life’, I said before, is ‘communion with God’. In this earthly life the child of God already lives with God; in fact the Holy Spirit has made His home in our hearts. That life-with-God never ends for the child of God. That is why Paul can say to the Romans that even death cannot separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord (Rom 8:38f). But it remains fact that in this life we do not see God face to face. More, because of sin we repeatedly experience a measure of distance between ourselves and God. How, now, do we get out of this vale of tears into that world of glory in the presence of our covenant God? The way to get from this life to that life is by means of death. Death is the entrance, death is the door through which the child of God must travel to get out of a life of sorrow and brokenness into a life in God’s presence. Whereas the Lord simply "took" Enoch so long ago (and Elijah too), God is pleased not to use that means for the rest of us; He in His wisdom is pleased to take us to glory by means of death.

We might wish it were different, for we realize well that the process of dying brings its pain, its own humiliation. Here we need to bear in mind, brothers and sisters, that God maintains His word in the beginning. He said that if we would eat we would die. He keeps His word, and so we shall have to undergo the humiliation of death. So we taste just how broken we’ve become as a result of our fall into sin, and therefore how much we need the redeeming work of the Savior. Yet even tasting that brokenness is not a bad thing, for Paul says to the Corinthians that for the child of God that process of dying brings with it an inner renewal (I Cor 4:16). That inner renewal is the beginning of a "weight of glory" that God gives to His own in the life to come. So Paul can say to the Philippians that death is "gain". Sure, he’d prefer to keep living in this life, he says, because he can see work that needs to be done. But, he adds, it’s "far better" to be with Christ; "to die is gain" (Phil 1:21ff). No more tears, no more pain, no more remnants of sin; only glory with God – how rich the future for the sinner bought with Jesus’ blood! And the way to enter that realm of glory is through the door of death. No wonder Paul can jubilate that "Death is swallowed up in victory," that the sting of death is broken, is gone (I Cor 15:54f).

Shall we then prolong life at all cost? The world around us will spend big money and effort to keep death at bay, and yes, that’s so understandable; those not washed in Jesus’ blood need to pay for their own sins – and they can’t! How awful is death for those who must face God empty-handed! But not so for those whose sins have been washed away in Jesus’ blood. Keep death at bay at all costs? In this matter too, beloved, we may be different from those around us. Sure, let us treasure the life God gives. But fight of death at all costs? There is no need to do that. Let us lift our eye beyond the fact of death, and beyond the empty place that will result from the passing on of a loved one. The Lord is pleased to give the crown of glory to a dear child of His. We realize: it will not do to begrudge another such a privilege.

Then it’s true: for those left behind an empty place remains. Death does leave such a painful scar. And those who have lost loved ones know so well how intense the longing can be to have the loved one back, how much of a struggle it is to let the loved one go. We’re confronted so painfully with the harsh reality that we still live in a vale of tears, that we have not yet been relieved of the suffering that characterizes this fallen world. But for us who remain, beloved, the good news of Christ’s triumph over death has encouragement for us too. It’s not just the sick or the aged who benefit from the confession of Christ’s death, but also the young and the healthy. For Christ’s triumph means that the living are spiritually alive again. And that’s to say that those who live in Christ have "communion with God" again. Then yes, death leaves a very empty place, and that emptiness hurts. But communion with God –being alive in the true sense of Scripture- means that there is no distance between God and us, that we’re secure in His hands, deeply loved by a God who gave His only Son to the death of the cross so that we might live with Him forever. Granted, in the face of an empty place left by death we might not feel that God is near, might not feel that God loves us dearly. But what we feel is not the measure of reality; our feelings are warped by the fall into sin. The fact of the matter is that even in our aloneness and grief, the God who has let loved us go through the door of death before we travel that route continues to carry us in His hands.

How did Paul say it again? "I am persuaded," he said, "that neither death nor" –and there follows a long list- "that neither death nor … anything else can separate us from the love of God which is in Jesus Christ our Lord" (Rom 8:38f). That includes our own death as well as the death of loved ones. Amen.