…but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Dead men aren’t generally known for their capacity to live. But there was a Man who plucked the briars of death and the curse by the root, a Man who lived apart from the seed of sin, a Son of Adam who was the Son of God. 

If God became a man, we would kill Him. But if God were killed, it could not be against His will. It could only be by His consent. If God died, He did it for a reason.

The Almighty consented from the throne of His infinite sovereignty to suffer our sufferings, from birth of a virgin to death on a cross, chose to envelop himself in the quivering shackles of humanity. When that man Jesus of Nazareth, who once was dead, as all men become, walked out of his sepulchre, as no man could do, the Almighty told us why He’d done it. While buried in the earth, he plucked up the seed. In being immersed in the heart of humanity’s evil, he dispersed the same. By plunging into the plumbless depths of suffering, God sanctified suffering. His holiness irrevocably stained it a new and brighter shade.

Death, that archfiend which has since time immemorial rested on its laurels of triumph over life, who has always had the last word, suddenly did not. Suddenly, that man Jesus Christ, rolled the stone which had fallen back uphill. He reversed the course of the world, of time, of physical being, turned the spiritual river running back to its source. He shone so bright that the shadow of death, the spectre of all existence, died. The cause of all disintegration was disintegrated. Nonexistence ceased to exist. 

The endless taunt of death at last has ended! No more is man’s hope invisible, no more is his faith a grasping after the wind. Discipline never held the promise, nor did law, nor knowledge, nor effort. The law was just the herald of the coming King’s conquest. The emptiness where man needed the object of his hope to reside was all along filled with God Himself, overflowing with grace through channels of faith.  

Love is never wasted. Christ has ensured it is so. There is indeed a Sun that shines behind the veil of darkness, and there is healing in His wings. He tore that veil once and for all. Death is dethroned, the King has come to take His rightful place, with all things under His feet. The age of death’s tyranny is over. Where death has so long flowed beneath and between everything, light and life permeate and purge the threads of being. We are set free for freedom. Life becomes life again. Liberty is total.

The method of death becomes its undoing. Where death has poisoned and corrupted, now life seeps in and sanctifies with unrivaled ferocity. Death itself has been poisoned with holiness. Just as plague spreads, now healing is contagious. Just as suffering rebounds from every onslaught of hope, now peace that surpasses understanding undercuts pain itself. The handiwork of sin faces a crisis of unstoppable life. Life has become inevitable, death has been rendered moot.

All who stand by those channels of faith can drink of waters of grace. That grace has invaded, the territory of death has become the scene of the most tremendous cosmic rout. Men and women who once were sinners, agents of the tyrant grave, are seized unawares by the transformation, as by a thief in the night. The stillness of spiritual death is disturbed incomparably and irreversibly by the waves of Life Himself.

Through Jesus’ death, the inevitability of death has been amended with a most beautiful caveat: that men who choose to suffer for Christ now suffer toward holiness. The meaninglessness of death has been supplanted by godliness. Those who die upon the cross of Christ pass through death into the life beyond it. Those who let the Good Physician pluck the seed of sin from their hearts, those who relinquish their chains to Him will be free. God never dies. Neither do His children.

We, like sheep, have gone astray. Sin, the ultimate malady, the problem we created and never could solve, the pit which proved so much easier to fall into than to climb out of, has been breached by love. Those wallowing in the underworld have seen the rope of God’s rescue tossed down all the way to the depths. Those who were dead have been hoisted by His strong arm back to the world touched by the sun. The Good Shepherd has braved the depths to rescue His flock, and in so doing has changed the very nature of things. The intractable illness of man’s heart has been given a cure. Nothing can ever be the same.

And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away. And he that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new. And he said unto me, Write: for these words are true and faithful. And he said unto me, It is done. I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the water of life freely. He that overcometh shall inherit all things; and I will be his God, and he shall be my son. — Revelation 21:4-7 (KJV)

Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. Believest thou this? — John 11:25-26 (KJV)