Our Surest Hope in Life Is Death
And the life that comes after
I’m a little obsessed with death.
I know that sounds weird—because it kind of is—but it’s true, and I figure I should be honest with you about it.
I’m at that weird age and stage of life (35-years-old with two young children) in which I vacillate between feeling invincible and inescapably fragile in a matter of hours.
One day I may feel invincible, totally forgetting that death will one day come for me. And then the next, I may be physically and mentally aching, totally and painfully aware that one day my kids will bury me—hopefully well after they are adults themselves.
Death fascinates me for a whole host of reasons we won’t dive into today, but death becomes a front-burner topic in my mind around Holy Week each year for obvious reasons: the Savior of the world died and then de-clawed death by rising from the grave.
Obviously I don’t want to die anytime soon mostly for personal, selfish reasons like wanting to see my girls grow up or enjoy a long life with my wonderful wife. But I never fear death less than I do when I am reminded of Christ’s conquering of it, and how temporary it really is.
Death and resurrection are baked into the fabric of the cosmos, and our greatest hope in life is the life that awaits us on the other side of death.
Death and Resurrection: Threads in the Fabric of the Cosmos
In his book The Hope of the Resurrection, Patrick Schreiner has an entire chapter dedicated to how the realities of death and resurrection are woven into the fabric of the whole cosmos. He writes specifically about how we can see the resurrection in our backyards (bolding mine):
For example, the life cycle of an oak tree is one of death to life. An oak tree doesn’t reach its peak acorn production until it is about fifty to eighty years old. Its acorns contain seeds protected by hard wood shells. When an acorn falls to the ground, it is alive. But once it is disconnected from the tree, the outer shell slowly dies so that the life in the seed can sprout through the shell. An acorn’s potential is never realized until part of it dies. After an corn sheds its outer shell, new life bursts through.
The Scriptures say that this reproduction cycle points to a resurrection reality. When asked about the resurrection, the apostle Paul turns to seeds to explain it (1 Cor. 15:35-38). People in the first century were just as shocked by the idea of the resurrection, so he uses nature as an analogy for it. He says we are foolish if we don’t recognize what you sow into the ground does not come to life unless it dies (1 Cor. 15:36). Paul asserts that our earthy bodies are like seeds planted in the ground. You are to your future resurrection body as an acorn is to an oak tree. Today you are an acorn, but the acorn must die. In the resurrection you will be an oak tree.
Schreiner also shares a great Martin Luther quote that reads, “Our Lord has written the promise of resurrection, not in books alone, but in every leaf in springtime.”
The movement from life to death to life-to-the-full is true of us, the pinnacle of God’s creation, and echoes of this truth are woven throughout the fabric of all of creation. How awesome is that? Even the acorns cry out to testify of God’s work in creation to bring about new creation.
I have sometimes been a part of Holy Week services in different church communities that are somber in tone—like Good Friday services—and I’ve just always had a hard time play-acting grief when in such a service—for two reasons, I think.
First, it’s hard for me to pretend that Christ has died and not yet resurrected. It’s hard for me to get into that mode, I guess. I live in a post-Easter-Sunday world, and it’s hard for me to mentally transport myself to the night of Good Friday or the silence of that Saturday.
Second, I guess I find myself asking the question, “Would I have rather Christ not died?” How could I genuinely grieve one of the most important elements of the greatest news the world has ever received? While Christ’s death was unjust and awful, I find it hard to make myself grieve it—without it, we don’t have resurrection! The two feel so inextricably connected to me that it’s hard for me to deeply grieve Christ’s death without immediately being comforted and overjoyed by his resurrection.
The only reason death doesn’t scare me—even as much as I would like it to hold off for as long as possible—is because Jesus conquered it and showed us that real life awaits us on the other side of death. In going up on the tree, he fell from the tree like the acorn, bringing forth new life that could only come from death. This is what awaits us. This is our ultimate hope.
What Is the Ultimate Hope for the Christian?
In their tremendous work The Gospel Way Catechism, Trevin Wax and Thomas West answer the question “What Is the Ultimate Hope for the Christian?” in this way, in part:
Answer: Our hope is in Jesus Christ. We believe he will come again to reign over and restore the world, delighting to dwell with us and grant life everlasting, forever filling us with wonder, love, and praise.
“A man who believes is a man who hopes,” claimed Nicholas Sarkozy, former president of France. “Secular morality always risks exhausting itself because it is not backed up by a hope that fulfills man’s aspirations for the infinite.”
Our world wants to hope but doesn’t know how.
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We were created to live for God and to hope in God.
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The ultimate hope for the Christian is embodied in Jesus Christ. He is not just the fulfillment of God’s promises; he is our hope. Christians look back at the fulfilled promises of God and look ahead to the eventual return of Jesus Christ…The new heavens and earth will one day be our eternal home. We will be free from suffering and sorrow. All that will remain is the presence of God filling us evermore with wonder, love, and unending praise.
The ultimate hope for Christians is in the finished work and future return of Jesus Christ.
Death is, in the eyes of most, the worst thing that can happen to humans—it is the cessation of life itself. But, because of Christ, death is not the destination for the Christian. Death is but a brief layover on a connecting flight that shortly arrives at eternal, joyful life in the presence of the God who created, saved, and loves us.
No one wants to die before they’ve lived whatever it is fulfills their version of what it means to “live a full life,” and this is understandable. It’s good for us to want to experience the variety of beautiful experiences and wonderful graces that God provides for us throughout our decades of heartbeats and deep breaths.
At the same time, we can see death not as a cessation of life so much as a changing of mode.
Death doesn’t press stop on life, it just moves us to the next final, beautiful, unending song.
Whether we’re rooting our hope in the eventual return of Christ in glory or the eventual reality that we will join Christ in glory, the ultimate hope for the Christian is found in the person and work of Jesus Christ. It is because he defeated death that we don’t have to fear it.
The Impenetrable Armor of Resurrection Life
A prayer titled “Retrospect and Prospect” in the Puritan prayer book The Valley of Vision says:
I am not afraid to look the king of terrors in the face,
for I know I shall be drawn, not driven,
out of the world.Until then let me continually glow and burn out for thee,
and when the last great change shall come
let me awake in thy likeness,
leaving behind me an example that will glorify thee
while my spirit rejoices in heaven,
and my memory is blessed upon earth
Whatever sort of terror it is we face—whether some sort of spiritual oppression, a cancer diagnosis, a relational catastrophe, or something else—we can face it without fear. We can “glow and burn out” for the Savior who gives us hope. Perhaps if the terror overcomes us and we find ourselves joined to Christ in glory earlier than we would have preferred, we could leave behind an example of Christlikeness and gospel-rooted hope that it glorifies God.
Finally, to zoom in a bit more closely on the idea that our hope is untouchable, that no earthly terror and even death itself cannot take away the hope we have in the finished work of Christ, let’s look again at something Patrick Schreiner writes in The Hope of the Resurrection:
…the resurrection is satisfying because it confirms that nothing can finally harm those who are in Christ. The resurrection affirms that the Christian cannot be destroyed in the ultimate sense.
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Even if people maim a body, they can’t reverse the resurrection. What a comfort this is. Satan is incapable of destroying us. We’ve been given impenetrable armor.
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If Jesus did not rise from the dead, then there is always the chance that someone can take everything away from you, including your life. However if Jesus did rise from the dead, then everyone in Christ has a satisfying end to his or her story.
No one can take everything away from us because everything we have been given are gifts of God that are not ours to hold for our own sake, but are ours to steward faithfully for the glory of God and the good of other people.
Our only hope in life is death and the untouchable, unending, and unmatched life that comes after. But even as we look ahead through the dim glass of death to the life that is to come, let’s enjoy this one, too.
The Qoheleth writes in Ecclesiastes 9:7-10:
Go, eat your bread with joy, and drink your wine with a merry heart, for God has already approved what you do.
Let your garments be always white. Let not oil be lacking on your head.
Enjoy life with the wife whom you love, all the days of your vain life that he has given you under the sun, because that is your portion in life and in your toil at which you toil under the sun. Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might, for there is no work or thought or knowledge or wisdom in Sheol, to which you are going.
Amen. Christ is risen! Christ will come again.
