WHY YOU SHOULD THINK ABOUT DEATH by William Boekestein for Core Christianity
GNN Note – And a happy Wednesday to you!!
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Most of us have probably heard the phrase “death rate” more in the past month than at any other point in our lives. In the midst of a virus pandemic tracking the death rate—how many people infected with the virus actually die—is an important statistic.
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We love helping others and believe that’s one of the reasons we are chosen as Ambassadors of the Kingdom, to serve God’s children. We look to the Greatest Commandment as our Powering force.
But let’s not forget the ultimate human death rate: 100%.
For each of us, death is both imminent and unpredictable. The current virus outbreak is leading to more obituaries of elderly people. But younger and middle-aged people also continue to die. Some expected to die; others were blindsided. Tragically, many people are simply not prepared to die.
Young Jane Eyre was asked how one must face the reality of our mortality. “I deliberated a moment. My answer when it did come was objectionable. ‘I must keep in good health and not die.’” Objectionable indeed. And silly. And tragic. [MOU1] Still, how many people are like Jane, trying to prevent death rather than prepare for the life to come with true godliness (1 Tim. 4:8). How can we prepare for death so that our deaths will not be an eternal punishment for our sin, “but only a dying to sin and an entering into eternal life”[1](John 5:24; Phil. 1:23; Rom. 7:24–25).
Entrust yourself to Christ.
No one is ready to die who is not entrusting their eternity to the eternal Son of God. The only way to die well is to become “hidden with Christ in God” (Col. 3:3) so that Christ’s life, death, and resurrection become yours. In his death Christ has borne for us the wrath of God against our sin (Heb. 2:9). He was raised to “overcome death . . . make us partakers of the righteousness which He has obtained for us by his death,” raise us up to a new life, and offer a “sure pledge of our blessed resurrection.”[footnote: HC 45] God graciously offers us the eternal life we forfeited by our union with Adam (original sin), and by our actual transgressions. We can receive God’s gift “and make it [our] own in no other way than by faith only” (1 John 5:10).[2]
