Death
July 10, 2025 | by: Dale Thiele | 0 Comments
Posted in: Pastoral Encouragement
We have been confronted with news of the devastating tragedy of the flooding in Texas along the Guadalupe River. Over 100 people lost their lives in the flash flooding, including dozens of children. Even more people are still missing. With growing global connectivity and the 24/7 news cycle, we have front row seats to tragedies from all over the place almost instantly. We might become enraged about death. We might become numb to death. We might feel guilt or indifference about the death of others. Some death weighs heavy on our hearts. The fact of the matter is that no one can escape death. It is all around us and will someday come to each of us.
So how should we think about and respond to death? As followers of Christ, we must, and our hope must, be grounded in Scriptural truth. The time to dig those roots in is during times of relative peace so that when tragedy strikes, we are not searching for something on which to hold. Here are some essential biblical truths about death.
- Death is our enemy. The Bible does not sugarcoat or downplay death. The apostle Paul says, “The last enemy to be destroyed is death” (1 Cor. 15:26). And the writer of Hebrews says that the devil “has the power of death” and uses the “fear of death” to subject people to “lifelong slavery” (Heb. 2:14-15). It is no Christian virtue to like or love death. Death is evil. It reigns in all humanity due to sinful rebellion against God. Death is the consequence, the wages, of sin. We do not celebrate death.
- We Grieve Death. Paul says in 1 Thessalonians 4:13 that he does not want the church to grieve the death of another “as others do who have no hope.” He is not saying Christians should not grieve death, but Christians should not grieve without hope. We will talk about hope below. But the point here is that Christians grieve death; it is our enemy. Famously, “Jesus wept” when he saw the tomb of Lazarus (John 11:35). “Abraham went in to mourn for Sarah and to weep for her” when she died (Gen. 24:2). It is appropriate to be grieved by death, to feel pained by death.
- In This Life, We Do Not Know All of God’s Purposes Behind Death. We are assured in Scripture that God is sovereign over everything in this world, including death. God says, “I form light and create darkness, I make well-being and create calamity, I am the Lord, who does all these things” (Is. 45:7). We would not find comfort in the Lord if he was not sovereign. And yet, we do not fully understand God’s ways and purposes. Why would he allow a six-year-old girl, out riding her bike, to get hit by a truck and die? I don’t know. We get in trouble, though, in two ways in these situations. First, we think we can know all of the purposes of God. This is the problem with Job’s friends, seeking to explain why Job faced the tragedy of the death of his ten children. They were wrong, and God rebuked them for it. Second, we can begin to believe and operate as if God does not have any purposes behind the deaths we face. This is a place of hopelessness, believing that God is capricious and unloving. We are assured in Scripture “that for those who love God all things work together for good” (Rom. 8:28). Even when we don’t understand the “why?” we can trust in the goodness of God.
- Hope, Springing from Christ, Distinguishes Christians From Others When Facing Death. Paul wanted the church at Thessalonica to grieve death with hope. Hope is the confidence that all will be okay. That confidence is in no one else, nothing else, other than Jesus Christ. Jesus said in John 11:25-26, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die.” Jesus conquered death in his resurrection and will eliminate death in his second coming (see 1 Cor. 15:20, 57; Rev. 21:4). Therefore, Paul quotes the prophecy of Isaiah in 1 Corinthians 15:54-55: “Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?” Christians have the hope, rooted in Christ, that death does not have the final word. In fact, we have the hope of resurrection. Death no longer is to be feared. Death does not threaten our eternal well-being. Even though we grieve the loss we experience through death, we can never lose our greatest treasure in Christ. Death can never take Christ away from us (Rom. 8:38). Death is devastating when we believe it threatens our ultimate treasures. But when those ultimate treasures are secure in Christ, the sting of death is no more.
We cannot avoid death. But we can let Scripture guide our response to death. Let’s grieve death, clinging to our hope in Christ.
