As a seminary student serving as pastor of my first church, I was almost anxious for someone in the church to die. The lectures and study in the theology class about death and dying had been so exciting and inspiring, I could hardly wait for an opportunity to share them. The professors talked about Jesus’ victory over sin and death. Their faces almost glowed as they paced back and forth reflecting about the wonders of our Lord’s resurrection.
The professors talked about the victory over sin and death of each person who believes in Jesus Christ and how the resurrection of the Christian is assured because of Jesus’ victory over the grave.
My lack of experience as a pastor caused me to believe that the pain of death could almost be overcome by the glorious words of Scripture that because Christ lives, those who die in Him also live.
Then the time came when one of the deacons in the church died in a farm accident. A tractor turned over on him as he plowed a hillside. I arrived at the door of that house with all the inspiring words of my professors firmly planted in my mind and Bible verses marked and ready to read.
What I found was a weeping widow unable to hear the theological truth I had come to share. She had just lost her husband, her life companion. She was hurting with a pain I did not fully understand. Instead of recounting the wonderful lectures I had heard, we talked about God’s care for us in times of trouble, about His strength being available to us when we have no strength of our own. We cried together as I tried to comfort her with Scripture about God’s nearness.
That day I learned that one does not teach great Christian doctrines like the resurrection during crisis times of death. That kind of teaching takes place when people are able to hear and reflect, a time when emotions are not raw from pain. In times of death, people rely on understandings gained before that moment. Their immediate needs are to know they are loved, that God is not punishing them, that God is by their side helping carry their sorrow. People need to know that God understands their pain and will not let them go. After all He lost a Son, too.
The inability to hear new teaching or to be comforted by the biblical truth of resurrection is not an indictment on this great Christian doctrine. It is more a comment on the ability to receive comfort at a particular time. In essence, the deacon’s wife was like a patient not strong enough to take the medicine that could help her heal. She had to grow stronger before being able to let the healing impact of resurrection salve her wounds.
After all, her immediate grief was because her husband was no longer with her, not the question of his eternal destiny.
That is one reason the weeks following Easter are important to the teaching ministry of the church. It was in these weeks that Jesus appeared to the disciples. This season of the church year provides occasion to focus on the ultimate victory over sin and death made possible by Jesus’ death on the cross and the fact that God raised Him from the dead.
In Acts alone are some wonderful verses about the church’s teaching about Jesus’ resurrection. “But God raised Him from the dead, freeing Him from the agony of death, because it was impossible for death to keep its hold on Him” (Acts 2:24). “But you disowned the holy and righteous One and asked for a murderer to be granted to you, but put to death the Prince of life, the One whom God raised from the dead, a fact to which we are witnesses” (Acts 3:14–15).
“The God of our fathers raised up Jesus, whom you put to death by hanging Him on a cross. He is the one whom God exalted to His right hand as a Prince and a Savior to grant repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins” (Acts 5:30–31). “For David, after he had served the purpose of God in his own generation, fell asleep and was laid among his father and underwent decay; but He whom God raised did not undergo decay. Therefore let it be known to you, brethren, that through Him forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you and through Him everyone who believes is freed from all things from which you could not be freed through the Law of Moses” (Acts 13:36–39).
In Romans 8:2, the apostle Paul declared that “through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life sets me free from the law of sin and death.”
Jesus died for our sins but death and the grave could not hold Him. God raised Jesus to new life through the resurrection. God exalted Him and declared Him to be the Son of God with power. Repentance and forgiveness of sin are available to all through faith in Jesus and through Him alone.
Is it any wonder that Paul declared in 1 Corinthians 15:55–56, “The sting of death is sin and the power of sin is the law but thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
As a believer in Christ, one has “victory” because one’s sin is forgiven and the promise of resurrection is certain. In 1 Corinthians 15:23, Paul writes, “Christ the first fruits, after that those who are Christ’s at His coming.” Earlier, he declared, “Now God has not only raised the Lord, but will also raise us up through His power” (1 Cor. 6:14).
Raised to newness of life like God raised up Christ; raised to eternity with God in the place where Jesus went to prepare for His followers; raised to praise and worship the Lord of Lords and King of Kings forever and ever — that is what awaits the believer.
That is the victory of my deacon friend. That is the victory awaiting every Christian. Jesus breaks the power of canceled sin. The grave cannot hold the believer just as it could not hold Jesus. Satan loses. Jesus wins.
That certainty — the certainty of the resurrection — brings comfort indescribable to one who mourns, even if it takes a while before one is able to allow that truth to salve the aching soul.
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