The Reality of Death

There’s a reason we don’t like talking about death. I am not going to pretend there is no fear as death draws near, whether it’s our own or that of a loved one. We intuitively quake before it and rail against this last enemy.

Our minds cannot fully grasp what’s beyond our present reality, let alone on the other side of death. When we lack cold hard facts in a world that demands them, fear flourishes. As for our hearts, death is a harsh reality for those it leaves behind. It threatens to break us asunder, to shake us to pieces, to make target practice out of our hearts, poking holes in the faith we thought was firm.[1]

But often, when we go to the Bible in the wake of death asking “Why?” its overarching storyline answers us with a different question: “Who?” Our grief and lament lead us, however pain-fully and slowly, to the Man of Sorrows Himself, a Savior so “acquainted with grief” that it defined Him (Isa. 53:3). He faced death when it took His friend Lazarus. He faced death as it took His own life. And He faces the fullness of it for us and with us.

Yes, Christ rose again, declaring (incredibly!) victory over death. But He still wept, really wept, at the tomb of Lazarus. He still cried, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” during His own death on the cross (Matt. 27:46). Even after resurrection, “He who broke the bonds of death kept his wounds,” writes Christian philosopher Nicholas Wolterstorff in Lament for a Son.[2]

We too will be wounded when it comes to take those we love. We too will cry out. We will weep at the bedsides and gravesites of our beloved. We will tear up at the grocery store. We will cry at the playground and in the car. We will stumble on a memory and curl into a ball intermittently for months and years and lifetimes, even if we know that, one day, our Savior will wipe away every tear.[3] There is no tidy theology that will keep those tears from falling.

But our suffering in death need not be deepened by surprise. Paul used the phrase do not be surprised in his letters to the first-century churches while addressing the concepts of fiery trials and the return of Christ. John also told his readers not to be surprised if the world hates them.[4] They knew that being surprised by something that feels so theologically unsettling would only add to the weight of their sorrow.

Likewise, if we do not understand and have not tested the doctrines we claim—that God has pointed the arrows of His wrath not at us who deserve it but at His own Son to save us—then every trial can feel like a double trial, leaving us to wonder whether God is truly for us in the midst of it.[5] Death can leave us particularly vulnerable to this way of thinking, especially when it strikes sooner than our modern life expectancies predict. The grief that accompanies it hits each of us so uniquely that it can be disorienting and dangerously isolating.

This is when it matters to believe in a Savior who not only conquered death, but also experienced it. “Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows” (Isa. 53:4a).

The promise in the valley of the shadow of death is not that we won’t walk through it—there is no avoiding it—but that God is with us when we do (Ps. 23:4a). We are perhaps too familiar with Psalm 23 for this truth to bowl us over, but it should. In the valley of the shadow of death, God’s with-ness both changes us and comforts us (v. 4b). And it lifts our eyes to the day when we will dwell in His presence forever (v. 6b).

If God’s presence is promised in this valley of death, shouldn’t that change our perspective of it as disciples of Christ? If God’s story is all about His desire to dwell with us—and about us receiving a desire to dwell with Him in return—that makes the place where His presence is promised the climax of the story. It’s not to be skipped over. It is to be soaked in.

[1] “I was at ease, but he hath broken me asunder: he hath also taken me by my neck, and shaken me to pieces, and set me up for his mark.” (Job 16:12 kjv)
[2]  Nicholas Wolterstorff, Lament for a Son (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1987), 92.
[3] Revelation 21:4.
[4] See 1 Peter 4:12; 1 Thessalonians 5:4; and 1 John 3:13.
[5]  Rev. Kevin Twit, campus minister at Reformed University Fellowship at Belmont University, made this comment while introducing the song “O Love That Will Not Let Me Go” on The Hymn Sing album (Indelible Grace Music, 2010).