The unmentionable

No-one in polite society ever talks of death – yet everyone, deep down, is afraid of it. Howard Inlet in Collateral Beauty expressed it: “At the end of the day, we long for love, we wish we had more time. And we fear death”.

When I was an adolescent I remember one night lying awake at night thinking about death and the great Beyond. I was so perturbed I finally got out of bed, crossed the landing to my brother’s room (a year and a half older than I) to try and get some reassurance. It was only some years later that the true answer came to us both and ultimately made us into workers for the Gospel.

One Bible verse I did know in my teens was, “The wages of sin is death” (Romans 6.23). The Bible, right from the beginning, makes it clear that death comes as a punishment for sin; we all die, because we are all sinners. God is kind enough not to inflict the penalty immediately when we sin; he allows time for people to remain alive and repent and find forgiveness.

The “death” that is the “wages of sin”, however, is not merely physical death. It is also what the Book of Revelation calls “the second death”, which is hell. This is described by Jesus as a place of “torment” where there is “weeping and gnashing of teeth”. There are sobering warnings throughout the Bible of the awful reality of eternal punishment; there are also wondrous depictions of eternal bliss and eternal life for those who have found mercy, obtained grace and been forgiven.

It is because “the soul that sins shall die” (Ezekiel 18.4) that the atoning work accomplished by Jesus had to take the form of his death. The sinner must die – so justice will be done; but if a representative bears the penalty in the place of the guilty, they may go free. That is why Jesus died: he said he would “give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10.45). “Christ also once suffered for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God” (1 Peter 3.18). “He himself bore our sins in his body” on the cross (1 Peter 2.24).  He came to deal with our sin problem, “to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself” (Hebrews 9.26). It was the supreme demonstration of his love for you and me: “Greater love has no-one than this”, said Jesus, “than to lay down his life for his friends” (John 15.13). “I am the Good Shepherd”, he said, “The Good Shepherd lays down his life for the sheep” (John 10.11).

If you ever doubt that God loves you, look with the eye of faith at the cross where Jesus bore your sin and your death penalty, to save you from eternal death. This is the great message of the Gospel: “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5.8).

This loving service, indispensable for our forgiveness, was accomplished by Jesus in human history, at Jerusalem, almost 2,000 years ago, and its value is such that on that basis any sinner may turn to Christ in faith and find salvation.

Our response must logically be that of thankful faith. Once we grasp what Jesus did for us, how can we but turn from sin and open our hearts in grateful love to such a Saviour? Once we do that, we need no longer fear death: the verse that begins, “The wages of sin is death”, ends, “but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord” 

Clive Every-Clayton