That Dreaded Day

In my previous post I began to look at Jesus’ imperative statement in John 4:24 regarding our worship of God, our acknowledgement and pursuit of Him as the object of our deepest love and source of our greatest joy. In this passage Jesus states that “God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.” I had noted at the end of the post that our ability to do so, as men and women who come into this world spiritually dead, cut off from the glorious life and relationship with God for which we were created (Ephesians 2:1), required what Jesus referred to as our being born again – restored to spiritual life in Him (John 3:3-5). I intended to use today’s post to begin explaining what Jesus meant by this and how and why it was necessary for us to worship God His Way. However, sadly, in the past few weeks I have lost both my brother and one of my closest friends suddenly and unexpectedly, to what the book of Job refers to as the king of terrors, namely death – physical death (Job 18:11-14). This experience has stirred up in me a number of thoughts regarding this aspect of life that I and everyone conceived in women must ultimately face.

The issue of death, though unpleasant to think or talk about, is quite relevant to my recent posts on worship, as the Bible makes it clear that death is the result, the just penalty designated by God for idolatry, for the worship of something or someone other than the one true God as the object of our deepest love and the source of our greatest joy (Romans 1:18-32). Idolatry is a violation of God’s first and great commandment, a violation the Bible refers to as sin (Exodus 20:1-3) (Matthew 22:36-40) (Luke 4:8).

Sin essentially is man’s rejection of God’s purpose for and rule over our lives, our opposition to His order and design for human flourishing and individual happiness. Sin is displayed in our willful ignorance of and disdain for the truth of God’s glorious person (Romans 1:25); in our innumerable transgressions of His righteous laws and commandments (1 John 3:4); in our ingratitude for His goodness and grace (Romans 1:21); and ultimately in our rejection of Him as the object of our deepest love and source of our greatest joy (John 3:19) (Psalm 73:25-26). We are told in Romans 3:23 and a number of other passages in the Bible that we, the human race, are all guilty of sin and subject to its just penalty of  death, which God determined and warned Adam and Eve of, and everyone since, would be His just and certain penalty for it (Genesis 2:17) (Ezekiel 18:1-4) (Romans 6:23) .

Death is a violent intruder into God’s good creation (Genesis 1:31). The term death in the Bible means being cut off or separated from. I have noted in previous posts that death as defined in the Bible has three aspects to it. The first is what theologians have referred to as spiritual death, defined above as our being cut off – separated from the glorious life and relationship with God for which we were created (Ephesians 2:1). As a result of Adam’s sin, all of mankind come into this world in this condition (Romans 5:12), and to escape it we must be born again by a supernatural work of God the Holy Spirit (Ezekiel 36:26-27).

The second aspect of death is physical death, our being cut off from life in this present material world (Genesis 3:17-19) (Ecclesiastes 3:1-2). Physical death is rightly the most feared, despised, ugly, vulgar, obscene, hated event ever witnessed or experienced by mankind while in this world. It is the loss of all relationships – all attachments – all possessions – all achievements.  Funerals, cemeteries and obituaries are real life reminders that medical science has no answer for it, and no one escapes unless we are alive at Jesus’ second coming. Death can come suddenly or after a prolonged physical illness. Ultimately though, the day and way we go out of this world is in the hands of a sovereign God (Deuteronomy 32:39) (Psalm 139:16) (Job 14:1-5).

Physical death is something we rarely talk about in polite company, and which few of us plan well for, despite its inevitability. It is certainly not something we generally look forward to and most try to delay it as long as we can. This is despite the well-meaning, but ignorant comment some make to a person who has recently lost a loved one when they say, “Well, we know that they are in a better place.” Unfortunately, the Bible makes clear that a better place is not the destiny of everyone that death takes out of this world. This thus brings us to the third aspect of death, namely eternal or what is referred to in Revelation 21:6-8 as the second death, in which a person is cut off forever from the glorious life with God for which man was created in the beginning – confined forever to a place referred to in the book of Revelation as the lake of fire (Revelation 20:13-15).

This is ultimately why mankind as a whole so dreads the day of our physical death, as we are told in Hebrews 9:27 that it is appointed for man once to die (physically) and then the judgement. Upon our last heartbeat, our last breath, our soul or spirit man will pass from our body into the presence of the holy, just and righteous God who created us (2 Corinthians 5:8-10). He will, at that moment, either joyfully welcome us into His eternal presence in which we will forever know only fullness of joy and pleasures forevermore (John 5:24-25) (Psalm 16:11), or confine us to the place Jesus referred to as Hell, where we will know only the pain, torment and horror of being forsaken by God to His wrath and judgement and the misery of our ongoing sin, forever (Matthew 10:28) (Revelation 14:9-11).

According to the Bible, God’s judgement of either eternal life or eternal death, will be based on who we have as the one we worshiped as the object of our deepest love and source of our greatest joy while in this world (Luke 10:25-28).  And if it is not the one who first loved us and gave His life for us, Jesus Christ, we have every reason to dread that day that God has appointed for our physical death (1 John 4:18-19) (1 John 5:11-13) (John 3:35-36).

More in my next post (God willing).

Grace and Peace ×