Death is God’s enemy & God brings life from death
Being close to the brokenness of people’s lives–death, addiction, divorce, job loss, moral failure–on a daily basis was my most significant adjustment when I became a minister. It wasn’t occasional; it was all the time. And in those situations, people looked to me to offer hope. I realized that saying things such as “everything happens for a reason” was more hurtful than helpful. It’s also not true. We see in the ministry of Jesus that all forms of death are God’s enemy, and God brings life out of death.
Death is God’s enemy
Paul directly says this in 1 Corinthians 15. But if we want to know how God feels about death, sin, evil, and sickness, we see Jesus defeat death, forgive sin, vanquish evil, and heal sickness. Jesus tells us that the thief comes to steal, kill, and destroy and that he comes so that people might have life and have it abundantly (John 10:10). God has come to rescue us from the things that destroy life, bringing restoration in spite of these things not through. There is no need to make excuses for something God will judge false and annihilate. Therefore we are free and empowered to hate death just as God does. The value of this is two-fold. First, it’s emotionally honest. Second, it allows God to be the good God that God is and reveals resurrection as God brings life out of death.
Death is a place God can be found
Jesus’ response to the death of Lazarus is informative (John 11). Jesus arrives and engages Martha and Mary’s anger over the loss of their brother. He feels angry over the brokenness of death. Jesus also weeps alongside everyone. Finally, he calls Lazarus out of the grave and back to life. God is not the orchestrator of death, nor does God abandon us in death. Death nor anything else can separate us from the love of God (Rom. 8:39). Therefore, we can know that during our experiences of death in this world, God comes as a minister and mourns with us. On the cross, God conquers sin, death, and evil by entering them and turning them inside out so that restoration can come despite death–sometimes realized in the present and sometimes in the life to come.
It’s important to remind ourselves how God has ministered to us amid our experiences of loss because we are forgetful. God’s ministry shows up through the love and care of others as well as the Spirit of God, assuring us that the beauty and goodness of this world are not random or arbitrary but a glimpse of true reality.
¾ Time of the Christian Life
In music, the top number of a time signature is the number of beats per measure, and the bottom number is the length of each beat. So ¾ time is three quarter beats per measure, as is most commonly displayed in a waltz. The three quarter beats of the Christian life are living, dying, and living again. In each measure of your life, you will live and experience loss. The question is, will we choose to play that last beat and live again? We will be tempted to hide from loss, but this leads to hiding from life. Instead, whether responding to a setback or significant loss, we lean into hope and choose to live again because this act defeats the enemy of death by denying it the final word.
