The Curse of, Fear of, and End of Death

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Jesus has a deep, intense desire to give you a gift so great you do not yet have the capacities to conceive of it (1 Corinthians 2:9). But you do catch glimpses of it in biblical metaphors and imagery, and in sublime moments when an experience of glory briefly transcends anything else here on earth.

Jesus longs so intensely for you to have this gift that he pleads with the Father to give it to you:

Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am; that they may behold my glory, which thou hast given me: for thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world.” (John 17:24)

This supreme request is the great culmination of Jesus’s prayer in John 17. That you may receive this free gift is the reason why; He manifested the Father’s name to you, gave you the Father’s words, and guards you so you will not be lost. It is why he prays that you will be kept from the evil one, know the joy of helping others believe in him, and experience the sanctifying wonder of knowing and living the truth. (John 17:6, 8, 12, 14-15, 17, 19-10)

More than any other good thing Jesus asks from the Father for you, he wants you to be with him forever. More than anything else, he wants you to see and savor the glory that the Father bestowed on him from eternity past. For he knows that nothing else you ever experience will provide you such profound and lasting joy and pleasure.

“Thou wilt shew me the path of life: in thy presence is fulness of joy; at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore.” (Psalm 16:11)

What Do You Fear Most?

But Jesus’s fervent prayers for you come with a sober implication, one that makes you recoil, even fear. In fact, one day you might find yourself pleading with God to give you the very opposite of what Jesus wants for you. The answer to Jesus’s prayer eventually requires your physical death. Unless Jesus returns first, you must die before you experience the forever fullness of joy in his glorious presence.

We as believers must endure what we hate and formerly feared most in life in order to enjoy what we love and long for most.

Yes, we naturally hate death and resist it — and we are right to do so. God originally created us to live, not die. Death is the curse that humanity bears as the tragic consequence of rejecting God. “For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” (Romans 6:23)

Nowhere does the Bible encourage us to view death itself as a good thing. Death is not a good thing; it’s a horrible, evil thing. Anyone who has watched a loved one die can attest to its hideousness. Death is our mortal enemy.

How Is Death to be Considered ‘Gain’?

If that’s true, why does God count precious the death of his saints (Psalm 116:15)? And why did the Apostle Paul call death “gain”? “For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. (Philippians 1:21)

Because in that most horrible, most evil moment of the death of the Son of God himself (death exactly as we fear it — the extinguishing of our life and the seeming loss of our soul and joy — He was killed! Why was He killed? “(to) deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage.” (Hebrews 2:15)

In His dying Jesus conquered our great enemy when He rose from the dead (Romans 4:25; Revelation 1:18), and He will ultimately destroy death forever.  “The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.” (1 Corinthians 15:26)

In fact, so powerful, so complete is Jesus’s defeat of death that he speaks of it as if Christians no longer even experience it:

“Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: 26 And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never (really) die. Believest thou this?” (John 11:25-26)

It isn’t death itself that is precious or gain to us. It is He who is “the Resurrection and the Life,” who has removed death’s sting and swallowed it up in victory (1 Corinthians 15:54–55), in whom we are receiving an eternal inheritance beyond our wildest dreams (Ephesians 1:11), and in whose glorious presence we will experience unsurpassed joy forevermore (Psalm 16:11). He is so precious to us. Jesus Christ is our great gain in death.

When our earthly assignment from Jesus is done (Acts 20:24), he will call us to be with him to enjoy most what we are made to most enjoy: him. This will actually make death gain for us on that day.

Jesus is eager to give us this great gain, and he wants us to grow in our eagerness to receive it.

How do we do that? Like he does. We ask the Father for it!

We join Jesus in praying for the time we will finally see him in all his glory. We ask him to decrease the hold that the fear of death has on us due to unbelief in our hearts. And we ask him to give us such faith and longing to be with Christ that we no longer wish to live as long as possible here on earth, but only long enough to faithfully finish our course. Because to finally be with our Savior will be so much better. For I am in a strait betwixt two, having a desire to depart, and to be with Christ; which is far better:” (Philippians 1:23)

Our Prayer: Whatever It Takes, Lord

Someday Jesus’s prayer for us to be with Him will overrule our prayer to be spared physical death. And when it does, we will know such joy and pleasures that we will wonder why we ever felt any reluctance to pass through the valley of its shadow.  

“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.” (Psalm 23:4)

We might pray; Whatever it takes, Lord, increase my faith and joy in the truth that death is gain for me, so that I can “let goods and kindred go, this mortal life also.” Do not let the fear of death cause me to resist your will for me and let me die in a way that declares that Christ is gain.