Eighteen years ago on November 28, 2004, our first-born son, Jonathan, passed through the doorway of death at the age of 22. Since his departure, there always remains an empty place at the table of our family and of our hearts. Author Joseph Bayly, who grieved the death of three of his seven children, writes: “Birth and death enclose man in a sort of parenthesis of the present. . . . We may postpone it, we may tame its violence, but death is still there waiting for us. Death always waits. The door of the hearse is never closed.”[i]
Death is inevitable, but death is not invincible. Death is evil’s trump card; only the supernatural can trump death. And it has! Paul asks, “Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?” (1 Corinthians 15:55). Once a honeybee stings, it no longer has the power to sting again. Having left its sting once for all in the God-Man, Jesus Christ, death can no longer eternally harm God’s children.
In light of this, I can sincerely affirm that the day my son died was the best day he ever lived. The same is true for all who place their faith in Jesus Christ. That is why Lutheran pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer could pray just before he was hanged by the Nazis, “Oh, God, this is the end; but for me it is just the beginning.”
For unbelievers, death begins the night that has no sunrise; but for Christ followers, death begins the day that has no sunset. That is why the Bible describes the death of a believer as an exodus. When Jesus was transfigured before his disciples, Moses and Elijah also appeared as they spoke “of His departure (exodus) which He was about to accomplish at Jerusalem” (Luke 9:31, NASB). Apparently, Jesus’ death was going to accomplish something significant—the possibility for his followers to experience a similar “exodus” from the dungeon of sin and death. Peter also speaks of his impending death by martyrdom as an exodus from this earthly life: “And I will make every effort to see that after my departure (exodus) you will always be able to remember these things” (2 Peter 1:14). Just as the Israelites made their exodus from suffering in Egypt into a land flowing with milk and honey, death for the believer is a welcomed exit from the afflictions of this earthly pilgrimage into the promised delights of heaven. For as Paul writes, “We long for our bodies to be released from sin and suffering” (Romans 8:23, NLT).
Such an exodus from our painful earth-bound limp seems to be the emphasis of the prophet Isaiah’s words, which brought great comfort to me and my wife following our son’s “premature” death: “Good people pass away; the godly often die before their time. But no one seems to care or wonder why. No one seems to understand that God is protecting them from the evil to come. For those who follow godly paths will rest in peace when they die” (Isaiah 57:1-2, NLT).
Though the prophet is speaking in the context of impending judgment on Judah in the seventh century B.C., the principle he describes is timeless and applicable today. The French reformer John Calvin (1509-1564) applies this verse to Martin Luther’s (1483-1546) death when he writes: "We ought, therefore, to consider diligently the works of the Lord, both in the life and in the death of the ‘righteous,’ but especially in their death, by which the Lord calls them away to a better life."[ii] Irrespective of the specific circumstances, death for a Christ follower is an exodus, a welcome release from this world of agony and grief.
The Bible not only views the believer’s death as an exodus from evil and suffering, but as a departure for heaven and happiness. Only months before his execution, Paul writes to Timothy, his protégé in the faith, “For I am already being poured out like a drink offering, and the time for my departure is near” (2 Timothy 4:6). Previous to the period of the New Testament, the word “departure” described the pulling up of stakes when breaking camp or the loosening of the ropes and cables when a ship weighed anchor and set out to sea. Though we are presently anchored to the hardships and heartaches of our earthly existence, death is but the loosening of the ropes and weighing anchor. With a mere blast of wind in the sails, the believer will be off to his heavenly home. No wonder Paul can say, “I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far” (Philippians 1:23).
I have frequently cited at funerals a poem entitled “Gone From My Sight,” which beautifully describes what it means for a Christian to die:
I’m standing on the seashore. A ship at my side spreads her white sails to the morning breeze and starts for the blue ocean. She’s an object of beauty and strength and I stand and watch her until, at length, she hangs like a speck of white cloud just where the sea and the sky come down to mingle with each other. And then I hear someone at my side saying, “There, she’s gone.” Gone where? Gone from my sight, that is all. She is just as large in mast and hull and spar as she was when she left my side. And just as able to bear her load of freight to the place of destination. Her diminished size is in me, not in her. And just at that moment when someone at my side says, “There she’s gone,” there are other eyes watching her coming, and there are other voices ready to take up the glad shout, “Here she comes!” And that is— dying.[iii]
Mary Alice and I didn’t “lose” our son, for we know where he is! Unbelievers are living (somewhat) on the way to dying; believers in the resurrected Christ are dying on the way to truly living.
Yes, the day Jonathan died was the best day he ever lived. But it was not the best day he will ever live. That day will be when his body now in the grave is raised imperishable and incorruptible at the moment of Christ's return (1 Thessalonians 4:13-18). Jonathan was delivered from death by death . . . the death of another. And that One, Jesus Christ, now lives that death may die.
This blog is adapted from the author's Life with a Limp: Discovering God's Purpose in Your Pain (Vide Press, 2022).
[i] Joseph Bayly, “A Father’s Afterthoughts on Death,” Moody Monthly 1968: 35-36. [ii] John Calvin, Commentary on the Book of the Prophet Isaiah in Calvin’s Commentaries, vol. 8 (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2009), 196-197. [iii] Presumably written by the Rev. Luther F. Beecher (1813-1903) but also attributed to Henry Van Dyke. Cited by Loraine Bettner, Immortality (Phillipsburg. N. J.: Pres. & Reformed, 1956), 29-20.
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