Physical and Eternal Death
God's words to Adam—“ ‘When you eat of it you will surely die’ ” (Gen. 2:17, NIV)—indicate that death is the result of rebellion against God. Death and sin cannot be separated. This death is not only spiritual; it also designates the physical and eternal death of sinners. Because of its connection with sin, death is not a simple biological phenomenon but a fearful awareness of our eternal separation from the Source of life—a separation that leads to eternal extinction. In all of its expressions, death is like sin, universal and inevitable (Rom. 5:12, Heb. 9:27). With the entrance of sin into the world, the human race was an endangered species about to disappear from the universe. God's creation on Planet Earth, human and nonhuman, was on its way to annihilation.
Read Romans 5:10–21. How did death enter? What caused it? What’s our only way out?
Death and suffering came together into the world as a result of sin. No one born and raised on this planet escapes pain and suffering. We may not be able to express in words what suffering is, but we have a deep experiential knowledge of it. In the Bible there appears to be a connection between our condition as mortal sinners and pain and suffering. Death is so powerful that even before we die it makes its presence felt among us through the physical, emotional, and psychological pain produced by sickness, uncertainty, and fear. As a result, the quality of life is weakened, and depression sets in.
The phenomenon of sickness, another result of sin, is described as coming “near the grave,” as being “counted among those who go down to the pit” (Ps. 88:3, 4, NIV). The incursion of death in daily human existence is part of the human predicament directly associated with the phenomenon of sin. Humans needed Someone who could give them life by dying in their place, freeing them not only from sin but from pain, suffering, and death.
| What have you learned from your own experience with death, either facing your own or seeing others die? What is it about death that should show us our own utter helplessness? How can we use the reality of death to draw ourselves closer to the Lord? |
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