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It Is Not Death To Die

The marvelous poet and preacher John Donne began his Holy Sonnet #10 with this audacious words: "Death, be not proud..." And his ending was even more bold: "One short sleep past, we wake eternally, and death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die."

Mocking, taunting, sneering at death! Either Donne was deluded—or he knew something that gave him invincible courage in the face of death. The gospel of Jesus Christ does just that.

“When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written: ‘Death is swallowed up in victory.’ O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?” (1 Cor. 15:54).

Death has been called the Great Devourer. He swallows up all living things. His appetite is insatiable. His taste is unrefined. Indiscriminately, promiscuously, death devours everyone. He is a ruthless, pitiless monster.

Death takes all types of people: young & old, men & women, the good & the bad. Hungry & greedy, he prowls in all the streets & alleyways—he has the key to every house. He has servants by the thousand who are eagerly doing his will—diseases which no man can heal; accidents that no one can prevent; wars, plagues; poverty, famine; sins & crimes.

Death is relentless. And he is never satisfied. He's always craving for more. Like the devil whom he serves, he goes about seeking whom he may devour.

You cannot bribe him, bargain with him, plead with him, or charm him—death's rage will not subside—it knows no pity.

No amount of wealth or power or wisdom or beauty can hold him at bay. No one is humble enough, good enough, or high enough to be overlooked or excused from death.

Death—the king of terrors—frightens all, yet is himself afraid of none.

And then death met his match. Finally there stood before him One over whom death had no rights, no power.

Jesus—the only Man who could say, "No man takes my life from me… The prince of the world has nothing in me."

Jesus, “holy, harmless, undefiled, and separate from sinners” stood up to death.

He gave himself up as a ransom for sinners.

He yielded his head, his hands, his feet, to be nailed to a cruel and wicked Cross.

And death opened his mouth to swallow him up—thinking this would be his most delicious victim ever!

But Jesus became death's poison—death's ruin—death's destruction. The death of Jesus became the death of death!

Because Jesus Christ is the Resurrection and the Life, he could not be held by death. Death could not digest the bleeding Lamb of God. Death was forced to give up its victim—to release Jesus from it's vice grip. And death trembles in fear of the Day that is coming, when Jesus will return, and the trumpet will sound, and Christ the Conqueror will shout, "Death, Give UP! Give up the members of my Body, just as you were forced to give me up! They are mine—they are a part of Me. I and they are one.

Just as Jesus' death was swallowed up in victory, so will the death of all who have died in Christ be swallowed up in victory. What seems on this earth to be the defeat of all our hopes, will prove to be the greatest victory of them all.

Death, be not proud—for death, thou shalt die!

For a believer in Christ, it is not death to die!

Alleluia! Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!

Happy Easter to all,
David Sunday

*These ideas adapted from Robert Candlish, Life in a Risen Savior, Discourse XVI, pp. 251-54 (1863).