On Christmas this past year my grandfather died. It was a weird, difficult holiday, my family was all together, and everyone was on edge. In ten days we said our goodbyes to him, learned of his passing and performed his funeral, and it was hard. It was also really encouraging. My family asked me to speak at the funeral, so I told them exactly why there is joy even in this. Afterward I was asked to try to write down what I said, so here is my best attempt. Hopefully this gives you joy as well!
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Death is a hard subject. Forced to confront it face-to-face, especially planning for it, seems unnatural and strains everything. My family this past week has seen the full effects of this; we were pushed to the limits of our emotions and relationships while we experienced my grandfather’s last days here. We often throw out phrases like, “He was ready to go,” or “Death is just a natural part of life,” but those are difficult to believe. Here is what I believe: we were not made for death.
God created us to live with him forever. In the beginning, God was so full of love that he longed for a creation to share it with. His love is perfect and complete. It is not lacking anything, but overflowing into everything. He created us in His image to enjoy all of His goodness. We are created more intimately than all the rest of creation, and given the ability to choose to love God in return.
This seems like a simple decision, but we could not pull it off. Adam and Eve chose to ignore God’s goodness, and sought their own justification, and we continue to do that every day. We are all sinners, and consciously decide to turn away from Him. Without God, there is no blessing, and the disease eats into everything we touch, yet we try to bandage our lives with other things. How can we have joy apart from the One that is joy? In response, God gave us death. This is physical death, designed to conquer our sinful selves. Rather than allow us live forever apart from Himself, God frees us from this prison we have created for ourselves. We have earned death, but even from the beginning God begins His work to bring us into full, complete life that lasts forever.
His plan has never changed. He has never been surprised by our response to Him. He gave us a promise--that He would enter this world as a man and pull us out of this misery we have gotten ourselves into. God was born into earth, through the supernatural, virgin birth that we so often hear about. Jesus lived a complete life, subject to the same torments as us, but he never once sinned. Unlike each of us, Jesus always trusted the Father, never seeking anything but His identity in the love of God. He was not a slave to this sinful nature that we feel, because He is God. He and the Father are one. So Jesus lived the life that we were meant to live, as an example, as a teacher, as a counselor, and above all as a substitute. We could never do this, because our entire world is tainted by sin. The joy is that we do not have to! This is where the hope begins: “...to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God” (John 1:12).
I think my grandpa understood this. A lot of what I know about him, and all of the stories shared this week point to the idea that he was a servant. My grandpa loved people well, investing heavily in his family, friends and the church. He knew that he did not have to justify himself--he just loved to serve and strived to understand the love of Christ.
It does not end there. This debt of sin has a cost. As our substitute, Jesus lived a perfect life in our place, and died an unjust death to cover the cost of all of our sins. God could not simply ignore sin--it had to be destroyed if we were to be restored, and that is what Jesus accomplished. He broke death, and gave us the opportunity to accept His life in exchange for our own.
Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly also be united with him in a resurrection like his. For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body ruled by sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin--because anyone who has died has been set free from sin. Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him. The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God (Romans 6:3-10).
Jesus died, but He is not a dead god. To seal the deal, the Christ had to rise from the dead. Rather than succumb to death, Jesus overcame it. He destroyed our old selves, so that we might receive new life in Him. Christ is alive, and that is where my hope lies. Because of Him, I believe that I will have the opportunity to see my grandpa again. My grandpa followed Christ through to the end, and his death broke the last remnants of the chains of sin that kept him from God.
My hope is in Christ. Everything that God has ever done has been because of love. Every freedom and every law, every gift and every loss: these are the ways God reveals himself to us.
