When Jesus came to the house of a man named Jairus whose daughter had fallen ill and died, he told the crowds “Do not weep. The child is not dead, but only asleep,” and everyone laughed at him (Luke 8:52).
It’s sometimes thought that the average ancient person was superstitious when it came to death, and that the acceptance of human mortality is somehow a product of our advanced scientific outlook, but that is an ignorant presumption, and the passage above shows that this is the case. Most people back then, and indeed in any other period of history, were every bit as realistic about death as we are today, and though some religions (for example, that of the Egyptians) and some philosophies (for example, that of Plato) taught that death was merely a doorway into another kind of existence, these were hardly a mainstream views. For most, death was the end.
Death, then, does not as we commonly suppose consist in the body’s expiration, but in the soul’s estrangement from God
That Jesus’s statement elicited laughter is therefore not surprising. If he had gone on to expound a doctrine of reincarnation there may have been some who would’ve accounted him wise, but no one could’ve expected him to do what the scriptures say he actually went on to do: namely, to raise Jairus’s daughter to life. Talking about death not being the end is one thing (philosophers and religious people do it all the time). Demonstrating that death is not the end through a miracle is quite another. Not only did it give Jesus’s words an authority they could not have got otherwise, it illustrated what remains for us one of the most profound truths of our religious faith: that the continuance of life does not depend on our being in the possession of immortal souls or having the right spells, but on the condition of our relationship with God, who is both the Life and the giver of life.
Death, then, does not as we commonly suppose consist in the body’s expiration, but in the soul’s estrangement from God. On that reckoning, we can be biologically alive even though we are spiritually dead, and we can be spiritually alive even when our bodies decay and return to the earth. That’s why Paul is able to say that those who are in sin are dead in their trespasses. And that’s why Jesus is able to say, “this child is not dead, but only sleeping.” For in the end, there is really only one being in whom life exists as an independent principle, and that is God. The life that is in me, that is in you, is borrowed as it were from Him. And so the life that is to come does not consists in the continuance of our immortal souls, but in our being resurrected from the dead by the power of him who said of himself “I am the Life.”
It is perhaps especially important to remember these things at the present time, when there is so much talk about the importance of life, and about how life is the most important thing. I, for my own part, would not venture to disagree—I’m what they call a “conflict-avoidance-personality”—but it’s only fair to point out that the Christian and the non-Christian have two very different conceptions of what life actually is.
Life is not a possession that I have. It’s a gift I receive from the hand of God.
Even if Adam had never sinned, there can be little doubt that his body would’ve expired, if for no other reason than to serve as a prelude to his resurrection. Even Jesus—the Second Adam—was born into a mortal body, and then died in order that mortality might be swallowed up by immortality. These are prototypes of the kind of life that was intended for us.
And so death, as we are accustomed to think of it, is not really death at all.
When Moses “died,” the Bible says his eyes were not dimmed, nor his strength abated, but he “died according to the word of the Lord.” In short, he did not die in the ordinary sense of the word, running as it were out of steam, but within the scheme of divine providence. True, his mortal body perished, but not merely as the result of accidental causes. It perished unto a higher end.
So it is with all who have fallen asleep in Christ.
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