Why this is good news

The fear underneath

Few people will admit it, but underneath a great deal of religion lies the fear of death. The writer to the Hebrews names it, and tells us what Jesus did about it:

Inasmuch then as the children have partaken of flesh and blood, He Himself likewise shared in the same, that through death He might destroy him who had the power of death, that is, the devil, and release those who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage.

“Through fear of death ... subject to bondage.” That bondage has taken many forms. Prayers and payments for the dead. Terror of what one’s own death will bring. Anxiety about whether a loved one is now in bliss or in torment. Consultation with those who claim to speak to the departed. Every one of those chains is forged from the same metal: the belief that the dead are conscious somewhere. The biblical teaching about death does not add to that fear; it breaks it. Let me show how.

No one is suffering now

If the dead sleep, then no one you love is in torment at this moment. No one is in a purgatory, waiting on your prayers or your money. No one is watching helplessly as their family falls apart. The unsaved dead are not screaming; the saved dead are not sighing over us. All of them rest. Judgment belongs to a day God has appointed, when He “will judge the world in righteousness” (Acts 17:31), not to a shadowy present that we must fear.

This matters enormously for the bereaved. A mother whose son died outside of faith can be told the truth: he is not suffering now, his case is in the hands of a God who is “not willing that any should perish” (2 Peter 3:9), and the judgment will be perfectly just and perfectly merciful. A widow can be told that her husband is not grieving over her loneliness, because “the dead know nothing” and his love, in the sense of present emotion, has perished with him; it is held safe in God, to be restored on the morning.

No one is being deceived by a counterfeit

If the dead cannot communicate, then every voice that claims to be a departed loved one is something else. The Bible is not silent about what that something else is. We will look at the medium of En Dor in Part Three; here it is enough to note that Scripture forbids every attempt to contact the dead (Deuteronomy 18:10-12), and that it warns of “deceiving spirits” (1 Timothy 4:1) and of an enemy who “transforms himself into an angel of light” (2 Corinthians 11:14). A Christian who knows that the dead sleep is simply not available to that deception. The door is shut.

The believer can face the valley

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; For You are with me; Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me.

David could walk through the shadow of death without fear, not because he expected to be conscious in it, but because God would be with him on both sides of it. The One who was there when David closed his eyes would be there when he opened them. Isaiah puts the rest of the righteous dead in the gentlest words:

The righteous perishes, And no man takes it to heart; Merciful men are taken away, While no one considers That the righteous is taken away from evil. He shall enter into peace; They shall rest in their beds, Each one walking in his uprightness.

“He shall enter into peace; they shall rest in their beds.” The righteous dead are taken away from evil. They will not see the troubles that are coming on the world. They rest, and their rest is peace.

Their works follow them

John, in Revelation, hears a beatitude for the dead:

Then I heard a voice from heaven saying to me, “Write: ‘Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on.’ ” “Yes,” says the Spirit, “that they may rest from their labors, and their works follow them.”

Rest from labour. The sleeping saint has finished the fight. Paul, facing execution, wrote that he had “fought the good fight”, “finished the race”, “kept the faith”, and that a crown was “laid up” for him, to be given “on that Day”, the day of Christ’s appearing (2 Timothy 4:7-8). Paul did not expect his crown at the moment of death. He expected it at the resurrection, together with “all who have loved His appearing”. He expected, in the meantime, to rest.

The keys are in good hands

And when I saw Him, I fell at His feet as dead. But He laid His right hand on me, saying to me, “Do not be afraid; I am the First and the Last. I am He who lives, and was dead, and behold, I am alive forevermore. Amen. And I have the keys of Hades and of Death.

Here is the heart of the good news. The grave is locked, but Jesus has the keys. He went into death Himself, really and fully, and He came out of it alive forevermore. Every grave that holds a believer is a locked room to which He holds the key, and He has told us the hour at which He intends to use it. Death, for the Christian, is therefore not a journey into the unknown. It is a sleep in a room whose door is held by a Friend.

Paul can therefore say, and we can say with him:

For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Death cannot separate the believer from the love of God. Not because the believer is awake and aware, but because the love of God does not depend on our awareness. It holds the sleeper as surely as it holds the saint at prayer. And on the morning, it will wake them.