To Encourage You

1 Corinthians 15:55 “O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?

You and I live in a world where we are constantly exposed to the reality of death. Some of us have been with someone in their last moments on earth. It was a sobering and sad experience, an experience for which no words are fitting. In our travels, we inevitably pass by graveyards, or we visit them on purpose to remember a loved one who has passed. We read about death seemingly every day in the newspaper as we read accounts of death as a result of war, crime, accidents and natural causes. Then, of course, there are the obituaries. In all of this there is a continual reminder that “the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23).

Sometimes this truth is very obvious, for some people die as a direct result of murder, drunk driving, or other sinful acts. However, the truth is that all of us die because of the curse that sin has brought on all mankind, and all creation, for that matter, because of what’s known as the Fall. Sooner or later we are forced to face it, even if we make great efforts to avoid or even ignore it. Death and everything associated with it – the sights, the decay, the stench, the emotions – it’s something we would like to avoid at all costs, but we can’t, unfortunately.

So is there any remedy? Is there any hope? Is there a way that the pain of death can be muted? Is there a way for us to face the inevitable reality of death, yet rise above it’s pain? It is to this universal problem that the Bible has the one and only universal answer.

You see, God has made a way by death for us to face death with hope. This one and only Way was made possible by the death of God’s own Son. We have been told that “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree’” (Galatians 3:13). It is because of this death, and only because of this death that we can have hope, for in this death comes the hope of resurrection. It’s because of this that believers have been told, “we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep. For this we declare to you by a word from the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord. therefore encourage one another with these words”(1 Thessalonians 4:13).

Exposure to death is something none of us can avoid. But we can avoid it’s sting because of our hope in the resurrection. It’s a reality we can face with hope, for we know that death is not the end, but the beginning, “For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality. 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?’ The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ “(1 Corinthians 15:53-57).

Praise the name of the Lord!