The Death of Death in the Resurrection of Christ

The great Puritan theologian John Owen once wrote a book entitled The Death of Death in the Death of Christ. This book was a biblical defense of the doctrine of “particular redemption,” sometimes called “definite” or “limited atonement.” In this book, Owen argued that the death of Christ did not merely make salvation possible, but that it actually secured the final salvation of all of God’s elect people.

Whereas Owen’s book focuses on the saving efficacy of Jesus’ death on the cross for us, I want to focus this Easter Sunday morning on the saving efficacy of his resurrection. In truth, these two events—the death and resurrection of Christ—cannot be separated. They are really two aspects of one seamless, saving event. Take away one, and the whole thing falls apart. This is exactly Paul’s point in 1 Corinthians 15 when he rebukes some in the Corinthian church for denying the future resurrection of believers. In verses 16-17 he writes, “For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins.” According to Paul, the death of Christ has no ability to save us, to put away our sins, if there is no resurrection to go with it.

When I was younger, I did not understand the biblical connection between these things, and I suspect that most Christians in America today have the same difficulty of understanding the full significance of Jesus’ resurrection for that reason. And the reason we have difficulty is because we generally do not operate with a biblical understanding of death and of salvation. Popular American piety is aptly expressed in the words of a hymn (one that I personally love, but that does not communicate the full truth of our salvation):

Some glad morning when this life is over

I’ll fly away

To a land on God’s celestial shore,

I’ll fly away.

I’ll fly away, O glory,

I’ll fly away.

When I die—hallelujah by and by—

I’ll fly away!

The notion of the soul going to Heaven when you die as the final hope of salvation has been drilled into us from childhood. But saying, “If you believe in Jesus, you will go to Heaven when you die” is a bit like saying, “You should really try Texas Roadhouse. If you go there, you can eat peanuts in the waiting area.” Well, that is true, but that is hardly the most important thing about eating at Texas Roadhouse. But because popular American piety has so emphasized our hope of salvation as going to Heaven at death, it is easy to see, then, why the moment of death has come to be seen as the moment of greatest consequence. And if that is the case, then the death of Christ on the cross becomes the decisive moment when our salvation was achieved. For Christ’s death on the cross is what has secured the forgiveness of our sins, making it possible for us to go to Heaven when we die.

Now do you see the problem with this view? If this is the case, the resurrection is not necessary. But we still want to sound like we think the resurrection is necessary, so we talk about it as though it were a big divine exclamation point at the end of God’s work of salvation. Or we say it was God’s way of publicly verifying that he accepted Christ’s sacrifice. But is that all? If that is all the resurrection is, then why would Paul say that if Christ has not been raised, then we are still in our sins? For Paul, and for the whole of the biblical storyline, the resurrection is not merely a public vindication of Christ’s work on the cross. It is not merely a big exclamation point at the end of God’s work of redemption. It is itself an inseparable part of God’s saving work. Today my goal is to help you understand biblically why that is the case. In order to understand, we are going to trace the themes of death and resurrection through Scripture to see if we can gain a more biblical understanding of our lost condition and of our salvation in Christ.

Death in the Old Testament

The creation story implies that we were not made to die. The reason for this assumption is that humanity had access to the tree of life in the Garden of Eden, and death was threatened as a punishment for sin. In Genesis 2:17, God said to the man, “but of the tree of knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” A key question for us to ask is what God meant by “die” in that verse. If we go on to read the story, we note that Adam and Eve did eat of the tree, and yet they did not immediately die physically. One very popular interpretation of Genesis 2:17, then, is the view that God threatened them with spiritual death that would ultimately culminate in physical death. They experienced spiritual death immediately upon eating, but physical death did not follow until many years later. By this interpretation, we are enabled to see how they did, in fact, “die” (spiritually) on the very day that they ate of the fruit, even though they did not physically die until much later.

While I agree with the theology of the view I have just described, I don’t think we have to resort to that view to make sense of God’s threat in Genesis 2:17 and the following account in Genesis 3. If we understand that by “day” in Genesis 2:17, God simply meant, “in the general time period,” the problem is resolved. We use the word “day” in this way quite frequently. Members of an older generation sometimes say something to this effect: “In my day we didn’t have all of these gadgets and gizmos. We played outdoors all the time.” They use the word “day” to refer, not to a twenty-four hour period, but to a general period of time. That is what God appears to mean in Genesis 2:17. Interpreted in this way, we can see that the meaning of “die” in Genesis 2:17 is primarily physical: if Adam eats from the tree, he will die physically. This reading of Genesis 2:17 leads us to the conclusion that physical death is a curse of God and a punishment for sin (see the curse of Genesis 3:17-19). It is an indication of the wrath of God upon us and is, therefore, something to be feared.

We get a fuller perspective of the horror of death if we take note that the death of Adam and Eve is tied to a wider reality of expulsion from the presence of God. Adam and Eve eventually died because they had been driven away from the Garden, God’s dwelling place, and the life-giving tree that resided there. The implication for us is that physical death is tied to the deeper spiritual reality of being alienated from God, cut off from his favor and blessing, and placed under his wrath. If you flip over to Genesis 5, you see the refrain “and he died” over and over as a testimony to the fact that humanity remains outside of God’s dwelling place.

Throughout the rest of the Old Testament, those who die depart from life in the body to a place called “Sheol,” the realm of the dead. It is pictured as “going down” to a place that is cut off from the blessings of God. For example, Hannah’s prayer in 1 Samuel 2:6 says, “The LORD kills and brings to life; he brings down to Sheol and raises up.” Job pictures Sheol as a dark and gloomy place, much like a prison, in Job 17:13-16: “If I hope for Sheol as my house, if I make my bed in darkness, if I say to the pit, ‘You are my father,’ and to the worm, ‘My mother,’ or ‘My sister,’ where then is my hope? Who will see my hope? Will it go down to the bars of Sheol? Shall we descend together into the dust?” Sheol is pictured as a monster that devours people in several passages, including Isaiah 5:14: “Therefore Sheol has enlarged its appetite and opened its mouth beyond measure, and the nobility of Jerusalem and her multitude will go down, her revelers and he who exults in her.” Sheol is the destination of the haughty king of Babylon who is soon to be brought under the judgment of God in Isaiah 14:9-11: “Sheol beneath is stirred up to meet you when you come; it rouses the shades to greet you, all who were leaders of the earth; it raises from their thrones all who were kings of the nations. All of them will answer and say to you: ‘You too have become as weak as we! You have become like us!’ Your pomp is brought down to Sheol, the sound of your harps; maggots are laid as a bed beneath you, and worms are your covers.”

The overall picture we get of Sheol in the Old Testament is that it is a place to which one always “goes down,” not up, a place that is gloomy and dark, akin to a prison, a place where human beings are cut off from the blessings of God and enter into a diminished existence. Death is not celebrated in the Old Testament as a moment of salvation. It is regularly viewed as something negative. Perhaps Psalm 88:10-12 capture the Old Testament sentiment the best: “Do you work wonders for the dead? Do the departed rise up to praise you? Is your steadfast love declared in the grave, or your faithfulness in Abaddon? Are your wonders known in the darkness, or your righteousness in the land of forgetfulness?” The implied answer to each question is “No.”

However, nothing that I have said so far should be taken to imply that Sheol is the same thing as Hell (called Gehenna in the New Testament). Hell is a place of final and irreversible judgment, but we will see shortly that the same is not the case for Sheol.

Death in the New Testament

When we turn to the New Testament, we see how God’s revelation is progressive in nature, for we get a fuller picture of the significance of death when we take into account the teaching of the Apostles. Paul affirms in Romans 5:12 and 6:23 that death is the result of sin, not an inherent part of God’s creation (at least as it pertains to humanity). He also makes explicit what was implicit in the Old Testament: that death is more than a physical reality. For example, Ephesians 2:1 says, “And you were dead in your trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience.” Paul clearly speaks here of death in a spiritual sense, i.e., of alienation from God that is our condition even from birth. In Romans 8:13, Paul speaks of another dimension of death: “For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.” What does Paul mean by “die” in this verse? He can’t mean, “You will die physically,” because everybody dies physically, and yet Paul ties this kind of death specifically to those who live according to the flesh. So it would make no sense in his argument for Paul to speak of physical death here. He must be speaking of something more: what we would call eternal death, that is, a permanent and irreversible cutting off from God’s presence and experience of his wrath.

In the book of Revelation, eternal death is called “the second death,” or being cast into the lake of fire. The reason this is called a second death is because it occurs after a bodily resurrection. Revelation 20:11-15 reads, “Then I saw a great white throne and him who was seated on it. From his presence earth and sky fled away, and no place was found for them. And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Then another book was opened, which is the book of life. And the dead were judged by what was written in the books, according to what they had done. And the sea gave up the dead who were in it Death and Hades [“Hades” is the Greek equivalent of “Sheol,” referring to the realm of the dead] gave up the dead who were in them, and they were judged, each one of them, according to what they had done. Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire. And if anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.” Jesus confirms that Hell is a place where unbelievers go after they have raised from the dead (as opposed to a place where the soul goes immediately after death when it is separated from the body) in Matthew 10:28: “And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.”

When we take in a whole picture of what the Bible teaches about death, we see that it is most certainly not something to be celebrated. It is not to be viewed as the culmination of our salvation. It is, instead, a curse of God upon us for our sin, a perpetual reminder that we have been exiled from God’s presence and, when brought to fruition, an irreversible imprisonment under his wrath in a place of endless suffering.

Now let me ask you this: what if Jesus had remained dead? What would we have to conclude? That he remained under the wrath of God, under the curse, that he had been permanently cut off from life and blessing. And for him to remain dead would only ensure that we would remain under the power of death forever, hopeless. If Christ had not been raised from the dead, we would still be in our sins.

The Defeat of Death Anticipated in the Old Testament

But God’s plan has always been to deliver his people from the power of death. This plan is already implied in Genesis 12:3, when God promises Abram, “in you all the families of the earth will be blessed.” To be “blessed” is the opposite of being cursed. We have already seen that the curse of God’s wrath is the curse of death. Therefore, God promised to Abram that he would reverse the curse of death for all the families of the earth by bringing them under divine favor. That this blessing would ultimately take the form of resurrection from death is progressively revealed throughout Scripture.

As early as Genesis 5:24, we see an early anticipation of deliverance from death. In the middle of a genealogy that has includes the refrain “and he died” over and over again, we read this about Enoch: “Enoch walked with God, and he was not, for God took him.” Enoch escaped the power of death, becoming an early indication in the story that death will not have the last word.

There are a few indications in the Psalms that, while both the righteous and the wicked go to Sheol at death, Sheol’s power over the righteous is only temporary. Listen to the contrast in Psalm 49:14-15: “Like sheep they [the wicked] are appointed for Sheol; death shall be their shepherd, and the upright shall rule over them in the morning. Their form shall be consumed in Sheol, with no place to dwell. But God will ransom my soul from the power of Sheol, for he will receive me.” There is at least one other example in the Psalms that exhibits this kind of expectation of deliverance from Sheol, but it is commented on in the New Testament.

One more Old Testament hint of a resurrection to come is given in the book of Daniel. In 12:2, toward the end of a revelation that Daniel receives about the future of Israel and the great turmoil that is coming in the last days, we read, “And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.” This is the most explicit reference to a bodily resurrection in the Old Testament, and it is tied to the coming deliverance of Israel as foreseen by Daniel.

The Defeat of Death in the New Testament

The Apostles understood the resurrection of Jesus in light of the Old Testament anticipation of the deliverance of the righteous from death. Look at Peter’s sermon in Acts 2:22-36. Notice how he argues based on Psalm 16. His argument looks something like this:

Premise 1: David said he would not be abandoned to Hades or allowed to see corruption.

Premise 2: In fact, we know that David died, and his body did see corruption.

Conclusion: Therefore, David was not speaking of himself, but as a prophet he spoke of the resurrection of the Christ.

Read in this way, we see that Psalm 16 is a prophecy of the resurrection, or the overcoming of the curse of death in the resurrection of the Messiah.

Now, in order to show how this affects us, I want to look at another key passage. In 1 Corinthians 15:20-26, Paul argues that the resurrection of Christ is not an isolated event. It is the first moment of the final resurrection hinted in the Old Testament but widely expected in first century Judaism. Christ has been raised as the “firstfruits,” the first part of the harvest to be gathered in. If the firstfruits have already been gathered in, then the harvest is already underway. The resurrection of Christ, therefore, represents the final resurrection brought forward into the middle of history. It is a reminder to us, then, that we are on the brink of the end now, and our resurrection from death, our deliverance from the curse, is imminent.

This is why Paul ties Christ’s resurrection to the doctrine of justification in at least two key passages. In 1 Timothy 3:16, he writes, “He was manifested in the flesh, vindicated [i.e., “justified”] by [better “in”] the Spirit.” Jesus’ resurrection was his justification, the moment when the condemnation of death was overturned by the powerful declaration of God. And our justification before God is nothing other than a participation in that same verdict of justification pronounced over Christ. Paul writes in Romans 4:25 that Christ “was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification.” Do you see why the resurrection of Christ is one seamless aspect of a total saving event? Take it away, and we are still in our sins.

I have been holding out to you this morning a salvation that culminates in deliverance from death. I want to argue that the main reason we should not fear death, but instead face it with hope, is because we have the hope of being delivered from it. Death cannot hold us anymore than it held Christ. In Christ, God has given death a mortal wound.

Most Christian funerals I attend do not speak of hope in these terms. They do not hold out the hope of being delivered from death, but rather the hope of death not being a bad thing after all, but really a good thing, because it enables the believer to go to Heaven. We need to adjust our thinking here. Yes, it is good, in one sense, for a believer to die, because a believer does go to be with Christ at death. Paul affirms in Philippians 1:23 that to depart from the flesh is to be with Christ, and that this is “far better” than remaining here. He also says in 2 Corinthians 5:8 that to be away from the body is to be at home with the Lord. This is all true. But we should press the issue further and ask “Why?” Why is it true that death for a believer is not so bad after all, when the perspective we get from the Old Testament is that death is a horrifying reality of being cut off from the blessing of God? The reason for the shift in perspective from Old to New Testament is because Christ conquered death, not only in the sense that we will ultimately be delivered from it at the final resurrection, but also in the sense that our experience of death itself has been tamed. No longer does it represent for us being cut off from God. Instead, it represents respite in God’s presence as we await the glory of the resurrection to come. This is why the New Testament speaks of the death of believers as “falling asleep.” For example, when Stephen is stoned, Acts 7:60 says, “And falling to his knees he cried out with a loud voice, ‘Lord, do not hold this sin against them.’ And when he had said this, he fell asleep.” In 1 Thessalonians 4:13, Paul writes, “But 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.” 1 Corinthians 15:51 says, “Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed.” The taming of death into a kind of sleep, a sweet respite from the troubles of this world, with an expectation of an awakening to come, is what Christ accomplished in his resurrection. In other words, it is only because we are destined to be delivered from death through resurrection of our bodies with Christ that the actual experience of death need not be feared anymore.

I believe that Jesus’ interaction with the Sadducees makes this point as well. Turn to Matthew 22:23-33. Notice specifically how Jesus’ makes a biblical argument for the resurrection of the dead. He quotes the words of God to Moses in Exodus 3:6: “I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” Of course, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had been dead for hundreds of years by this time. But he is not the God of the dead, but of the living, so in some sense Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob must continue to live beyond death. At this point we need to think very carefully about what Jesus is arguing. He is not saying that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob have already experienced the resurrection. He is saying that if God continues to be their God even beyond their deaths, then he must be preserving them for a resurrection to come. Otherwise, their existence would have ended at death, and God would have better said, “I was the God of Abraham, and of Isaac, and of Jacob.” Their future resurrection is what guarantees their continued existence beyond death as those to whom the Lord is bound in a covenant relationship, so that they live now, even though they are dead.

The same is true for you as you face death. You need not fear it, not because it really isn’t so bad, but because it is horrifyingly bad, and yet it has been tamed by the resurrection of Christ and the certainty that all who are in Christ will share in his resurrection.

So let us worship our risen Lord this morning as the one who, by his death and resurrection, has secured our salvation. Only by being raised from the dead has he delivered us from the curse of death and the wrath of God, so that all who are in him are likewise justified instead of condemned, and given the assurance of a future resurrection.

I mentioned earlier that most Christian funerals I attend do not portray death or salvation from death in fully biblical terms. One such funeral was that of my grandfather, who died in 2007 just before Thanksgiving. I remember hearing a lot in the funeral message about the hope of his soul going to Heaven, but I do not remember a single word about the hope of the resurrection of the body on the last day. But just last week I drove by his grave in Cass, Texas, where I saw a much more biblical perspective on death written on his tombstone: “At rest til the resurrection morn.” And that is exactly how we as believers should view death for ourselves and our loved ones in Christ.