Death is the one of the last taboos in contemporary British society. Medical advances over the past 200 years have all but ended infant mortality and life expectancy is now more than 81 years. As a result, we are less familiar with death, which is confined to medicalised environments. We tend not to talk about it.
Our reasonable expectation that most people will live to a ripe old age means that we are even more shocked when younger people die.
Fear and frustration
Earlier this month Deborah James, the podcaster, revealed that she had moved to end-of-life care for bowel cancer. She is only 40 and will leave a partner and two children. She has spoken with candid honesty of her fear and frustration. In a podcast interview she said: ‘Please, please just enjoy life because it is so precious. All I want right now is more time and more life.’ In an interview with the Sun, she said:
‘I’m scared because I don’t know what to expect…What’s really hard is that no one talks about death. We don’t really know what happens or how we’re meant to navigate it.’
Hope and certainty
As Christians our hearts go out to her and her family, and we empathise with the fear she expresses. At the same time we believe that we can have certainty about what happens after death and a sure and certain hope of eternal life because of what the Lord Jesus has done for us. Death ought not to be a taboo subject for us, to be avoided and ignored. Death is right at the heart of our faith and ought to be at the centre of our evangelism.
Christ died for our sins
If we hold to the apostolic gospel, we cannot avoid the issue of death. At the heart of that gospel is the central fact that ‘Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures’. We know that death is not natural, nor just the result of the impersonal evolutionary forces of natural selection, but the just judgment of God for our sin and rebellion. We rejoice that Jesus willingly bore that punishment in our place, not just experiencing physical death but eternal death in His separation from His Father, thus depriving death of its sting. He triumphed over death by His resurrection, and all who repent of their sin and trust in Him will be resurrected like Him to a glorious eternity where there will be all the time in the world to enjoy Him and the new creation. Every week when we gather as His people in church we are reminded of His death and are preparing ourselves for death, strengthening our hope, and fostering longing for our home.
A better life to come
The gospel is good news because it offers true hope in the face of death. This ought to be a point of universal contact for our evangelism. If our gospel message is only ever the offer of a better life now, then the world will always be able to outbid us. We need to have confidence that the gospel alone meets the universal human experience of fear of death. God has put eternity in our hearts, and it is our task to point people to the author of life in whom alone immortality is to be found.
What we believe about death has never been better expressed than in the Heidelberg Catechism, and it is our duty, task and delight to testify to this truth:
Q. What is your only comfort in life and death?
A. That I am not my own but belong with body and soul, both in life and in death, to my faithful Saviour Jesus Christ. He has fully paid for all my sins with His precious blood, and has set me free from all the power of the devil… Therefore, by His Holy Spirit, He also assures me of eternal life and makes me heartily willing and ready from now on to live for Him.
Our greatest need is to be filled by the Spirit
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