Perspectives

Let’s talk about dying well

By Brian Onstead
Posted 6/24/21

It was more common in older Christian teachings to hear about dying well.

Life expectancy was much lower back then. Medical treatment was not nearly as advanced as it is today. The infant …

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Perspectives

Let’s talk about dying well

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It was more common in older Christian teachings to hear about dying well.

Life expectancy was much lower back then. Medical treatment was not nearly as advanced as it is today. The infant mortality rate was around 50%. Death was such a common reality that the topic was unavoidable.

Sadly, the church at large in America overwhelmingly talks about how to live rather than how to die. We talk about how to have a fulfilled marriage, good children, better-managed finances, how to support many worthy causes and what ways we can get our families plugged in to the latest church activities. Even when the gospel is preached, it is often for therapeutic reasons: you’ll be blessed with peace and joy in this life (which is true and a glorious truth). In all of this, death is seldom mentioned.

Even with COVID, the death count was used not to make us aware of the reality of death, but to call us to take the virus seriously and to order our lives according to the medical professionals’ rules in order to live. The responses were either to put hope for salvation in masks and other safety measures or to point out the virus’s very low death rate and move on from focusing on death.

We do not like talking about death because it is a formidable and scary enemy. We would rather push it out of our mind, telling ourselves that it is far off, or distract ourselves from its reality with the pleasures of this world. 

Hebrews 2:15 reveals to us that we all in our natural sinful state have a fear of death. The verse tells us that this fear of death leads to lifelong slavery to the devil. Two expressions of this slavery is to be busy with the pleasures of this world in order to distract us from the reality of the curse of dying — which our bodies gradually experience as they age — and to be busy pursuing works of righteousness in order to feel like we have enough righteousness to stand before God when we meet him. Thankfully, and gloriously, Hebrews 2 also tells us that the Lord Jesus provides deliverance from the fear of death which leads to a life of slavery. It says that Jesus did this through death itself.

The Son of God came to live on this earth for the purpose of dying. After living a perfect life of righteousness so that those who trust in him would get the credit for his perfect living as a free gift, he went to the cross to die in the place of sinners. He did this in order to pay the penalty (death) for the sins of his people.

Because Christ has provided a perfect righteousness by which believers can stand before God, and suffered their penalty in their place, we who trust him do not need to fear death. We do not have to fear God’s judgment for our sins and lack of righteousness because Jesus has covered us with his own righteousness and faced God’s dreadful judgment in our place so that we would not have to. When we draw near to our physical death, we know that death is a defeated enemy that is now our servant to bring us into the presence of God where there is fullness of joy and pleasures forevermore.

We who believe in Jesus can, therefore, say confidently, “O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?” (1 Corinthians 15:55). Not being enslaved from the fear of death (judgment) and being confident and at peace in the face of death is how we both live and die well.

(Brian Onstead is a pastor at Trinity Bible Church.)

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