WHAT is death? When God said to Adam, “In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die,” He uttered no vain threat. Adam ate thereof, and that day he died!
True he lived on some hundreds of years outside of the garden where God had placed him, but he lived outside the presence of God. It was a life of banishment, so far as circumstances went, from the face of God. He was thus separated from God. Death means separation; and, in the first instance on record, Adam was separated outwardly from God.
Death, that of the body, is the severance of the link of body and spirit. The life is not touched, but the condition in which it existed here is altered.
The “second death,” in which, after resurrection, body and spirit are reunited, is the definite separation of the man from God, not only as to outward circumstances, but morally as well. This is the final punishment of the “lake of fire.”
The first death is destroyed by the “first resurrection”; the “second death” remains. There is no “second resurrection” to destroy it. We find no such expression as second resurrection. “Second death” signifies a final and unalterable state of exclusion from the face and under the wrath of God. Death means more than dissolution, or a decay of vital energies and powers. It is the sole fruit of sin. Apart from sin, the idea of death is to us impossible. Creation itself has been brought into the bondage of corruption through man’s sin. Hence, in tracing, the turbid stream to its source, we find ourselves at sin. Sin is the fatal fountainhead, as it is also; the sting of death. Extract the sting, and death is then resolved to simple dissolution.
But why dissolution, if the sole cause of death be gone? Just because flesh and blood―a body animated by the soul as at present―cannot inherit the kingdom of God. But is sin gone? No, it is not actually gone. Our sins, if believers, were borne by the blessed Lord on the cross, where also He was made sin for us; and we are forgiven, justified, and bid to reckon ourselves dead to sin, as being in Christ; but yet, as to fact, sin is not gone. “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves.” In me, that is, in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing. Hence the body is mortal and corruptible, and cannot inherit that kingdom.
But in God’s sight sin is gone, and with sin the dread sting of death. The worst part of death―in fact, death itself, in all that makes it dreaded―is gone to faith as well. Hence we can say, “Thanks be unto God, who giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” That victory is ours now, and death becomes but the hand that opens the door into realms of bliss.
“Death is ours,” and for this infinite boon we are the debtors of our blessed Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us under judgment for sin.
J. W. S.