I’m Not Afraid to Die

I was having a conversation with a friend recently about a person’s attitude when death comes calling. She believed that everyone would cling to life in hopes that death could be avoided as long as possible. She had recently lost a loved one, so her thoughts were deeply personal and based on her own ideas about death and the afterlife. When I told her that I would welcome death because it is the door to a better life, she told me I might think differently if I were the one facing a terminal diagnosis.

I think she is wrong; I hope she is wrong. I haven’t heard the grim reaper’s steps in the hall, but I have a deep, abiding faith in what Scripture teaches about life after death. I think it is an expression of that faith that allows me the confidence to say that I will welcome it when it comes knocking. This position touches a subject I have covered previously: Confidence versus Arrogance. When I express absolute confidence (aka faith) in the Word of God, it sounds arrogant to unbelievers and believers who have not yet accomplished the renewal of their minds recommended by Paul.

What are the Scriptures that should renew our mortal fear of death? The first that comes to my mind is Paul’s poetic echo of the prophets in 1 Corinthians. “Death is swallowed up in victory. Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting? Now 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!” Because I no longer bear the penalty for my sin which was taken by Christ on the cross, I have confidence that the sting of death is gone, and it is replaced by my joyous victory over it.

So then, death becomes a stage in life, a life everlasting with great expectations of continued joy. While I don’t pretend to know exactly what or how the transformation from this life to the next will be, I have numerous Scriptural clues about it. For one, Jesus told His disciples just before His death and resurrection that He was going away to prepare a place for them where they would join Him later. The place Jesus referred to (His Father’s house) is in that realm or dimension where God is said to dwell, often called Heaven.

This raises a question about exactly what Heaven is or where Heaven is. Curiously, in naming the disciples’ future destination, Jesus used a word that might well be translated “hotel.” This tempts us to think that the place Jesus referred to is not our permanent eternal dwelling, but rather a waystation between life on this earth and life on the new earth which will be created in God’s good time. Whatever or wherever the place is, we get a sense that we will have a consciousness that we will carry from this life to the next; otherwise, Jesus would not have suggested that His disciples would be joining Him there. His subsequent death and resurrection revealed a new body that bore recognizable marks of the old but with capabilities that were new.

Although many people believe that Christians go to Heaven when they die, this is not exactly what the Bible says. When the word heaven is used, especially by Jesus, it is in the context of the “Kingdom of Heaven.” In those instances, Jesus was not referring to a far distant place, but rather to a condition of God’s sovereign rule. The rule of Heaven is a metonymy much like the modern reference to the authority of the “White House.” What’s in view is a matter of control or reign; it’s what Jesus taught His disciples to pray for: “Thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven.” We are to pray that “Heaven” would have complete control over the events of our earthly existence. Jesus repeatedly said that the Kingdom of Heaven, the sovereign rule of God had already burst onto the earthly scene with His incarnation. He never suggested it was the place we go when we die.

The fact is the Bible says very little about where we go when we die. One of the most encouraging passages is Paul’s declaration that to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. Paul does not elaborate on where that presence is, but he is confident that he will share a relationship with the Lord he serves. Jesus seems to have hinted at this reality when on the cross He told the penitent thief, “Today you will be with me in Paradise.” No description or explanation is given as to what or where “Paradise” might be. Suffice it to say that it will be more than pleasant, particularly if that is where Jesus dwells.

Some of the most detailed hints we get about the afterlife are in Paul’s long dissertation on the resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15. We learn there that at some point after death, we receive a different kind of body. We are not going to be resurrected with the same body we died with. Paul makes the point that when you bury a seed, the resulting growth is far different from the seed with characteristics and capabilities far surpassing the mere seed. That will be the case with our resurrection bodies.

We see hints of that in the body Jesus returned with after His death, resurrection, and ascension. He could pop in and out of rooms without bothering with doors; He could transit between the realm of God’s dwelling (Heaven?) and our earthly plane at will. He was recognized by His disciples even to the point of showing them the wounds caused by His crucifixion. The apostle John says that we don’t know precisely what form our bodies will take, but he says with confidence that we will be like Jesus because we will see Jesus as He is. We will have spiritual eyes enabled to see the spiritual bodies Paul says we get upon our resurrection.

This is not to suggest that our new bodies are not corporeal—physical in some sense. We are not to go the way of the Greek philosophers or the Gnostic Christians who believed flesh was evil, and our ultimate goal was to attain a spiritual existence devoid of the physical form in which we occupy space on earth. Paul assures us that we will be resurrected in a body; his point is that it will be a body of a different sort, though it will be recognizable as who we were.

When God created the earth and put humans on it, He declared that it was good. Sin stained that goodness, but God has promised to recreate it once again. That is why I am not afraid to die: I want to experience that Edenic perfection and intimate fellowship God intended for His children. The truth is I am looking forward to it. But I say with Paul that it is better that I remain on earth until my Lord is finished with me. The God who created everything and everyone has a family to gather; when it is complete, we are all going home. I am ready whenever He is.