September 17, 2015 MORTAL BECOMING IMMORTAL
1 Corinthians 15:53, 55: “For this perishable must put on the imperishable, and this mortal must put on immortality. O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?”
Recently, I attended the funeral of a twenty six year old man who lost is life in an accident on a job site. He was an outstanding young man with a wonderful family-salt of the earth kind of people. When we experience the death of a loved one-when we look death in the face-we mourn over the hard fact that life has left the one we loved. We find ourselves asking why this had to happen and we may even question, or at least wonder about the goodness of God. It just does not make “sense” to us that a twenty six year old lost his life. As painful as it is to have someone close to you die, perhaps your own flesh and blood, there is comfort and hope to be found in what the scriptures say about death. In the second half of 1 Corinthians 15, Paul was answering questions from believers about death and resurrection, and what he says does in fact give us the right perspective on death. We tend to live in the here and now with a mindset that rarely contemplates what happens when life on this earth ends. God designed it in such a way that we are born with mortal bodies-perishable bodies that are destined to die one day. We are not to live with a focus on death, but at the same time, it is good to have an understanding of the plans that God has for life here and for life after our physical death. Death of a love one tries and test our faith like nothing else-it’s the acid test of what we say we believe. The reality of death is a starch reminder that we should see each day that we live as a gift from God. Death has a way of putting life in the right perspective. Certainly, to mourn over someone’s death is normal, and it is part of the healing process. Christianity offers the only sure and steadfast hope of life in heaven after death, and God has taken away the “sting of death” for the one who belongs to Him. We find comfort when remember that physical death is the beginning of a life we can’t even imagine, and when a believer dies, he takes on immortality! It’s an awesome thought to realize that our loved ones that knew the Lord, and who have passed out of this life, are now immortal beings in the presence of the Lord! Yes, we mourn the death of a loved one; but let us find comfort in what God says about life and death.
Psalms 116:15: “Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His godly ones.”
1 Corinthians 15:42-44: “So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown a perishable body, it is raised an imperishable body: it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body.”
Blessings.
Buddy
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