Terrible Weekend

What a terrible weekend, especially for my best friend. I had to conduct the funeral for his wife. We have been friends, brothers I would say, for years. Fighting fires and running ambulance calls and even scuba diving to locate drowned victims, we have been through a lot together. His wife was a wonderful person and we are dear friends with them and their adult daughter. I never expected to have to do such things when I answered the call to pastor. I am not to be pitied however. My friend and his daughter are the ones who have suffered the blow. When I got the call I was shocked. Immediately asking God, “Oh Lord, what can I do? What do I say?” It took a while for it to sink in and after being with him in his home it was evident that the Holy Spirit was doing a great job of comforting him and his family.  

Death is certainly not a respecter of persons. Old and young, good and bad, healthy or sickly; it comes to each. Solomon said, “None of us can hold back our spirit from departing. None of us has the power to prevent the day of our death.” God lets people die because He said He would. After putting Adam in the Garden of Eden God gave him this warning: “Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”  It just does not seem fair that God would punish every human, by letting us die, just because one of us disobeyed Him! After all, my friend’s wife had nothing to do with Adam messing up, why should she die for it?

Well, God does not deal in fairness but He does deal in justice. Any Gospel that does not include Gods judgment is not a true gospel. In order to administer justice in the form of punishment for sin, death of the body was required; not death of our spirit. Although all human bodies will die, (or be changed from mortal to immortal), only the death of one human body paid the price of sin required by God in order that our spirit would be rescued from death (salvation). That was the body of the Lord Jesus, the Christ.

My friend’s wife believed in Christ, she trusted He would save her; and He did. Her body died but she lives on! Death no longer has reign over her. Were it not for the Cross and Calvary, death would be the final horrible state of humanity. Because Jesus lives, we will live; if the same Spirit that raised Him lives in us. It is like the church sign once read; “Born once, die twice. Born twice, die once.”