We went to a funeral visitation the other day. The man was about my age. He died suddenly. No one saw it coming.
Death can be like that. Some of us will go quickly. Others will linger, but in the end all of us are like grass. Our beauty fades and we return to the dust from which we came.
Perhaps that sounds morbid, but in truth, it is the most important thing we can think about while we yet live. The Bible tells us that it is better to go to the house of mourning than the house of feasting because the wise will take it to heart. Take what to heart?
The fact that death comes as the end, and what happens after that? It is a question every single person needs to find the answer to if we want to fully live now. When we know where we are going after we breathe our last here, we can live this life without fearing the future.
The Bible tells us that death came into the world through Adam because of sin. He sinned by disobeying God’s command. We are born with his nature, and we prove that we do sin by our actions.
What actions? Anything that falls short of the commands of our Creator.
Do we lie? Cheat? Steal?
Are we greedy? Immoral? Hateful?
Have we gossiped?
It takes humility and a true assessment of our inmost being to admit that we are not born good. Even a child is known by his actions, whether they are good and right.
But we do not like to think that way today because in our various modes of thought we make up our own version of what is good and what is evil. Interestingly enough, though…if we do not believe that we are sinners…or if we believe everyone is inherently good, where does evil come from?
Even atheists believe that there are evil people in the world. But by whose standard are they evil?
I return to the premise that human beings are not born with a clean slate or are good at our very core. If that were true, then we have a big problem in trying to explain why there are so many evil and cruel and hateful people in this world.
Again, if we are all born good and there is no sin, where does death come from?
As stated above, the God of the Bible tells us that death came through one man Adam because of sin. And eternal life comes through one man Jesus Christ who took away the sting of death and the permanency of eternal death–if we place our faith in Him.
Without sin–if Adam had not sinned–there would be no death. We cannot even imagine what that would be like because we are all so used to a culture of death. But in the beginning it was not so.
Sinful humans can die. God, on the other hand, cannot. Perhaps this is why those who believed that Jesus was the Son of God could not comprehend that He could actually die as He predicted He would. But Jesus was both God and man and the human part of Him absolutely could die and did.
But the God part of Him could not, which is why He did not and could not stay in that tomb.
The One who is inherently good, the One who created all there is cannot die.
Death cannot hang onto good.
If we were not born in sin–if we were inherently good as we want to believe–then we could not die.
Sin is our only connection to death and faith in Jesus is our only connection to life for He is the Life.
When we choose to repent of our sin and place our faith in what Jesus did for us by dying in our place, we have life–eternal life. We will still die physically, but we will live eternally with the One who is truly good. The One who has always been and always will be. We cannot even imagine the good that He has in store for those who believe. It is far better than anything we will ever experience here.
So why would anyone choose death over life? Why choose to think people who are “born good” can somehow become evil? There is no sense or logic in thinking that we can somehow flip our nature unless we already have a bent toward that sinful nature. The nature that can be evil and cruel and hateful.
Why choose to believe something that goes against all common sense? Because those who say we are good with no need to change, no need to repent of anything, no need of a Savior, deny the reality of the world in which we live. That is the problem with believing things happen by chance or that we somehow evolved from nothing to something. Those things all deal with the physical realm. So where did evil come from? Where did good come from?
Why do so many refuse to seek truth in these matters?
Because we are dead men walking. We can’t see the truth through the lies we’ve been told. The lies we believe.
We need someone to open our eyes and help us to see. We need to realize that this earth is a temporary dwelling place for all of us. One day, when we die, we leave this place for another. What and Who we believe in now will determine our destiny then.
~Selah
