The Cross: Hope in Death

In 2007, I saw the devastation of death on the campus of Virginia Tech after a mass shooting. I saw the pain of death in Haiti during a cholera outbreak in 2010. I saw people on death’s door in Kenya fighting AIDS. And, I felt death’s pain when my father passed this year.  

Death is severe, painful, and definitive. Death tempts us to question: Where is God? Or, perhaps, who is this God who allows death? If God can do anything, why is there death? Hasn’t Christ conquered the grave? Didn’t he provide eternal life for those who believe?

Yes, Jesus has done all these, but God’s redemptive plan is still in motion. As hard as it is to accept, death still has a place and purpose for a little while longer.

Death’s severity proves that God is honest and just. From the beginning, God said that the soul who sins shall die (Ezekiel 18:20). We often see death as a punishment for God is a righteous judge. However, God is also a Father, and death lovingly frees us from mortality. Death is severe, but it mercifully ends our sinful imperfection. 

Death’s pain reveals the heart of God. God does not want us to live forever in a broken state, and God’s heart breaks with sin and separation. God wants something better. His heart is full of love, which is why he faced the cross and associated with us in death.

Death is definitive, but it is not the end. Death points us to a better future. If not for death, our hope would be limited to the improvements of our broken bodies and imperfect world. When we see death for what it is (a transition), we can rest in an eternal hope that Christ has secured for the Church.

Death played its role, but so has the cross, which confronts death and rewrites the script. If it were not for the cross, death would reign. Now, there is victory over death and after death. Death used to be a master, but Christ made it a servant. Yes, it still operates, but under Christ’s authority, and we have witnessed the hope of his extravagant heart.

The Apostle Paul asked, “Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?” (1 Cor 15:55). Today, we can answer that question because of Christ’s death. The cross of Christ provides real hope in death because it was severe, painful, and definitive.

What shall we do? We cannot escape death or close our eyes towards it, but we can trust that God is sovereign over death. It is under Christ’s domain. Thus, we can face death with Christ by our side, for he has been on the other side. And, most glorious of all, because of the cross, when death’s purpose has finished, it will be thrown out forever!