Death is final. It is the end of all things. It catches up to us all, for it is the most powerful and unstoppable force in existence. No one, not one, can evade its bony grasp. We must all succumb to the darkness and be forgotten. There is no escape.
All that is a lie.
“Can anything ever separate us from Christ’s love? Does it mean he no longer loves us if we have trouble or calamity, or are persecuted, or hungry, or destitute, or in danger, or threatened with death?”
Romans 8:35 NLT
In those times described above, we feel justified in giving up. Giving up on life. Giving up on Christ.
“(As the Scriptures say, “For your sake we are killed every day; we are being slaughtered like sheep.” )”
Romans 8:36 NLT
But what about death? It’s final. The end. And being slaughtered like sheep? Taken helplessly into a torturer’s chamber to have our throats slit and our blood pooled on the floor?
Yet the Apostle Paul resoundingly proclaims:
“No, despite all these things, overwhelming victory is ours through Christ, who loved us.”
Romans 8:37 NLT
And he doesn’t stop there. Christ does not stop there with just overwhelming victory, for his love tears through anything to find us. Nothing can stop Christ. Nothing has ever stopped Christ. He conquered “the grave”, also known as Hades, Sheol, or the realm of the dead. He himself said:
“I am the living one. I died, but look—I am alive forever and ever! And I hold the keys of death and the grave.” (Revelation 1:18 NLT)
The gates of those kingdom belong to him! They are spoils in his war against the evil one, and he can with them as he wishes. And one thing Christ wishes for us as that we not enter those kingdoms but instead enter his own.
“And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love.” (Romans 8:38 NLT)
“No power in the sky above or in the earth below—indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Romans 8:39 NLT
Why can nothing separate us? Because Christ is that powerful to be able to tear through the veil of reality, possibility, and time to not only reach for us, but to actually reach us. To embrace us, and that fully, like the Savior he has proven himself to be. He welcomes us into his Kingdom.
“The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it. The world and all its people belong to him.” (Psalms 24:1 NLT)
Death is dead.
“O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting? ” (1 Corinthians 15:55 NLT)
A contemporary log of fragmentary pleasures 