Mortality
Chapter 8
DEATH
The eighth and last characteristic of the radical disciple which I have chosen is death. Let me explain. Christianity offers life – eternal life, life to the full. But it makes it plain that the road to life is death. It underlines this in at least six areas, as I will go on to show in this chapter. Life through death is one of the profoundest paradoxes in both the Christian faith and the Christian life.
Both life and death have always fascinated human beings. There can be no doubt that we are alive and that we will die. Life and death are two incontrovertible facts with which we have to come to terms. But they are also mysteries and hard to define.
Let me give you an example from a sphere of experience of interest to me, namely ornithology.
Life through death is one of the profoundest paradoxes in both the Christian faith and the Christian life.
Roger Tory Peterson, who died in 1997, was the doyen of twentieth-century American birdwatchers and bird artists. He used to tell how he got started. On a walk in the country at the age of eleven he spotted a Flicker (a species of Woodpecker). It appeared to be just a bundle of brown feathers, clinging to the trunk of an oak tree.
Gingerly I touched it on the back. Instantly this inert thing jerked its head around, looked at me with startled eyes, then exploded in a flash of golden wings, and fled into the wood. It was like a resurrection – what had appeared to be dead was very much alive. Ever since, birds have seemed to me the most vivid expression of life...Birds are an affirmation of life.1
Elsewhere Peterson described this as ‘the crucial moment of my life’. ‘I was overwhelmed,’ he continued, ‘by the contrast between something that was suddenly so vital and something I had taken for dead.’2
My concern in this chapter, however, is not with life and death in nature, but rather with death and life in Christ. The radical biblical perspective is to see death not as the termination of life but as the gateway to life.
For what Scripture does is to set before us the desirable glories of life, and then insist that the indispensable condition of experiencing them is death. In short, the Bible promises life through death, and it promises life on no other terms. So the apostle Paul describes Christian people as ‘those who have been brought from death to life’ (Romans 6:13). This perspective is so different from the assumptions of the secular mind, so novel, so revolutionary in its implications, that we need to see it illustrated in the six different situations in which according to the New Testament it operates.
SALVATION
First of all, we see death and life in relation to our salvation. For salvation is often represented in terms of life. Paul wrote that God’s gift is eternal life (Romans 6:23), and John explained that those who have the Son have life (1 John 5:12). It’s also made clear that the distinctive feature of this life is not its eternity but its quality as the life of the new age. Eternal life is life lived in fellowship with God (John 17:3).
But the only way to enter this life is death. The reason for this is clear. It is that the barrier to fellowship with God is sin, and ‘the wages of sin is death’ (Romans 6:23). Throughout the Bible sin and death are coupled together as an offence and its just penalty. But if we were to die for our own sins, that would be the end of us. There could be no life that way.
So God came to us in Jesus Christ. He took our place, bore our sin and died our death. We had sinned. So we deserved to die. But he died instead of us. The simple statement ‘Christ died for sins’ is enough. He had no sins of his own for which he needed to die; he died for ours.
But his death cannot do us any good unless we claim its benefits for ourselves. It is by faith inwardly and by baptism outwardly that we become united to Christ in his death and resurrection. We have died and risen with him. Now therefore we must ‘count [or ‘reckon’ ] ourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus’ (Romans 6:11) – not pretending we are immune to sin when we know we are not, but realizing and remembering the fact that, being one with Christ, the benefits of his death have become ours. We are ‘alive to God’, alive through his death.
DISCIPLESHIP
The same principle of life through death operates in discipleship as in salvation. Jesus himself used this vivid symbolism:
Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: ‘Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it.
(Mark 8:34–35)
If we had lived under Roman occupation in Palestine, and if we had seen a man carrying a cross, or at least the patibulum or crossbar, we would not have needed to ask him what on earth he was doing. No, we would have recognized him immediately as a condemned criminal on his way to execution, for the Romans compelled those they sentenced to death to carry their cross to the site of crucifixion.
This then was the dramatic imagery Jesus used for self-denial. For if we are following Jesus, there is only one place to which we can be going, the place of death. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote in The Cost of Discipleship:3 ‘When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.’ What is more, according to Luke we are to take up our cross every day (Luke 9:23), and if we do not do so we cannot be his disciple (Luke 14:27).
This teaching comes into direct collision with the Human Potential Movement, and with the New Age Movement too, which has jumped on the bandwagon of the Human Potential Movement. Carl Rogers taught that human beings are characterized not by pathology (as Freud taught) but by potential, and Abraham Maslow emphasized the need for self-actualization. Jesus’ words about ‘saving’ and ‘losing’ our ‘life’, although they can certainly be applied to martyrdom, are not necessarily restricted to it. For our ‘life’ is our psychē, our self, and in other versions of this saying the reflexive is used, namely ‘yourself’. So we could paraphrase verse 35: ‘Whoever is determined to hold on to themselves and live for themselves, will lose themselves. But whoever is willing to die, to lose themselves, to give themselves away in the service of Christ and the gospel, will (in the moment of complete abandon) find themselves, and discover their true identity.’ So Jesus does promise true self-discovery at the cost of self-denial, true life at the cost of death.
This teaching of Jesus was elaborated by the apostle Paul. In Galatians he declared that he had been crucified with Christ (2:20), and that all who belong to Christ have crucified their fallen nature with all its passions and desires (5:24). This is ‘mortification’, that is, putting to death or repudiating our fallen, self-indulgent nature. Paul’s clearest statement of it is Romans 8:13:
For if you live according to the sinful nature, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live.
Here is a verse which draws a clear contrast between life and death. It affirms that there is a kind of life which actually leads to death, and there is also a kind of death which actually leads to life. So if we want to live a life of true fulfilment, we must put to death (radically reject) all evil. As Martyn Lloyd-Jones wrote:
I am more and more convinced that most people get into trouble in the living of the Christian life because of their molly-coddling of themselves spiritually.4
Conversely if we reject evil, we will live. The only way to enter into the fullness of life is to die, or better to put to death, even to crucify, that is utterly to renounce, our self-indulgent nature and all its desires.
The Puritan John Owen emphasized this in his treatise The Mortification of Sin in Believers (1656). ‘Hatred of sin as sin, not only as galling or disquieting,’ he wrote, ‘...lies at the bottom of all true spiritual mortification’ (chapter 8). So it is essential to make war against indwelling sin and not to come to terms with it. We must avoid the ‘great evil of speaking peace groundlessly to ourselves’ (chapter 13). Moreover, such thoroughgoing mortification is possible only through the Holy Spirit. ‘A man may easier see without eyes, or speak without a tongue, than truly mortify one sin without the Spirit’ (chapter 7).
MISSION
The third area in which the life-through-death principle operates is mission. Although suffering is an indispensable aspect of mission, it is frequently overlooked. We need therefore to grasp its biblical basis before considering some notable examples of it.
Take the marvellous profile of the servant of the Lord in Isaiah chapters 42 – 53. His calling is to bring the light of salvation to the nations, but first he must endure mockery and persecution. Again, before he can ‘sprinkle many nations’ he will be despised and rejected by others, and will pour out his life unto death.
Douglas Webster, in his book Yes to Mission, gave an eloquent exposition of this theme:
Mission sooner or later leads into passion. In biblical categories...the servant must suffer...it is this which makes mission effective...Every form of mission leads to some form of cross. The very shape of mission is cruciform. We can understand mission only in terms of the Cross...5
Jesus clearly saw himself as fulfilling the suffering servant prophecies, and spoke of the necessary place of suffering in mission. When a delegation of Greeks came to Philip with their request to see Jesus, Jesus replied:
The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified [on the cross]. Very truly I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. Those who love their life will lose it, while those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life
(John 12:23–25)
Here again, although now in the context of mission rather than discipleship, Jesus uses the language of life and death, and emphasizes that death is the way to life. Only through his death would the gospel be extended to the Gentile world. Death is the way to fruitfulness. Unless it dies, the seed remains alone. But if it dies, it multiplies. It was so for the Messiah: it is the same for the Messiah’s community, for ‘whoever serves me must follow me’ (John 12:26).
The biblical basis for mission suffering would be incomplete without reference to the apostle Paul. Consider this extraordinary statement of his:
So then, death is at work in us, but life is at work in you.
(2 Corinthians 4:12)
Here the apostle dares to claim that through his death others will live. Is he out of his mind? No! Does he really mean it? Yes! It is not, of course, that his own sufferings and death can bring about salvation, as does the suffer- ing and death of Jesus Christ. It is rather this. People receive life through the gospel, and those who preach the gospel faithfully suffer for it. Paul knew what he was talking about. The good news he proclaimed was that salvation is available to Jews and Gentiles on equal terms, by faith alone. This aroused fanatical opposition from the Jews – so much so that it is no exaggeration to say that the Gentiles owed their salvation to his willingness to preach it faithfully and suffer for it. He was ready to die in order that they might live.
The history of the Christian church has been adorned by brave missionaries who risked their lives for the sake of the gospel, and who saw the church growing as a result. I will mention only two examples – one relating to an individual, and the other to a whole country.
The individual is Adoniram Judson of Burma (now Myanmar). When he proposed to his wife Ann, he said to her: ‘Give me your hand to go with me to the jungles of Asia, and there die with me in the cause of Christ.’ They reached Rangoon in 1813 and immediately soaked themselves in Burmese language and culture. Only after six years did Adoniram feel able to preach his first sermon, and only after seven could they register their first convert. It took him twenty years to translate the whole Bible into Burmese. He also wrote tracts, a catechism, a grammar and an English-Burmese dictionary which is still in use.
His sufferings were intense. He was widowed twice and lost six children during his lifetime. He and his family were constantly plagued with illness. During the Anglo-Burmese war he was suspected of being a spy and spent nearly two years in prison enduring chains, heat and filth. And in thirty-seven years of missionary service he returned home to the United States only once.
Yet as a result of his ‘death and burial’ in Burmese soil he bore much fruit. When he and Ann arrived in Burma, on their first Sunday in 1813 they shared in the Lord’s Supper together because there were no other Christians to invite to the table. When he died thirty-seven years later in 1850, however, he left more than 7,000 baptized Burmans and Karens in sixty-three churches. And now it is reckoned that there are more than three million Christians in Burma.
My second example relates to the vast country of China. When the Communists took over, and all foreign missionaries had to leave, it is believed that there were nearly one million Protestant Christians. Today the guess is that there are about seventy million.6 How can we account for this? Tony Lambert has written as follows:
The reason for the growth of the church in China and for the outbreak of genuine spiritual revival in many areas is inextricably linked to the whole theology of the cross...The stark message of the Chinese church is that God uses suffering and the preaching of a crucified Christ to pour out revival and build his church. Are we in the West still willing to hear?...The Chinese church...has walked the way of the cross. The lives and deaths of the martyrs of the 1950s and 1960s have borne rich fruit.7
The ‘death’ we are called to die as the condition of fruitfulness may well be less dramatic than martyrdom. Nevertheless, it is a real death, especially for cross-cultural missionaries. It may be for them a death to comfort and ease, and a separation from home and relatives; or a death to personal ambition as they renounce the temptation to climb the professional ladder, being content to remain in a humble servant ministry instead; or a death to cultural imperialism, refusing to exalt their inherited culture (despite it being part of their identity) and identifying instead with the culture of their adoption. In these and other ways we may be called to ‘die’ as the means to a life of fruitfulness.
PERSECUTION
The fourth area in which death is found to be the way to life is physical persecution.
Once again an outstanding example of this was the apostle Paul. Few Christians have suffered as he did – flogged, stoned, imprisoned, lynched and shipwrecked. Indeed, so extreme was the brutal treatment he received that he sometimes described it as a kind of ‘death’, and his deliverance from it as a kind of ‘resurrection’. ‘I die every day,’ he wrote in the middle of his great chapter on resurrection (1 Corinthians 15:31, NIV), meaning that he was continuously exposed to the danger of death. Here is his fullest statement:
We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about the troubles we experienced in the province of Asia. We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt we had received the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead. He has delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us again. On him we have set our hope that he will continue to deliver us.
(2 Corinthians 1:8–10)
By no means all beleaguered Christians are repeatedly rescued from death as Paul was. Christians are promised neither immunity nor deliverance. Instead, even in the midst of death we can experience life.
We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that his life may also be revealed in our mortal body.
(2 Corinthians 4:10–11)
This extraordinary statement declares that we can experience both the death and the life of Jesus simultaneously. Notice that the noun ‘body’ and the adverb ‘always’ are repeated in verses 10 and 11. We are always sharing in our body in the death and the life of Jesus. Even while we are being afflicted physically, and made aware of our mortality, we can draw on the spiritual vitality of Jesus. Even before the resurrection takes place we experience the resurrection-life of Jesus. Thus ‘dying, and yet we live on’ (2 Corinthians 6:9).
Whatever Paul’s thorn in the flesh was (some think it was sickness, others persecution), it was certainly a physical problem of some kind. And although Paul cried out for deliverance, he was promised instead Christ’s power in his weakness. Indeed the truth at the core of Paul’s letters to the church in Corinth is power through weakness, glory through suffering and life through death.
In the end Paul was not delivered but executed. He sealed his witness with his blood. And in the final book of the Bible the people of God are warned of persecution and martyrdom. Jesus told the church in Smyrna: ‘Do not be afraid of what you are about to suffer...Be faithful, even to the point of death, and I will give you life as your victor’s crown’ (Revelation 2:10).
Dr Paul Marshall of the Institute of Christian Studies in Toronto writes in his book Their Blood Cries Out about ‘the worldwide tragedy of modern Christians who are dying for their faith’. He calculates that 200 million Christians worldwide live in daily fear of the secret police under state repression. In more than sixty countries worldwide Christians are harassed, abused, imprisoned, tortured and executed, simply on account of their faith. Yet ‘despite persecution, Christianity is growing rapidly in the world’.8
MARTYRDOM
In my treatment of the theme of ‘life through death’ it will be noted that I am separating martyrdom from persecution. This is not because I have failed to notice that they overlap (which they do) but because according to Scripture, a special honour will be accorded to them in the new world (see Revelation 20:4).
So I begin in this section by introducing you to Dr Josif Ton, a follower of Jesus Christ, who has shown by his life and teaching that suffering – and even death – is an indispensable ingredient of Christian discipleship. Josif Ton is a Romanian Christian leader, born in 1934, who became pastor of the Baptist Church in Oradea, which today is a world-famous Baptist Centre. After four years of faithful pastoring, the curiosity of the authorities was aroused and he was arrested and interrogated. He was then given the opportunity to leave the country and settle in the USA, where he pursued doctoral studies and was awarded a doctorate by the Evangelical Faculty of Belgium. His research topic was ‘Suffering, Martyrdom and Rewards in Heaven’ which was later published as a book.
During the oppressive regime of Nicolae Ceauşescu, Josif Ton in one of his published sermons told how the authorities threatened to kill him. He responded: ‘Sir, your supreme weapon is killing. My supreme weapon is dying.’
One who was ‘faithful unto death’ was Dietrich Bonhoeffer. He was imprisoned in the Flossenburg concentration camp. On Sunday, 8th April, 1945 he led a short service of worship. He had hardly finished his last prayer when the door opened and two men in civilian clothes came in and said: ‘Prisoner Bonhoeffer, get ready to come with us.’ Those words ‘come with us’ had come for all prisoners to mean one thing only – the scaffold. ‘This is the end,’ he said, ‘for me the beginning of life’.9
MORTALITY
So far we have considered five areas in which death is the way to life. We have seen it in salvation (Christ died that we might live), in discipleship (if we put to death the misdeeds of the body we will live), in mission (the seed must die to multiply), in persecution (dying that we may live) and in martyrdom. Now, however, in this section, we will face our mortality, and the death of our physical body. Having at the time of writing by the grace of God reached the age of eighty-eight, my readers will understand that I have been reflecting much about these things. The end is in sight. I have been encouraged by the paradox of life through death.
Death inspires terror in many people...But death holds no horrors for Christians.
Death inspires terror in many people. Woody Allen’s angst in relation to death is well known. He sees it as a total annihilation of being and finds it ‘absolutely stupefying in its terror’. ‘It’s not that I’m afraid to die,’ he quips, ‘I just don’t want to be there when it happens.’ 10
Another and similar example is given by Ronald Dworkin QC, the American legal philosopher, who has held chairs in London, Oxford and New York universities. He has written:
Death’s central horror is oblivion – the terrifying absolute dying of the light...Death has dominion because it is not only the start of nothing, but the end of everything...11
But death holds no horrors for Christians. True, the process of dying can be messy and undignified, and the decay which follows it is not pleasant. Indeed the Bible itself recognizes this by calling death ‘the last enemy to be destroyed’ (1 Corinthians 15:26). At the same time we affirm that ‘Christ Jesus...has destroyed death’ (2 Timothy 1:10). He has personally conquered it by his resurrection, so that it no longer has any authority over us. Consequently we can shout defiantly:
Where, O death, is your victory?
Where, O death, is your sting?
(1 Corinthians 15:55)
The defeat of death is one thing; the gift of life is another. But because of the difficulty of defining eternal life, the New Testament writers tend to resort to picture language. The apostle John, for example, describes the people of God as having their names inscribed in the book of life (Revelation 3:5; 21:27), enjoying continuous access to the tree of life (Revelation 2:7; 22:2), and drinking freely of the water of life (Revelation 7:17; 21:6; 22:1, 17).
‘But someone will ask, “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body will they come?” ’ (1 Corinthians 15:35). The same question (a foolish question, according to Paul) is frequently asked today. We answer it by drawing attention to the relationship between a seed and its flower. There will be an essential continuity between the two (e.g. mustard seeds produce only a mustard plant). But the discontinuity is much more striking. The seed is bare and ugly but its flower is colourful and beautiful. So will it be with our resurrection body. It will preserve a degree of continuity with our present body, but it will have new and undreamed-of powers (1 Corinthians 15:35–44).
Furthermore, what is true of the resurrection body will in some way apply to the new heaven and new earth. Jesus called it a ‘regeneration’ (palingenesia, Matthew 19:28). For if the body is to be resurrected, the world is to be regenerated. And as there is to be a blend of continuity and discontinuity between the two bodies, so surely will there be between the two worlds. The whole creation is going to be liberated from its bondage to decay (Romans 8:18–25). These great expectations will be part of the eternal life into which death will bring us. It is this which is proclaimed in many cemeteries and on many tombstones: Mors janua vitae, death is the gateway to life.
Reflecting on death and seeking to prepare for it, I have constantly returned to what one might call Paul’s philosophy of life and death:
For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain. If I am to go on living in the body, this will mean fruitful labour for me. Yet what shall I choose? I do not know! I am torn between the two: I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far.
(Philippians 1:21–23)
In one word, life meant Christ to Paul. He could not imagine life without him. So it was truly logical that he should want to die because death would bring gain, namely more of Christ. Nevertheless, he knew he would remain a while longer because there was more work for him to do on earth.
It is usually regarded as dangerous to argue from an analogy. But Paul here seems to give us permission to do so. The principle is clear. If life means Christ to us, then death will bring gain. Indeed the life to come will be ‘far better’ than life on earth.
For example,
These are only samples of human experience. In each case it is appropriate to use the comparative, namely ‘better by far’. Indeed, when we reflect on the life to come, the comparative is really inadequate and the superlative is appropriate. This is why, whenever we are reflecting on the future that awaits us, we can always say, ‘The best is yet to come.’
To recap, in this chapter we have looked at six areas where we find the paradoxical principle of life through death: salvation, discipleship, mission, persecution, martyrdom and mortality. In each case we must maintain both sides of the equation, death and life.
On the one hand we must not understate the glory of the life which is offered us in the gospel – the eternal life which is ours through faith in Christ, or the intensified life which is ours if we put to death the desires of our fallen nature, or the inward vitality we can enjoy in the midst of our physical weakness and mortality, or the fruitfulness promised to those who are faithful in their mission, or the comfort given us in the midst of persecution and in prospect of martyrdom, or – most of all – the final resurrection-life in the new creation. In all these ways God has promised that those who die will live.
On the other hand, we must not understate the cost of the death which alone leads to life – a death to sin through identification with Christ, a death to self as we follow Christ, a death to ambition in cross-cultural mission, a death to security in the experience of persecution and one of martyrdom, and a death to this world as we prepare for our final destiny.
Death is unnatural and unpleasant. In one sense it presents us with a terrible finality. Death is the end. Yet in every situation death is the way to life. So if we want to live we must die. And we will be willing to die only when we see the glories of the life to which death leads. This is the radical, paradoxical Christian perspective. Truly Christian people are accurately described as ‘those who are alive from the dead’.