“Never See Death” — Part Two

Jesus says—John 8:51—“Truly, truly, I say to you, if anyone keeps my word, he will never see death.”

Father, the reason we are here tonight is because of your love towards us that has created in our hearts a love for you and a love for your Word. And it is because we want to keep your Word that we want to learn what your Word says and what it means, why it matters, how it applies, how it impacts the living of our lives day by day. And so we ask again for your help in the evening hour, that beyond the voice of a mere man we might have a great sense of the abiding presence of God the Holy Spirit bringing home to our lives all these various things that you know we need to hear—not the same thing for everyone, necessarily. But Lord, close the gaps in some of our thinking. Come and assure us of the things that we have been singing about tonight, so that as we end in song, it might be with a deep sense of conviction and a gladness of heart. And we ask all of this in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Well, we come back to what we left off from this morning. If you’re visiting here this evening—and you may be—we are studying the “Truly, trulys” in John’s Gospel, and we set out this morning to be tackled by John 8:51, which I’ve just read, acknowledging the fact that there is another “Truly, truly” to which we’re coming at the end of this. And I did not set out in my study, not even when I was finally writing things up, to do what we’re doing today. And it’s really a measure of incompetence, I suppose. I mean, if you’ve got something, you should be able to get through it, and if you’ve got a plan, you should execute it. But I didn’t do it, so here we are.

And we set out on a long preamble, I admit, going through the beginning of John’s Gospel, trying to get the big picture and get the drama before we arrived at this. And before we’ve even arrived at it, then we had a discourse on death itself, acknowledging the fact that death is unavoidable and that it is not natural, as contemporary society wants to suggest to us, and so on.

That was our first point. Our second point, to which we come now, was then to consider the difference that Jesus makes in relationship to all of life and particularly to death itself. And so we can essentially go back to Romans 6:23, which, if you, like me, were taught the Roman Road through the Bible to try and teach people the way of salvation, you know that you stopped at 3:23 there: that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” And then you moved on from there to 6:23 to make sure that people understood that “the wages of sin is death, but the … gift of God is eternal life [through Jesus] Christ … our Lord.” So, sin pays wages. The wages are remitted to us in death—a death which is a physical death; it comes to us all. By our native sphere, it is a spiritual death. And if we were to die as those who are spiritually dead, then we would face death in terms of eternity, which the Bible refers to as hell.

So, it is a very, very, very important subject, and we need to come to terms with it. How is it that a man or a woman can be justified from sin? How is it that the wages of sin are going to be paid? Well, they’re going to be paid one way or another, because there is no way to escape the penalty of sin, which is death. That’s why we say that sin is not natural; sin is actually penal—that sin has crept in, as it were, into humanity by dint of the Evil One, and as a result of that, we are confronted by it, and in an unavoidable way. But at the same time, we do know that there is one who has defeated death because he has come in order that he might bear sin’s penalty.

Now, the picture is used by Paul often in his letters, and we can consider it very simply. We used to have a prison ministry in Scotland. We went up regularly on a Friday evening to a jail that was about fifteen miles away from our church. And so we often had prisoners, once they were discharged, coming to worship with us. And what a difference it was to see them on the outside from where they’d been on the inside! Because consider: a person commits a crime and is sentenced to prison. How, then, can they be justified? Only by serving the sentence. Only by paying the penalty. Once they have served their time, once they have paid the penalty, they are free to go, and the demands of the law have been satisfied, and they no longer need to be terrified or tyrannized in any way as a result of what was their previous experience, because the term has been satisfied. And the principle holds true, actually, in terms of death itself.

And that’s how it is applied in the writings of Paul. Jesus was sinless. Jesus had no sin. Therefore, Jesus did not need to die. And so anybody that’s reading the Gospel accounts… Someone says to their friend, “Why don’t you read the Gospel of John? I’ve got a copy for you here. Why don’t you take it, and we could have some conversation about it?” It’s a wonderful thing to do. And the person will come back, if they’re thinking at all, and they say, “But I just can’t understand this: why it is that Jesus ends up on a cross. Why did Jesus have to die? If he was the sinless one, why does he die?” And, of course, it is because he came deliberately, and he came freely, in order to die in the place of the sinner.

Jesus is the only sinless one, who is both God and man. He is the only one who walked through the valley of the shadow of death and came out as a resurrected Lord and King.

I was thinking just in an hour or so before we came here—I thought I remembered, and I thought I could find it, but I couldn’t find it, but I still think I remember it. What? Well, Derek Prime—I remember him using an illustration that came out of a real court case in the Edinburgh Sheriff Court. And it went something along these lines: that the person was brought before the sheriff (the judge), and the crime was admitted to, and the sentence of a substantial fine was passed. The person had no resources in themselves, and so they were escorted down into the cells. When the morning’s business was completed, the sheriff went down into the cells and paid the penalty, the fine, that was due to that individual, thereby allowing them to go free. It was an act of gratuitous generosity.

And Derek was helping me and helping us as a congregation to understand that that is exactly what Jesus has done. Because we owe a debt that we cannot pay, he comes to pay a debt that he doesn’t owe. That’s why we sang “Jesus Paid It All.” And that’s why the hymn writer puts it so perfectly, gives us a picture of it. What is happening up on the cross? And he writes,

Bearing shame and scoffing rude,
In my place condemned he stood,
[And] sealed my pardon with his blood.
Hallelujah, what a Savior![1]

You see, that is why Jesus is the only one qualified to do this. When people stumble over the exclusive claims of Jesus, we have to be prepared to stand firm on these things. Jesus is the only Savior because he is the only one qualified to save. He is the only sinless one, who is both God and man. He is the only one who walked through the valley of the shadow of death and came out as a resurrected Lord and King. And so we have to make sure we get that.

Only Jesus is able to say what he says here to these people in his audience: “Truly, truly, I say to you, if anyone keeps my word, he will never see death.” But what does that mean? What does it mean, “he will never see death”? They reply, remember—and they change it up a little bit—they say, “I don’t see why it is that you say if anyone believes your word, they will never taste death.” I don’t think there’s any real significance in the transfer in that way. Because the fact is, Jesus is making a very clear statement.

But he is clearly not suggesting that his followers will never experience physical dissolution. He’s not saying that those who are his disciples, that those who hold to his word, that those who believe in him will not ever face the reality that we spoke about this morning: conception, birth, growth, decline, decay, death, dissolution. He’s not saying that. He’s not saying that you will escape death as a reality but rather that in Christ, you will never have to confront death in its power—the power of death to condemn as the occasion of final separation from God. Okay? So physical death is a reality. But “the wages of sin is death.” And Christ comes and bears that penalty for us so that, as Augustus Toplady puts it—and I think he wrote “Rock of Ages”—in the hymn by Toplady, which I can’t remember the first line of for the moment, but this is what he says: “The terrors of law and of God…” “The terrors of law and of God”: the terror of standing before a sinless, almighty, pure God. “The terrors of law and of God”—which is a realistic terror—“with me,” he writes, “[shall] have nothing to do. My Savior’s obedience and blood hide all my transgressions from view.”[2] That’s the difference, you see. Because the fearful thing is the terror of standing before God with nothing to say by way of our defense. Jesus is the only shelter. He’s the only shelter that God has provided for sinners.

And so, when Jesus is speaking in this way, as I tried to suggest this morning, there is, if you like—in his heart and in his tone—there is an appeal to the people that he’s speaking to. “If you reject the shelter that is found in me,” he says to them, essentially, “there’s no other shelter. If you reject the shelter that is provided by my work on the cross,” which is prospective as he speaks to them then, “it will mean the ruin of your soul.”

So the question “What difference does Jesus make to death?”—he makes every difference in the world! Every difference in the world! That’s why by the time you get to chapter 11, which I don’t think has a “Truly, truly” in it—and we quoted it this morning—Jesus says in the context of the death of Lazarus and in the listening of the girls, the sisters, “I am the resurrection and the life. [And] whoever believes in me, [even] though he die”—if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed—“[even] though he die, yet shall he live.”[3] How will he live? “Well, he lives in me.” That’s the great significance of baptism: buried with him in baptism and raised with him to newness of life—not that baptism provides that reality but that it pictures that reality. So that’s why when people are baptized, they go down under the water as a symbol of them being buried in Christ and being raised to a new life. And it is that new life which is completely unassailable.

I mentioned my mother’s death this morning. I don’t mention it very often, but it’s a recurring thought. I’m sure it is for many of you with loved ones you have lost. And people ask me, you know, “When did you finally get a very strong conviction about theology and biblical things and all that kind of stuff?” I said, “Well, I’ll tell you what: I believed it until I stood at my mother’s open grave. And then I decided, ‘I’d better ask myself: Do I really believe it?’” Because we sang unaccompanied,

Death cannot keep its prey, Jesus my Savior;
He tore the bars away, Jesus my Lord!

Up from the grave he arose,
With a mighty triumph o’er his foes.
He [rose] a victor from the dark domain,
And he lives forever with [the] saints to reign.
He arose! He arose![4]

Some of you have perhaps sung that at a loved one’s grave. You find your voice breaks. You find yourself saying, “I really want to believe this deep, deep, deep inside of myself.” Do you? That’s why Jesus after he does that great statement in John 11, he asks the question, “Do you believe this?”[5] Do you believe it? Are you prepared to fly the instruments all the way through life and into death solely on the basis of the promise of Christ himself?

John pictures it in Revelation: “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, [because] the [old] heaven and the [old] earth had passed away,” and so on. “And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man.’” And then listen to this: “‘He will dwell with them, and they will be his people.’”[6] Which is, of course, what he planned from the very beginning—to choose a people that are his very own: “Abraham, come here. You’re going to have a son. Through your lineage all the nations of the earth will be blessed.”[7] Where are all these nations? Where will they all finally end up? They’ll end up right here. And “he[’ll] wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”[8]

There’s nothing like this in all of the world. There’s nothing like this in all of comparative religion. There is nobody else says this, because no one else can. Don’t put RIP on your tombstone: “Rest in peace.” Put CAD: “Christ abolished death.” Don’t look in there for that person, because, as we’re about to see, they’ve moved on. We could say more, but we won’t.

The third point that I was going to make this morning is that there are only two ways to die. Only two ways to die—or probably the proper English would be “There are only two ways in which to die.” Because in Jesus’ death, the last enemy is destroyed. That’s not 2 Corinthians 5, but it’s 1 Corinthians 15:26. Yeah: “For [Jesus] must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. [And] the last enemy to be destroyed is death.”[9] So, death is a defeated enemy. However, without a Savior, men and women will die in their sins.

Unless you believe, unless you trust in Christ, you will die in your sins.

Now, you can turn back to John 8 if you are not there—and why would you be? But anyway, John 8. In the previous discussion, or in the earlier part of the discussion, Jesus says to the group that are pushing in on him—John 8:21:

So he said to them again, “I[’m] going away, and you will seek me, and you will die in your sin. Where I[’m] going, you cannot come.” So the Jews said, “Will he kill himself, since he says, ‘Where I[’m] going, you cannot come’?” He said to them, “You[’re] from below; I am from above. You are of this world; I am not of this world. I told you that you would die in your sins, for unless you believe that I am he you will die in your sins.”

Death is not terminal. Death is not terminal. This afternoon I was reading The Times, and I came on an article about a Scottish politician who had been diagnosed with a brain tumor. But the headline was essentially “I’m Not Afraid to Die.” Now, I read the article carefully, because I thought he was going to say, “Because I know that Jesus is the answer to death. He has triumphed over death.” He didn’t say that at all. Apparently, the man believes that when you’re dead, it’s all over—that that’s all death is. You just come to a crushing halt. You’ll never know anything more about it. You don’t need to worry about it at all.

Now, if you’re a Christian and if you’re a Bible-believing Christian, somehow or another, if you end up in conversation with somebody like that, discussing these immense matters, you have to say, “Well, you know, Jesus actually doesn’t speak in those terms.” “You ought to be afraid.” The great consequence, says Jesus… See, people don’t understand the consequences of their unbelief. They think, “Well, I can believe or not believe. I mean, I know you’re very excited about it at Parkside Church and so on, and you do all this stuff. But I don’t really care. It doesn’t really matter.” Well then, we have to press them and say, “It matters.” It matters not only for now, but it matters for eternity. Because unless you believe, unless you trust in Christ, you will die in your sins.

That’s why I said this morning that we are essentially souls with bodies. You know, if you think about it, SOS: “Save our souls.” What does that mean, “Save our souls”? Well, an SOS, if you’re in a lifeboat, it’s “Come and get me. It’s me.” It’s not saying, “Save a bit of me that is unidentifiable, that is spiritual, that is a strange entity.” No. It’s “Save me.” “Save our souls.” Because the essential nature of who and what we are is embodied. The separation of the soul and the body in death is temporary; it is not eternal. You get that? The separation of our soul from our bodies is temporary; it is not eternal. Because there will be a reunion of our body and our soul that will be permanent. But at this point, no. The human body disintegrates for a time. The human soul does not.

The Westminster Confession, in section 32, is very helpful in this regard. And let me just quote it to you. Chapter 32 of the Westminster Confession and point 1: “After death, the bodies of men”—and women, but it says “men” here—“after death, the bodies of men decay and return to dust, but their souls, which neither die nor sleep, having an immortal existence, return immediately to God, who gave them.”[10]

Now, you say, “Well, this is the Westminster Confession. We’re not quoting the Bible here. Why are you doing that?” Well, I can give you all of the Scripture proofs that are under there, and if you go get the Confession, you will see that they were there. For example, at the end of Ecclesiastes—although I don’t know if they mention it. Yeah, they do. Ecclesiastes 12, where the soul has a destiny. That’s what the writer is saying: man, “the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit returns to God who gave it.”[11] So “the souls of the righteous are then made perfect in holiness and received into the highest heavens, where they behold the face of God in light and glory as they wait for the full redemption of their bodies.”[12]

What does that mean? It means that their immaterial existence, or their soul existence, is one day going to be reunited with their bodies. It’s an amazing thought. I mean… Because every so often I think about it, and maybe you do too. I’m glad for the book of Job. I’m glad that Job at one point says, you know, “No matter what happens to me, I know that even if my skin should be obliterated, in my flesh I will see God.”[13] Well, I’m glad he said that, because I want to know that too.

But at the time being, waiting the full redemption of their bodies for the Christian—listen!—“the souls of the wicked are cast into hell, where they remain in torments and utter darkness as they are kept for the judgment of the great day.” Two Corinthians 5! That judgment that the believer need not fear, that will deal with stewardship but not with our eternal destiny—kept for the judgment of the great day. “Scripture recognizes no other place except these two for the souls which have been separated from their bodies.”[14] In other words, no purgatory. There is no little stopping-off place where you can, you know, get a kind of refit so that the things that you didn’t quite manage in this life will be able to be taken care of there. It’s quite an attractive proposition, depending on where you’re coming from, but it’s not a biblical proposition.

Well, here is what we’re dealing with. It’s this. And Van Dixhoorn, whose work on the Westminster Confession[15]—and Chad came here and preached on the weekend that we had a couples’ conference, I recall (I wasn’t here)—but his work on this is very, very good, and I owe some of this to his insights. But what we’re confronted with is something that we don’t often ponder, and that is that a fully conscious—a fully conscious—part of every one of us never dies. A fully conscious part of every one of us never dies. It is, if you like, an immortal subsistence which continues to exist and is never annihilated.

You say, “Well, how do we deal with this?” Well, only in the period between death and resurrection does a human being exist temporarily as a soul without a body. You get this? In the period between death and the resurrection, a human being continues in an immaterial subsistence to exist as a soul without a body.

Now, parenthetically, let me just say that that ought to stop most of us talking in the three days after the funeral about Uncle Bob up there playing golf. Wherever you get that stuff from, you didn’t get it from reading your Bible. It might make you feel better. It doesn’t make me feel better at all. Of course, I don’t have an Uncle Bob. But anyway, you understand. This is what is being made clear here.

If you want an illustration of it, just look, for example, in the conversation that takes place between Jesus and the thief on the cross—Luke chapter 23. I hope it’s in Luke chapter 23, because it was when I looked before. Oh, yeah. So, the conversation is going on. The one thief “rebuked him.” And he says, you know, to the guy on the other side, “Don’t you fear God?”[16] “Don’t you fear God?” That’s a fact. People don’t fear God. Church is a kind of trivial exercise. Anybody mentions anything that’s somewhat threatening, they say, “Oh, I need to go to a safe place.” “‘Do[n’t] you … fear God,’” he says to his friend, “‘since you[’re] under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed justly,’” he says, “‘for we are receiving the due reward of our deeds; but this man[,] [he’s] done nothing wrong.’ And he said, ‘Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.’ And he said to him, ‘Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise.’”[17]

Now, notice: “You will be with me in paradise today.” How does that work? Jesus is not speaking about an embodied existence, because the body of the thief is going to be thrown in a pit, and the body of Jesus is going to be placed in a borrowed tomb. Jesus is speaking about the presence of their souls in heaven—and, as that soul, may be addressed as both a “you” and a “me.” Jesus does not say to him—he doesn’t need to say to him—“I’ll meet your soul later today.” No: “I will meet you later today.”

So, that immaterial subsistence, that us-ness, that soul, that spirit, that entity that animates us in our humanity and is so obviously not present in the experience of physical death, that then is going to be reunited: the redemption of the bodies on the day of resurrection.

Now, there’s so many things that remain unknown to us. But we know this: that all people will in some sense live forever—either in Christ, like “Blessed are [those] who die in the Lord,”[18] as Revelation says; or in their sins.

You see, loved ones, this is what makes this message so devastating, isn’t it? What do we know? We know that what has been sown as perishable will be raised imperishable.[19] Okay. I think I understand that. I know that it’s going to be kind of the same, but it’s actually going to be different, like Jesus’ resurrection body. Okay, I can understand that, but I’m not sure I fully grasp it. Nothing is told us about what age or stage anybody will be in eternity. That’s one of the questions that people always ask: “Will I be a wee boy? I died as a ten-year-old. Will I be a wee boy in heaven?” I don’t know. But I know this: it’ll be better than anything you could ever have imagined. And that is the prospect for the believer.

I continually retreat to Richard Baxter in his hymn, “Lord, it belongs not to my care whether I [live] or [die].” And then he writes,

My knowledge of that life is small;
The eye of faith is dim.
[It is] enough that Christ knows all
And I shall be with him.[20]

I don’t regard that as a copout. I regard that as the ultimate security. “He will hold me fast.”[21] That’s really about all I know.

I got a picture on my phone, just in the last forty-eight hours, of a father with a little boy going down a ski slope And the kid—as you’ve done this with your children, I’m sure—the child was just here. He basically could not escape from his father. It was a scary ride, but he held him fast the whole way. Death is the scary ride. The dissolution of our bodies may become [snaps fingers] in a moment. It may be in an OR ward. Who knows what it will be? But the security that is ours is in the promise of Jesus: “If you heed my word, if you trust in me, if you believe in me, you won’t actually face the terror of death.”

Death is inescapable. Jesus has conquered it. There are two ways to die: either in our sins or in the Lord.

Remember, when we spoke about this in John 5, we used the illustration of blinking. When you blink, you’re blind for a moment. But nobody ever says they’re blind: “Sorry, I was blind there.” They just said, “Sorry, I blinked.” How many times you blink in a day? Fifteen hundred times? I don’t know. Fifteen thousand times? I blink far more than I would like to, so… But in a blink, in a moment: the last breath here, the reality of the presence there.

I think it is the unknown-ness of it that is the challenge—certainly is to me. I’d like to have it more buttoned-down. I just wish there was a page that just laid it out. Why hasn’t God given us that page? Because he wants us to rely entirely on what he said. And the challenge in living the Christian life for me is, I’m tempted to rely on everything else. And it is a strange thing, it’s a wonderful thing when we are inching closer to the reality of actually saying, “I’m relying solely on you. I’ve got no particular way of explaining this.”

That’s why Paul, incidentally, in Philippians, where he says, “I don’t know whether I should depart and be with Christ or stay and do the work that I’m called to do,” he says, “I’d actually rather go.”[22] What he’s really saying is that he had to choose between embodied service or being in the presence of Jesus.

So, let’s stop. Death is inescapable. Jesus has conquered it. There are two ways to die: either in our sins or in the Lord. I’ve been referring to this Revelation verse; I’d better just quote it to make sure it’s there: “And I heard a voice from heaven saying, ‘Write this: Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on.’ ‘Blessed indeed,’ says the Spirit, ‘that they may rest from their labors, for their deeds follow [him]!’”[23]

Jesus says, “I want to tell you guys that if you refuse the only shelter that the God whom you claim to be your Father has provided, you will die in your sins.” There is no other alternative. Either we die in Christ, or we die in our sins.

Remember when you took exams at school? You had that… What do you call that guy? The invigilator? I don’t know. Scary. So he gave you the thing. You sit down, and the paper is like that. And then, at the appointed hour, they say, “You can turn your paper over.” You turn it over: “Oh, golly! Oh, no, no. Phew!” And then you get a good stab at it, and then eventually, eventually, you hear these words: “Complete the sentence that you are presently writing, and put your pen down.” That’s it. But actually, with exams, if you flunk it, you could have another crack at it. But in this test, no: “Put down your pen.”

How did these Jews respond to Jesus? Well, we read on. They said, “Make him a king”;[24] “Why don’t we kill him?”[25] They killed him. That’s why only God opens blind eyes, and only God softens hard hearts. And if you believe tonight, it’s a testimony to the loving compassion of Almighty God that he reaches down into our stubborn, resistant wills and convinces us of our need of a Savior.

And when we know that, then everything doesn’t just go smoothly. Everything doesn’t then all fall into line. I’m not a fan of the people who’ve just got a kind of high-ground view of death: “Oh, it doesn’t matter, you know, in Christ.” Yes, it matters! Of course it matters! It matters. Dramatically it matters. We sorrow, but not as those who have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, so he will bring with him those who have fallen asleep in him.[26]

Well, Lloyd-Jones, when he would tackle things like this, he would say, “You know, if I cannot allure you to trust in Christ, let me try and scare you.” I want you to be in the kingdom. I want you to know the reality of a forgiven life. I want you to know your sins forgiven. I want you to be able to say, “Hallelujah, what a Savior!”

Father, we are on our earthly pilgrimage. Every breath we take is a gift from you. All our days are numbered. Our times are in your hands,[27] as we acknowledged this morning as we began the day. We don’t know what a day brings, but we do know that you are the Lord of day and the Lord of night—that you have gone to immense lengths in order that we would not be lost, in order that we might be found, in order that we might be saved, in order that we might be secure in Christ. Lord, take away any props that we are using to keep us from casting ourselves entirely upon Christ. For we ask it in his name. Amen.

[1] Philip Paul Bliss, “‘Man of Sorrows,’ What a Name” (1875).

[2] Augustus Montague Toplady, “A Debtor to Mercy Alone” (1771).

[3] John 11:25 (ESV).

[4] Robert Lowry, “Christ Arose” (1874).

[5] John 11:26 (ESV).

[6] Revelation 21:1, 3 (ESV).

[7] Genesis 12:1–3 (paraphrased).

[8] Revelation 21:4 (ESV).

[9] 1 Corinthians 15:25–26 (ESV).

[10] The Westminster Confession of Faith, Modern English Study Version, 32.1.

[11] Ecclesiastes 12:7 (ESV).

[12] Westminster Confession 32.1

[13] Job 19:26 (paraphrased).

[14] Westminster Confession 32.1.

[15] Chad Van Dixhoorn, Confessing the Faith: A Reader’s Guide to the Westminster Confession of Faith (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 2014).

[16] Luke 23:40 (NIV).

[17] Luke 23:40–43 (ESV).

[18] Revelation 14:13 (ESV).

[19] See 1 Corinthians 15:42.

[20] Richard Baxter, “Lord, It Belongs Not to My Care” (1681).

[21] Ada R. Habershon, “He Will Hold Me Fast” (1906).

[22] Philippians 1:22–23 (paraphrased).

[23] Revelation 14:13 (ESV).

[24] See John 6:15.

[25] See John 7:1.

[26] See 1 Thessalonians 4:13–14.

[27] See Psalm 31:15.