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Sin Pain, and Death

 

 

Pain and Death.  Before the fall, Adam and Eve knew neither pain nor death.  With one bite of the forbidden fruit however, pain and death became our inescapable fate.  Knowing that we cannot ultimately escape them does not keep us from trying. Oh how we try.  We study health and follow fads, we store up for ourselves against days of loss and discomfort, we grasp for assurance that we have done the “right thing”.  And of course, we pray. We pray that everything will be alright, even though we know this side of Heaven it will not be.       

 

“I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace.  In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.”  John 16:33 (ESV)

 

Christ has indeed overcome the world, and sin, and the after-affects of sin we least enjoy, pain and death.  He has overcome in the sense that gravity could not tie Him to this earth and ultimately it will not tie those of us in Christ to this earth either.  He overcame the world not by taking it over, but by rising up over it. In doing so He prepared the way for us who inhabit the earth (with all the effects of sin) to also rise above.  We are buried with Him in baptism and we rise with Him in newness of life. The shell that houses the soul still feels pain. The shell that houses the soul still dies, but only this side of Heaven.  Paul says-

 

“If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied.”  

I Corinthians 15:19

 

Our hope is not in this life only, and that is why in the midst of pain, suffering, and even death, we do not lose heart.  We know peace, not because we are spared from pain, but because we know that ultimately pain won’t win. We remember this.

 

“When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written:  Death is swallowed up in victory. ‘O death, where is your victory: O death, where is your sting?’ The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.  But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain. ”  I Corinthians 15:54-58

 

Pain, suffering, and death are part of this broken world.  Not to be embraced, but this side of Heaven not to be circumvented either.  In Christ we find rest, not in a false hope He will keep them at bay, but in the real hope that He has overcome them, and that after passing through them He will raise us up to live with Him in a place where they are no more.  The will to endure comes from His promises. The ability to endure from the intercession of He who Himself bore our infirmities that He might be a faithful high priest. 

 

God created life.  Then came the fall, ushering in sin, pain and death.  In due time God sent Jesus, ushering in restitution. Through Jesus’ atoning blood on the cross, sin can be cancelled and its side effects (sin, pain and death) reversed.  We cannot circumvent the reality of sin or its side effects this side of Heaven, but by embracing the Christ who came to set us free, we can welcome another reality, the reality that He has overcome them and it is He who will reign forever.    Everything will be made right, maybe not today, but certainly when His judgement comes. We have peace in this world not because there is peace in this world, but because we belong to the next. Peace on earth is real, but only as real as the promise of another place where peace unbroken reigns.  We cannot circumvent pain, suffering, and death in this life, but Christ has come providing the way whereby we might circumvent them in the next. Rather than attempting to circumvent the inevitable, may walk with Him through the brokenness of this life toward the unbroken promises of the next. 

 

“And he who was seated on the throne said, ‘Behold, I am making all things new.’..” Revelation 21:5

 

A promise is a promise.

 

 

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