A Beautiful Death: Death is separation. Die to sin.
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When I had kids, I found a new favorite hobby: defining words. You cannot tell a child to be patient if she does not know what patience is. “Waiting without complaining.” You cannot tell a child to be kind to her sister if she does not know what kindness is. “Treating someone like a real person with her own thoughts and likes and dislikes that might be different from yours.” You explain the cemetery to her if she does not know what death is.
It was that question that birthed the hobby. One day, on the way home from church, she pointed at Fairmount Cemetery and asked, “Daddy, what kind of park is that? What are those rocks for?” I explained that when people die, their family puts them in the cemetery. “Why won’t their family let them come home from the Sem-tary Park?”
Definitions are important.
Death is the separation of someone or something from its previous context.
So, while Christians do not “grieve as others do who have no hope” (1 Thessalonians 4:13), we still grieve when a loved one dies. Thinking of “death” as a separation explains this because, at least for a time, we have been separated from someone we love. It may not be a permanent separation, it’s still a separation. It’s a death. That person was separated from their body and from their friends.
Defining “death” as separation also handles idiomatic uses of the word. When the same daughter watched my truck get towed away, she asked when it would get fixed. Without thinking, I said, “Honey, the engine threw a rod. It would cost more to fix than to replace. It’s dead.” The only word she thought she understood was “dead,” so naturally she asked, “Oh, so they’re towing it to the sem-tary?” You and I know, of course, that it was towed to the junkyard. The truck was dead because I was separated from it and unable to enjoy its benefits.
The Bible talks about a second death. In the first death, you are separated from your body. In the second death, you are permanently separated from any hope of anything pleasant or positive. “Their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death” (Revelation 21:8). Those who trust in Jesus will experience a first death, because “it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment” (Hebrews 9:27), but for everyone who trusts in Jesus “will not be hurt by the second death” (Revelation 2:11).
This makes Romans 6:23 even more dire. “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” The final wage of sin is the second death, but that isn’t the only way we experience separation because of sin. When we sin, there is separation in our relationship with God before our physical death. We are also separated from each other. “If we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another” (1 John 1:7). So, if we walk in the darkness of sin, we don’t have fellowship with one another. We are separated.
Followers of Jesus are urged to associate themselves with another kind of death, though. We are supposed to adopt Jesus’ death. Paul claimed to be “crucified with Christ” (Galatians 2:20). In Romans 6:8 claims that followers of Jesus have “died with Christ.” Except in this death, we are not separated from God or from each other. We are separated from sin. “So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus” (Romans 6:10). We are separated at the moment of faith from the penalty of sin. We die to it. Through our lives, we are continually and progressively separated from the power of sin. We die to it. At the end of our physical lives, the reason we do not “grieve as others do who have no hope” (1 Thessalonians 4:13), is because we are separated from the presence of sin. We die to it.
In the middle of both the word and concept of sin is “I.” In Genesis 3, Eve first sinned because she wanted tasty and attractive food for herself and to make herself better by herself. (See Genesis 3:6) Sin is always motivated by self-interest or delusions of self-sufficiency. This is why the “self” must die. This is the kind of death Jesus invites us to. “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it” (Matthew 16:24-25). The cross, after all, was an instrument of death. Anyone who picked up a cross would indeed be dying soon.
“Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints” (Psalm 116:15). Consider yourself dead to — or separated from — sin and self in Christ so that you can consider yourself alive to God in Christ. This is why I strive to strive to live up to my motto, “I am a servant, and I am already dead.”