Death is Transitory

1 Corinthians 15:56-58

Watch on YouTube

Our devotion today is based on First Corinthians 15, beginning with verse 56.

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! (1 Corinthians 15:56-57)

Back in 1933, during construction of the Golden Gate Bridge, unemployed men would stand waiting at the foot of the bridge to see if other workers up on the bridge would end up falling to their death, hoping to take their place and take their jobs. They were 750ft high in the air, and ultimately 11 men fell to their death during that construction.

Our text talks about the sting of death. There’s kind of a double pain when it comes to death. The hurt that takes place, just like venom going into our veins, has a double impact. It’s hard to watch other people die in our families, and to see loved ones have to deal with loss. But it also points each of us to our own mortality when we watch people go through it as well. On Good Friday, the evil serpent of the devil dug his fangs into the body of our Lord Jesus Christ, who took that venom. But he has then come out alive, victorious, and he himself has now become the very antidote of death itself. That’s why Paul says he gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

And in a sense, Jesus has defanged your death. All this is now yours, this victory of Christ, through a little activity that God places in your heart the gift of faith to trust in Jesus as your Savior. And the mission of the church is to implant that faith in us and to cause it to grow so that we can ultimately be death defiers, just like our Lord Jesus. Because of this victory, we can now stand over the graves of our loved ones who have fallen asleep, asleep in Christ, and sing wonderful hymns of victory. I know that my Redeemer lives, and so on. I remember at my mom’s funeral, I just love singing a hymn verse that had this line in it. I’m going to quote, and every time I sing it, it makes me think of her victory as well, and her now life in heaven. This is the line: Death itself is transitory. I shall lift my head in glory.

Death is now nothing but a passing for us. When they were building the Golden Gate Bridge, they designed a safety net, finally, because so many had died that would catch the workers below. And it saved the lives of 19 men. They called themselves jokingly, the Halfway to Hell Club because they felt that they had cheated death. And the man who came up with that idea knew that it would save lives. But he also knew that it would give greater confidence to those who were doing the work. The resurrection of Jesus Christ not only spares us from our future death and giving us life. In that way, it’s the ultimate safety net, but it also gives us tremendous confidence to carry out the work and things that we do on behalf of God’s church.

And that’s why Paul concludes this section with these words, knowing that we have the resurrection, our own Easter coming.

Therefore, my dear brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the Lord’s work, because you know that your labor is not in vain in the Lord. (1 Corinthians 15:58)

May God grant all of us a blessed celebration of our Lord’s Easter and our own future easters. Amen.