The Death of Death

Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom — but we will be changed. In a moment. In the twinkling of an eye. At the last trumpet. Paul closes this great chapter with a mystery revealed and a taunt unleashed: O death, where is your sting? O grave, where is your victory? The last enemy has been destroyed. This Sunday we stand at the end of the story — and hear what it means for Monday morning.

Transcript

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I think that there's a question that we process multiple times a day, whether we do it consciously or subconsciously, and here's what I think that it is. Is it worth it? Is it worth it? We ask this in the food we're about to eat, right? The empty calendar block that's requesting to be filled, the commitment that's lingering without a decision, or maybe that text that we're just afraid to send. There may be no question that we wrestle with more in this life than is it worth it? And there's the end of our life. And at the end of our life, in the closing moments, that question shifts and it weighs heavy on our heart, and it goes from is it worth it to was it worth it? We might begin to reflect on every sacrifice, every heartache, every moment of suffering and pain that was either brought upon us or brought about by us and tried to assess, did any of this have any value or worth to it at all? Does any of this truly last? Did all of that work, that labor, make any significant impact in this life, or was simply my life just wasted on things that are simply passing away? That's not a morbid scene. That's an honest one. It's an honest one that any good man wrestles with. Because the beneath the surface of nearly every human life rests that agitating question, and we rarely allow ourselves to just ask it out loud, right? You see, Paul he spent all of 1 Corinthians chapter 15 building toward an answer for that question. The foundation of the gospel, the logic of the resurrection, the nature of the resurrected body. And now here we are at the end of this series, at the end of this chapter, and we've arrived at the summit. And Paul's not gonna let this end simply in the realm of thought. No, he's going to take this and land it right in the heart of your life. And so let's read this together. Start at verse 50. I tell you this, brothers, flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. Now, Paul opens verse 50 with what sounds like an obstacle for us to overcome, right? He says, flesh and blood cannot, it's incapable of inheriting the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. Now, for us as listeners, this might sound or be received as something discouraging. Right? This body that you live in, this mortal flesh that's aging and aching and tearing, it cannot simply be relocated into the realm of God's glory, nor can it simply be transferred into his eternal kingdom as is. It's incapable of it. The earthly and the heavenly are incompatible with one another. But watch what Paul does with that. He doesn't just stop there as something impossible for us to accomplish. He doesn't use the incompatibility as an argument against the body. He actually uses it as a setup. Because the problem of incompatibility of our mortal fleshly body and the eternal glorious kingdom of God has a solution. And the solution for you and I is transformation. Transformation. Let's look at verse 51. Behold, I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed. That's that transformation. In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet, for the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed, for this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality. So Paul starts verse 51 with, Behold, I tell you a mystery. That word for mystery, mysterion, it doesn't mean confusing or obscure or unintelligible. In Scripture, that word is a technical term for a divine secret that has now been disclosed. A divine secret that has now been disclosed. See, this is part of the work of Jesus to be able to disclose or reveal all that had previously remained hidden in God's revelation to us. What was once a mystery, or we saw through a glass in this dark, dim partiality, we now in Christ are able to see all that was disclosed to us through his finished work. Something that was previously hidden, that God is now revealing to his people. And here's what God wants us to know through this revelation. We shall not all sleep, but we shall be changed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye at the last trumpet. So that word that Paul uses for a moment, it's the smallest indivisible unit of time. In the Greek, we actually borrow it for our own English language, and we get the word atom, A-T-O-M, not A-D-A-M. Atom. And so what he's saying is that this transformation, this change that he speaks of at the last trumpet, it's not going to be gradual. It's not going to be some slow spiritual process. It will be instantaneous, immediate, total, and complete right when that blast of the trumpet is first known. Now, I don't know about you, but I personally love monster movies. I love monster movies. And in every good monster movie with a werewolf in it, there's always that scene of slow, agonizing transformation. Right from Michael Jackson's thriller music video to the monster squad or even Underworld, they all have this iconic scene. And that might be what we think of when we try to imagine this transformation of our bodies that Paul speaks of. But he makes it clear that the mystery of transformation is immediate. It's in the twinkling of an eye, he says. When that last trumpet sounds at the return of Jesus, there will be an undeterminable amount of time between who you are now and who he will make us to be then. And so that's part of this mystery being revealed. The immediate nature of our transformation. But the second part he wants us to know is that we shall not all sleep. We shall not all sleep. Now, I don't necessarily believe that Paul has himself or his readers in mind as he's writing this. It's not as though Paul is saying, I will not sleep, or some of you shall not sleep, as if he has a definite understanding of the end times or when that last trumpet will be heard. I do believe that Paul lived as if Jesus would return at any given moment. At any time he was ready to meet his Lord. But what I believe Paul is actually speaking to more of in this passage is the nature of Christ's return, being at such a moment when some who are in Christ are still living. And so what he's doing is he's answering a question that might arise. Paul, you've done a lot to talk about those who have died will be transformed. Those who have fallen asleep will be changed in an immediate amount of unperceivable time. But what about those who have not died yet? What about those who are still living? And Paul says, even they will be changed. Both the dead will arise in their transformation, and those who are living will be transformed in the twinkling of an eye. So at the time of the trumpet, when it is heard, the dead are raised imperishable, the living changed without dying, everyone in Christ at once clothed with what is immortal. And then Paul, he's going to go back to the Old Testament as he's closing out this chapter. And he kind of lets the words of these two prophets taunt the enemy of death. He says this in verse 54 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. And so Paul is actually pulling from the prophet Isaiah for this first part, Isaiah 25 saying, death is swallowed up in victory. And that verb that he's using to explain what this triumph of Christ looks like. Swallowed. It means to absolutely consume and devour entirely. And so look what's happening here. That same consuming force that death has used on humanity ever since the first man Adam breathed his last, death has not stopped swallowing up image bearers in their fullness from that day. And Paul says, but the tables are going to turn. And God himself will devour death in its fullness. You see the same consuming force that death has used on humanity? God turns back on death itself. And then he's going to borrow from this other prophet, Hosea. Hosea 13. He taunts death. Oh death, where is your victory? Oh death, where is your sting? You see, this song, right? It's not the song of some timid hope where we are kind of anxious and fearful that what we say won't actually ever come to pass, but we're willing to say it anyway, out of some type of good fortune. No, this isn't timid hope that's being quoted or sung here. It is a victory march for God's people. It is a sure and confident win. It's as if we're standing, right, over a fallen enemy named Death. And we're demanding to see its weapons. We're demanding to see its tools of war that it once inflicted upon us. And verse 56 puts those weapons on full display for us. The sting of death is sin, and the power of death is the law. Now, that little sentence, it's one of the most compressed theological statements in the entire New Testament of Scripture. The New Testament commentator Anthony Thistleton calls it a summary of Romans chapter four through seven, compressed into one single sentence. Death. It gets its killing power from sin. Sin, it gets its condemning power from the law. And for us, it seems like a chain that is absolutely unbreakable. That we can't get out from under or we can't be unbound by. The law, what does it do? Well, it makes sin visible. It makes sin inescapable. The guilt of sin, what does it do? It earns death sentence. And what does death do? It collects. Death collects on that sentence for every person who has ever drawn breath. And so that chain of sin and the law and death, it's always before us. It's real and it's heavy and we feel it. And I think it is fundamentally the very reason that the question, is it worth it, haunts us. Because we're mortal people. Our bodies are dying. They hurt and they ache. Our time is falling through the hourglass. We've sinned against a holy God. And we know it. We know it at a soul level. We know that we don't measure up. We know that we've fallen short. I'm convinced that even the atheist at a soul level knows that. And they're haunted by it. But then verse 57, it breaks the chain for us. He says, but thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Notice something about what Paul says. He says, the victory is given, it's not achieved. The victory is given, it's not achieved. So this doxology here in verse 57, this worshipful explosion of gratitude is not the gratitude of some athlete who outworked their opponent or some skilled warrior who defeated his foe. No, it's the gratitude of someone who received by grace something that they could never have earned on their own. God gives the victory. Christ his son won it and accomplished it for us. And in the fullness of the gospel, you and I are clothed in it. We're adorned with that. Eternally, imperishable victory. So which means everything changes for the therefore that follows in verse 58. Therefore. Now I know this is corny, but for those of you who've never heard this before, when you're studying scripture and you come across the therefore, what do we have to ask? What's it there for? Right? We have to ask that question. So here's what this lets us know. How critically important that therefore of verse 58 is. Because everything that preceded it was working toward it. And you and I might think that 1 Corinthians chapter 15 is all just about the resurrection of Jesus as some apologetic argument or some way to defend the faith. It's not not that. Therefore, verse 58. 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. So first off, let's talk about that word labor. It's not a gentle word that Paul's using, it doesn't describe a Walmart greeter, right? And if you do that, thank you for your service. That's probably hard in certain ways. He's not talking about that type of work. It's not a gentle word. Paul means hard, wearisome toil that produces fatigue in the body. Labor to its fullest extent. Paul uses it elsewhere to describe suffering of the apostles, costly missionary work, the struggle of making disciples. He's addressing people here in 1 Corinthians chapter 15 who are working hard and who are tired, who are weary, who are wondering, is this labor worth it? And he's telling them, your labor, it's not in vain. It's not in vain. Look at how he bookends and weaves throughout this chapter this thought of vanity. In the beginning of chapter 15, he actually talked about some of them in their faith, that if they were to abandon the gospel of Jesus, their faith would be in vain. And then in verse 14, he talks about his own labor of preaching. If Christ had not been raised from the dead, then our preaching, our labor would have been in vain. And then here he's closing out chapter 15 and saying, Trust me when I tell you, nothing that you're doing that is laboring in Christ for his kingdom is ever done in vain. Why? Because Christ raised from the dead. And so because he is eternal and he's going to transform you into that which is eternal, the work we do for him is eternally costly and worth something. Nothing will be lost because he has resurrected. That's what 15 is about. Stop being weary and heavy laden in the labor of the kingdom. You have a hope beyond this world that is in him, the victorious king who crushed death and crushed its sting and power with him when he raised. Keep laboring, keep working. None of this is in vain. That's what Paul's pressing in on. That's what chapter 15 is all about. Because Christ has been raised. Because the transformation at the last trumpet is coming. Nothing done in him is empty, void, or in vain. Nothing. Because in the death of death, nothing is lost. You see the resurrection of the body? It means the resurrection of the work done in the body. That's critical for us to grasp. The hard kingdom labor. That you pour into in this life, it doesn't pass away. No, it doesn't end up empty or void, it carries forward into eternity. So not one sacrifice or trial or hardship or suffering or agony or heartache in Christ Jesus will ever be worthless. And if you live your life spent on the kingdom of God, when your closing hours are before you in death, you can have such confidence when the enemy wants to haunt you with the question, was it worth it? And with full fervor, you can respond to death in such a mocking taunt, absolutely. Every bit of it. Now that's not some sentimental statement. Try to make us feel good in the face of death. It's actually a cosmological statement in nature because there's a claim being made here about the very nature of reality. That because of the resurrection, everything done in Christ carries eternal weight. Your labor, your hard toil, it's all being written into imperishable history. And so we need to embrace that truth. Because most of us, we carry some type of low-grade anxiety about our significance in this life. Is what I'm doing making any difference? Does it matter? And it's not necessarily presenting itself as a present crisis right here and now, but it is a persistent uncertainty about whether our lives are just adding up. What about the person in this room? You gave your best years to something. You gave your best years to a marriage or a child, a friendship, a calling. And you're still waiting to see, was any of this worth it? The one who's been faithful in the small unseen things in this life, and you wonder if unseen means uncounted. You see, Paul's encouragement to every one of them is this in the Lord, your labor is not in vain. This isn't a promise that you're going to see the fruit of your labor in this life. Paul himself, he didn't see the fruit of all the kingdom labor that he exhausted himself in. But this is a promise rooted in the same power that raised Jesus from the dead, and church will raise us from the dead also. The same God who transforms a body sown in weakness and raised in power and glory is the God who takes a life poured out in faithfulness and raises it into his eternal purposes. J.I. Packer was a wonderful theologian and writer. He died recently, but he got the privilege of writing the introduction of John Owens of 1700's Puritans. He wrote the introduction of his work, The Death of Death and the Death of Christ, as it was being republished. And he loved how Owen sought to capture the old gospel in this work. And here's one thing that J.I. Packer says about it. He says that the old gospel exalts Christ, for it teaches Christians to glory in his cross alone and to draw their hope and assurance only from the death and intercession of their Savior. That's exactly what Paul's doing here. He isn't anchoring our motivation or our zeal in our own strength or even in the results that we are hoping to see. No, he's anchoring all of it entirely in what Christ has done and what Christ has guaranteed he will do. And so your labor is not in vain because the fullness of his resurrection is coming. Now it's one thing to declare that, right? But it's a much different thing to feel that. Because you and I, our lives often feel crushed under the weight of death. Our lives often feel crushed under the weight of death. Death doesn't just come for us at the end of this life, it presses on us throughout every day we live. In the movie The Crow, there's this iconic line that I think sums up this feeling for us. He says, Your childhood's over the moment you know you're gonna die. We feel that. We feel it in the things that we've lost, and we know we're not gonna get back. The relationships that have ended, the dreams that don't survive, the version of your life that you had planned for, but it became unavailable to you. All of this weight, it doesn't just lift off us magically in some moment. No, we feel at times crushed under it. The sense that everything is moving toward an ending. That what we build in this life is fragile and what we spend our life on is temporary. That we are, in the words of Paul's own argument, we're perishable. That's the reason the question, is it worth it, doesn't just stay theoretical and some philosophical thought, but it hits us in the chest. Because death is already in the room. It's in the fatigue, in the grief, in the moments of heartache and hurt when we're not sure we have the energy to keep going in this life. And we allow that sting. We allow that weighty power to affect our sense of purpose and labor in the kingdom. For many of us, our labor is heavy from the sting of sin. Our labor is heavy from the sting of sin. There are people in this room today whose labor has grown heavy. Not because you've stopped caring, but because you've been watching sin continuously win in this world. You prayed for that marriage, and it ended anyway. You poured your life into that child, and they've turned away from Jesus. You spent yourself into that relationship when it still has the same problems that it always had. You invested in someone's faith and they've walked away. You've been faithfully laboring in the kingdom, but the world around you just keeps breaking. You know what that is? It's the sting of sin. And it's heavy. At some point, our experiences in this life stir up the question: why does any of this matter? Why do I keep trying if sin just keeps on winning? And maybe by witnessing the sting of sin over and over again, maybe some of you have just started to pull back. You haven't become angry, you've just become indifferent. That's fueled by a hopelessness that anything could get better. You're still here, but you're less invested than you used to be. You still believe the right things mentally, but somewhere along the way, that belief stopped producing movement and engagement. But the city is still broken around us. The people around you still need the gospel. Mercy needs to still be applied to culture, and you know it. You just can't find the energy to act like it matters the way you used to. And if that's you this morning, the prophet's taunt of death is for you. Oh death, where is your sting? Where is your sting? The brokenness that you see around you, it is real, but it is not final. We have to stop living as if the world has the last word. The sting of sin is real, and that sting has been crushed by Christ. So the world does not have the last word. The blast of God's victory trumpet does. Some of us, though, our labor is heavy from the power of the law. Others of us, we kind of respond differently to this heaviness. We're still fully present in spite of the brokenness that we see around us. We're still discipling, we're still showing up, engaging the culture, being there when someone in a crisis needs you. Your obedience is genuine, but it's being driven by an engine. And that engine isn't running on trust, that engine is running on transaction. If I can just do enough, God will love me and accept me and bless me. But you're your own worst enemy. Because at a soul level, you know you don't measure up. At a soul level, you know that you don't have what it takes. You think if I'm just consistent enough, faithful enough, sacrificial enough, then it will have been worth something. Then my life would have meaning and purpose. And so your labor is not driven by confidence in what God has done through Jesus, but it's driven by the unspoken need to earn some cosmic verdict in your life that only God can give. And the terrifying thing about that kind of faithfulness that's meant to be measured is that in its measuring it's found so brittle and fragile. Because everything depends on the work of your life, on the results of your life being visible, on the sacrifices you make being recognized. And so when the ministry that you poured yourself into doesn't last and it falls apart and crumbles, when the fruit of your life's work isn't there and it looks like a barren field, when you hit a season that you genuinely can't tell if any of this has mattered, the foundation you've built your life on shakes. And so Paul's therefore in verse 58, it's not addressed to people who need to try harder. That therefore isn't there for the purpose of saying you need to pull yourself up by your bootstraps and just dig a little bit deeper in this life. Paul has never once in 1 Corinthians chapter 15 pointed to you. He's pointed to him. That verse 58, therefore, it's addressed to weary laborers who need to know why they can keep going. And the answer is not your life's record measured at the judgment throne of God. The answer is Jesus' resurrection, which makes everything you do have eternal purpose. The weight of death, it can feel so crushing at times, can't it? Paul knows this, but he doesn't look away from it. He doesn't spend his life avoiding it or trying to keep it out of his field of view. No, he looks straight at it and he says this. Jesus crushed death sting and power. Jesus crushed death sting and power. Now, before this 1030 a.m. gathering celebrates that too wildly, we need to sit in what required that. In what that required. Let's remind ourselves. The sting of death is sin. The power of sin is the law. The consequence is death. This is the chain that we spoke of earlier. The law of God. It is holy and it is good. But, church, it cannot save you. What it can do is it can expose you. It can expose you. It illuminates with brilliant light every fracture, every failure, every moment of not measuring up, every instance where you chose yourself over God or others. What does the law do? The law makes our debt visible. Now I don't know if you've ever been in a place where I've been, where I was in so much debt that I stopped opening mail. You know what I wanted to do? I wanted to make that debt non-visible. And I convinced myself in certain ways, if I don't open that letter, if I don't make that debt visible, it'll somehow go away. But the law, the law is the great letter opener. It makes all of our debt visible. We can't hide from it, we can't turn away from it. And that debt that we owe, it's weighty. The wages of sin is death. And that wage has been collected since Adam. So when Jesus knelt in Gethsemane, and it said that as he prayed, he sweated drops like blood, it was the Son of God staring into the full weight of what he was about to absorb, of the debt he was about to pay. You see, Jesus faced death in all of its terror, in all of its horror, in all of its God-forsakenness. Jesus faced it as the full, unfiltered wrath of a holy God poured out against every sin that would ever have been laid upon him. Why? Because the sting had to land somewhere. And it landed in Christ. It's important for us to reflect on what Anselm of Canterbury said about this in the 11th century. He said this: it was not possible for God to pass over sin unpunished. Nor was it fitting for man to be restored other than through a satisfaction for sin. The sting had to land somewhere. Jesus didn't turn his face away from the horror or the terror. No, he faced it fully. And he bore it all in his body without any relief. Every ounce of condemnation that the law demanded for every person who would ever be united to him, he took it. You see the sting that was meant for you, church? That sting pierced him through. The venom of death rushed through his veins. The chain of law, sin, and death, it bound him to that cross. And death thought to have the victory. Death thought to have the victory over him when his lifeless body was laid in a tomb. But then God raised him from the grave. You see, that resurrection of the Son is the Father's verdict that we need, that we long for. He declares it is finished, it is accepted, it is satisfied and vindicated, the chain is broken. Death has been defamed. And it, death itself, has experienced its own transformation. Look at the power of God over death itself to transform it from some type of vanity-filled, empty end of his image-bearers, to a glorious gateway of his presence. That's what God does to even death. And so verse 57 is not some theological conclusion. No, it's a doxology, a worshipful explosion that only makes sense because of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus. Thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. So here's my prayer for us. Church, that we will persevere in gospel labor, confident nothing will be lost when death is fully dead. We persevere in gospel labor, confident nothing will be lost when death is fully dead. The beginning of this chapter established a foundation. A foundation that both life and death are built upon. The fullness of the gospel of Jesus and Christ as the first fruits of those who now sleep. And everything done in Christ, every sacrifice, every prayer, every hard conversation, every act of faithfulness, labor is gathered up into imperishable glory. The same spirit indwelling you right now, in this moment, is the Spirit who will raise you and the works done in Christ with you. Then when he appears. So you're not drifting toward oblivion. You're moving toward transformation. Transformation into the image and likeness of Jesus. So be steadfast, be immovable, pour yourself into the work of the Lord, into this church body, into this city, into your neighbors, into your family. Exhaust yourself in him. Because not one bit of it is lost in the death of death. Death has been swallowed up in victory. Thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.