In our current series we’ve been going through an old list of questions and answers contained in the Westminster Larger Catechism published in 1648. In previous weeks we’ve seen God’s providence to humans when he created them by blessing them wonderfully. But then we saw that because of Satan’s temptation and the sinful choice of the first humans, they were cast out of God’s blessings. This week I want to unpack another consequence of sin: death.
When God created humans, death was not a factor for them. They were all set to live forever. So how did death come into the world?
Sin brought death into the world. Paul teaches us this: ‘Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin’ (Romans 5:12). As soon as Adam sinned, death came to humans. Now does that mean all humans die? Yes. The next part of the verse from Paul says: ‘and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned’ (Romans 5:12). Paul’s logic is: all sin, all die.
Thus in Hebrews we read that all humans have an appointment with death: ‘man is destined to die once, and after that to face judgment’ (Hebrews 9:27). As much as we might not like to admit it we all have a death written into our lives.
This is not a popular teaching. We like to minimise the thought of death as much as possible. We call it something else, like ‘passing away’. We don’t bring death up in polite conversation. We feel awkward when somebody does bring death up in conversation. We also plan for many things in our lives, but we often don’t plan for our death: huge numbers of people die every year intestate – without writing a will.
But no matter how much we suppress the truth of death by putting it out of our minds, eventually our time will come. There will be a day when you stop living on this earth and are judged for your sin.
But is there no hope for mortal humans? Paul says: ‘For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord’ (Romans 6:23). Through trusting in Jesus you can have eternal life again as God intended you to have before you sinned.
Do you trust in Jesus to save you from the consequences of your sin and give you eternal life?
Joel Radford.
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