The Kingdom of God, Mentor Guide, MG02

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T H E K I N G D O M O F G O D

any obligation to aid our sinful selves in attaining to a new relationship with God, participated fully in human death on our account (Phil. 2.7; 1 Cor. 5.7; 1 Pet. 3.18). The Author of life and creation became a human being and expired; he died “for us” (Mark 10.45; Rom. 5.6; 1 Thess. 5.10; Heb. 2.9). According to the Apostles’ word, the Lord through death crushed the devil and conquered death itself, and now possesses the very keys of Hades and death (Heb. 2.14-15; Rev. 1.17-18). He singlehandedly broke the death grip for all who by faith have become organically united to him by being “baptized into Christ” (Rom. 6.3-4). Through this unity we share with the risen Lord, we have died with him to sin and to the world (Rom. 7.6; Gal. 6.14; Col. 2.20). In the very person of Christ every believer has passed through death’s long tunnel; in him we tasted God’s wrath against our sin, and in him we have suffered its actual penalty, shame, and total tragedy (2 Cor. 4.10; 5.14-15; Col. 3.3). In other words, the effect of Jesus ministry was to join the status, history, and lives of every human being to his own, and now, those who trust in him by faith, are set free “in Christ.” We who, by faith, belong to Jesus have passed from death to life in him (John 5.24). Because of our unity with him, we will never see real death (John 8.51-52). What a contrast this is to the world, which as a world without God and Christ is already dead (Rev. 3.2), and already ticketed for the horrific end of eternal alienation and disconnection from the Father, called by John as mega-death, a second death (Rev. 20.14). As human beings, disciples of Jesus are still subject to the same effects of the curse on our physical bodies (i.e. we die, we are mortal, we suffer disease, we are the victims of violence, we become disabled, etc.). We will in fact die, if we do not live to experience the transformation spoken of in 1 Corinthians 15. Nevertheless, those believers who do die physically, die “in Christ” (1 Thess. 4.16) or “fall asleep” (Acts 7.60; John 11.11-14; 1 Cor. 7.39; 15.6, 18, 20, 51; 1 Thess. 4.13-15). This is not death in the same tragic sense as those who are disconnected from the life of God. Physical death exists for the Christian, but its cruelty is gone for nothing can separate the Christian from the love of God in Christ Jesus their Lord (Rom. 8.35-39). Remarkably, now, death ends the veil between the Christian and her lord, and to depart this life is to be transported into the very presence of him who tasted death