Death

The end of our natural life is known as death. Yet there is another death, deeper in meaning:

The separation of spirit, soul and body (1 Thessalonians 5).

Faith proclaims:

Our bodies will decay in death, awaiting resurrection at the end of time, while our souls and spirits will continue to exist beyond death.

This ‘separating kind of death’ is caused by sin. Adam and Eve were given a ‘boundary behaviour’ by God but ignored it:

You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die (Genesis 3).

Their sin – the original sin – is the cause of the kind of death we are speaking about. Remarkably, Jesus himself enters the mystery of this death:

By God’s grace he had to experience death for all mankind (Hebrews 2).

His death is a unique death since it is a death to sin, accompanied by horrific suffering and abandonment.

A great spiritual momentum has entered our life:

The death of Jesus embraces all forms of death – sin, suffering, fragility, weakness, vulnerability, betrayal, loneliness, death itself.

Jesus Christ stands right in the middle of our mess.

Amen.