“God raised him up, loosing the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it” (Acts 2:24).
This past weekend my wife and I had the opportunity to spend time with her grandmother. Her grandmother is dying of cancer. The doctors say that she has a couple of months left to live. Our son, Isaiah (3), understands that “grandma is sick”. Knowing this Isaiah requested that we pray that Grandma gets feeling better.
After praying I realized that I need to explain to Isaiah that God is probably going to answer his prayer in a way that is much different than he thinks. I explained to him that sometimes people get so sick that in order to heal them and make them feel better God has to take them to heaven. I then explained a little about heaven (intermediate heaven I guess you could say) and how God was eventually going to fix all of our brokenness.
I am not certain how much of this Isaiah was able to grasp. I am also not certain that I what I said was the best. All I know is that at that moment what I said was the best that I could do.
As I read through Acts 2 I realize that the redemption that I was speaking of is only possible because God, through Jesus, has put death in its grave. This is the meat of Peter’s Pentecost sermon. Jesus has dealt a deathblow to death itself and because of this he has ushered in the new age of the Spirit.
The conclusion from the resurrection of Christ is simply this, “Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified.” Every other religious leader is dead in a grave somewhere. Abraham. Dead. Moses. Dead. David. Dead. Only Jesus has been resurrected thus proving that he is indeed the sovereign Lord and he is the Rescuer. Yes, the very same Jesus that was crucified as a criminal.
John Mark McMillen captures this well:
Yes, unless Jesus comes back before, my wife’s precious grandmother will pass into eternity. But we know that because of the resurrection of Christ it is not death to die. So, what I said to Isaiah still stands. God has simply decided that it is time to redeem her completely.
We all get sick, we all die, but it is only through Christ that death is dead in your dying.
