Chapter 5 - Death
Definition Before Explanation
Death is one of the most familiar realities of human existence. We have all encountered it, whether through the loss of someone we know or simply through the awareness that our own lives will eventually end.
From the standpoint of human experience, death appears relatively easy to define. A person's body stops functioning. The heart stops beating. Breathing ceases. Eventually all biological activity ends. The person who was physically present with us is no longer there.
If we are willing to define death only by what we can observe from within this world, that is about as far as we can go.
We can only observe what happens to the body. We cannot observe what happens beyond it. Once physical life ends, our ability to follow the person through ordinary human experience ends with it. From a strictly temporal perspective, death therefore appears to be cessation - the end of life as we know it.
Yet human beings have never been entirely satisfied with that answer.
Solomon commented on something he recognized within mankind that reaches beyond the boundaries of our present existence. He states in Ecclesiastes 3:11 that “He (God) has put eternity into man's heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.” This suggests something more than a simple instinct for self-preservation. Human beings do not merely resist death in the moment; we contemplate it, we build our lives around it, we recognize the loss it represents, and long for life beyond the limits of our present existence.
We know that our present lives are temporary. Under ordinary circumstances, we do not welcome death as the natural completion of everything we wanted from life. We resist it. We postpone it. We mourn those it takes from us. We desire more life than this present world can ultimately give. And this desire leads us to contemplate what might exist beyond this temporal life.
If we limit ourselves to what can be discovered through human observation, we eventually reach a boundary we cannot cross. We can describe the dying body with increasing scientific precision, but no amount of observation from this side of death can, by itself, tell us whether biological death provides a complete explanation of what death really is.
If we want to consider what exists beyond the limits of human observation, we need a perspective that extends beyond those limits. That is where Scripture, God’s Word, becomes essential. If God is the Creator of life, then His definition of death is the one we should be seeking. And significantly, God speaks about death before mankind ever experiences it.
As we saw in the previous chapter, God told Adam:
“You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”
(Genesis 2:16–17)
At that point in the biblical account, no human being had died. Yet God was already addressing a condition that He could identify and what it would mean for mankind.
Adam and Eve eventually ate. But I’ll ask this question, did they immediately die based on our definitions from before? Obviously not. They did not physically collapse. Their hearts continued beating. They continued breathing. They spoke with God. Adam worked the ground. Eve had children. Genesis later tells us that Adam lived for 930 years. If biological cessation is the complete definition of death, then what God said would happen “in the day” Adam ate from the tree did not appear to have happened. But something did happen that day.
As we saw in the previous chapter, shame appeared. Fear appeared. Adam and Eve hid from God. The relationship in which mankind's life had begun was broken. They were expelled from Eden and separated from the extraordinary provision they had enjoyed there, including access to the tree of life.
Though Adam's body had remained alive, death had entered human existence, and its immediate consequences were already characterized by separation. Physical death would eventually follow. God tells Adam:
“for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” (Genesis 3:19)
Ecclesiastes gives greater clarity to what happens when that physical death occurs.
“and the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit returns to God who gave it.” (Ecclesiastes 12:7)
Physical death therefore does involve the cessation of biological life, but biological cessation alone does not give us the full picture. Physical death also involves separation. The body and spirit that existed together in the living person are separated. The body returns to the earth from which it was formed, while the spirit returns to the God who gave it.
And Scripture will take that concept further still. It will describe people who are physically alive and yet dead. It will describe creation itself as subjected to corruption and decay. And it will describe physical death not as the disappearance of the person, but as departure from this present earthly existence.
This gives us the organizing principle for this chapter:
Death is fundamentally separation. Biological death is one expression of that separation, but incomplete when considering its true depth.
The Serpent’s Redefinition
Once death is understood as separation rather than merely the cessation of biological life, the serpent’s words in Genesis 3 take on greater significance.
God had given Adam a clear warning “… for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” (Genesis 2:16 - 17)
The serpent directly challenged that warning:
“But the serpent said to the woman, ‘You will not surely die.’” (Genesis 3:4)
At first glance, what follows might seem to support the serpent. Eve eats the fruit. Adam eats with her. Neither of them physically collapses. They remain conscious. They do not immediately cease to exist. If death is defined only as the immediate cessation of biological life, the serpent appears to have been right. But that interpretation requires us to accept the serpent’s deliberate and deceptive framing of death rather than allowing the rest of Scripture to show us what God had warned would happen.
Something had changed immediately.
“Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths.” (Genesis 3:7)
The openness that had characterized their existence before the Fall was replaced by shame. When they heard God in the garden, their response changed as well:
“And the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden.” (Genesis 3:8)
Adam later explained:
“I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.” (Genesis 3:10)
Shame had appeared. Fear had appeared. Mankind was hiding from the God whose presence had previously been an active part of their lives. By the end of the chapter, the separation becomes physical as well:
“therefore the LORD God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken.” (Genesis 3:23)
God then placed the cherubim and the flaming sword at the entrance to Eden, preventing mankind from returning and taking from the tree of life.
The serpent had said, “You will not surely die.” Yet everything that follows shows death beginning exactly as God had warned. The serpent’s deception was therefore more subtle than simply claiming that God did not exist or that God had never spoken. He took something God had said and persuaded Eve to understand it differently. That pattern is consistent with what Jesus later says about Satan:
“When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies.” (John 8:44)
A successful lie does not always require the complete absence of truth. Often the most persuasive deception contains enough truth to make the false conclusion appear reasonable. That was already evident in the serpent’s promise that eating the fruit would open their eyes and give them knowledge of good and evil. Their eyes were opened. God Himself later acknowledged that mankind had come to know good and evil. But the serpent had presented that truth as though it meant something very different from what actually followed. What appeared to promise elevation instead produced shame, fear, judgment, and separation.
The same pattern appears in the serpent’s treatment of death. If death is reduced to one question, “Will your body immediately stop functioning?”, then the serpent can make God’s warning appear false. Adam and Eve ate, and their bodies continued to function. But God had never said that Adam would cease to exist the moment he ate. What God warned was that death would enter his existence that day. And it did.
Adam and Eve became alienated from God. They hid from His presence. They were removed from the garden. They lost access to the tree of life. Their bodies became subject to the return to dust that God subsequently pronounced upon Adam. Physical death would come later, but death had already begun.
This is why defining death correctly matters. If we allow death to mean only the final failure of the body, Genesis 3 can be made to look as though the serpent exposed an exaggeration in God’s warning. But once death is understood as separation, the opposite becomes apparent.
The serpent did not expose God’s warning as false. He persuaded mankind to misunderstand what God had warned them about.
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Death as Separation
The events in Eden start to identify that death began before Adam and Eve physically died. But Scripture does not leave that conclusion dependent upon Genesis alone. Later passages describe people as dead while they are still physically alive. Paul does this explicitly in his letter to the Ephesians:
“And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience.” (Ephesians 2:1-2)
Paul is speaking to living people about what they had previously been. Yet he describes them as having been dead. They were not physically dead. But the “death” Paul references is identified within their sinful actions. They were thinking, choosing, desiring, and acting, but focused on the things of “the world.” Their biological lives continued. However, he clearly addresses their alignment, “following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is at work in the sons of disobedience.” Paul is clearly recognizing that death extends beyond the physical.
The remainder of the passage helps explain what has been lost:
“But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ.” (Ephesians 2:4–5)
Paul contrasts being dead with being made alive. The change he describes does not occur when someone's heart begins beating again. He is speaking about people who were already physically alive, yet he describes them as having been dead and then being made alive together with Christ.
Paul makes essentially the same distinction in Colossians 2:13:
“And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses,”
Jesus Himself uses similar language:
“Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.”
(John 5:24)
Again, Jesus is speaking about people who are physically alive, yet He describes the one who believes as having already “passed from death to life.” Read alongside Paul's words in Ephesians, and in light of what we have already seen in Eden, a consistent pattern begins to emerge.
Adam and Eve turned their trust from the Creator toward creation, and separation followed. Here the movement is reversed.
When a person places his faith and hope in Christ, the separation introduced through mankind's rebellion is reversed. Where mankind once turned away from the Creator and placed its trust in creation, faith in Christ turns us back toward God and away from this world, restoring the relationship for which we were originally created.
The one who hears Christ and believes the God who sent Him is restored to relationship with the One from whom life ultimately comes. What began in Eden as movement away from God is answered by movement back toward Him.
The remainder of Ephesians 2 makes this relational dimension even clearer. Paul speaks of those who were once “separated,” “without God in the world,” and “far off,” but who have now been “brought near by the blood of Christ” (Ephesians 2:12–13). The language is difficult to miss. Death and life are not being described merely in terms of whether the body is functioning. They are being described in relation to God. The remainder of Ephesians 2 is worth reading in full with that distinction in mind — Paul's entire movement from separation to reconciliation, from being far off to having access in one Spirit to the Father, illuminates what Christ means by passing from death to life.
Scripture is beginning to give us a considerably broader understanding of death than biological cessation alone. Mankind can remain physically alive while separated from the God who is the source of life. And when that separation is overcome through Christ, Scripture describes the change as being made alive.
Adam's life did not originate on its own, without outside influence. Genesis describes God forming him from the material of creation:
“then the LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.” (Genesis 2:7)
The dust did not produce life on its own. God gave life to what He had formed. This is an important distinction because mankind continually experiences life through creation. We eat food. We drink water. We breathe air. Our bodies depend upon the physical world around us. Yet none of those things is the ultimate source of life. They are created means through which the life God has given us is sustained. The Creator remains the source.
The Fall reversed mankind's trust in that order. As we saw in the previous chapter, Adam and Eve placed their trust in creation rather than the Creator. Eve looked to the fruit for something she believed God was withholding. Adam knowingly chose Eve over obedience to God. In different ways, both placed something God had created above God Himself. But creation cannot become the source of the life that God alone gives. This is why separation from God is rightly described as death even while biological life continues. Mankind can continue breathing, eating, working, building, reproducing, and experiencing the world while nevertheless being separated from the One from whom life ultimately comes.
Jesus uses similar language in the parable of the prodigal son. The son leaves his father, travels into a distant country, and attempts to build a life apart from him. He remains physically alive throughout the story. Yet when he returns, the father says:
“For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found.” (Luke 15:24)
The parallel is striking. While the son was lost, his father describes him as dead. When he is found, his father describes him as alive again.
The son had not ceased to exist. He had been separated from his father. His restoration is therefore described as a return from death to life, giving greater significance to the father's celebration when his son returns.
The parable is not intended to provide a technical definition of every use of the word death in Scripture. But the language is entirely consistent with what Paul describes in Ephesians and with what occurred in Eden. Scripture can describe a living person as dead because death is not limited to the condition of the physical body.
Physical death follows the same underlying pattern.
As we have already seen, Ecclesiastes describes what happens when our present bodily life ends:
“and the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit returns to God who gave it.” (Ecclesiastes 12:7)
James draws upon this same distinction in an analogy about faith:
“For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead.” (James 2:26)
James's primary subject here is faith and works, which we addressed in Chapter 2. His analogy, however, rests upon something his readers already understand: a body apart from the spirit is dead.
The words spoken by Jesus and Stephen as they faced death also point to where the spirit goes. Jesus says, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit” (Luke 23:46), while Stephen prays, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit” (Acts 7:59). Both statements are consistent with the distinction Ecclesiastes describes: the spirit returns to the God who gave it.
Physical death, then, is also a separation. The spirit is separated from the body, and the person is separated from his present physical participation in the world he has known.
That gives us a broader biblical picture of death. Death can describe mankind's separation from God even while the body remains alive. Physical death describes the separation of the spirit from the body and the end of our present participation in this earthly creation. These are not identical events, but they share the same fundamental reality: Death separates.
That distinction will become increasingly important as we consider what happened after the Fall. Adam did not experience every consequence of death in a single instant. He continued to live physically for centuries. But from the moment mankind separated itself from God, everything had changed. Death had entered the world, and its consequences would continue to unfold.
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Creation Is Not the Provider
Death entered human existence when mankind separated itself from the God who is the source of life. Yet that separation did not mean that God completely withdrew from mankind or abandoned the creation He had made. Adam continued to live. The ground continued to produce food. Children continued to be born. And every generation since Adam has continued to receive life through a creation that remains dependent upon God.
That distinction is important. Separation from God should not be confused with independence from God. Mankind may reject the Creator, ignore Him, or attempt to live as though He were unnecessary, but neither mankind nor the creation in which we live becomes self-sustaining as a result. Yet, despite this rejection, God still chooses to maintain His involvement in this creation.
Paul says of Christ:
“all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” (Colossians 1:16–17)
Creation does not merely owe its beginning to God. Its continued existence depends upon Him. The systems through which we experience God's provision can make that dependence easy to overlook. Food grows from the ground. Rain falls from the sky. Human beings work, build, invent, cultivate, and produce. We experience the world through patterns and processes that operate with such regularity that creation can appear capable of providing for us on its own.
Yet if we are honest, that appearance of independence is remarkably fragile. The conditions upon which our lives depend are largely beyond our control, and relatively small changes can overturn what we take for granted. For all of mankind's ingenuity, we remain dependent upon a world we did not create and cannot ultimately control.
But even creation cannot provide for us on its own. Creation is not the Provider. It is one of the means through which the Provider gives. Jesus says that God:
“makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.” (Matthew 5:45)
Paul similarly told the people of Lystra that God “did good by giving you rains from heaven and fruitful seasons, satisfying your hearts with food and gladness.” (Acts 14:17)
Rain may fall from clouds, and food may grow from the ground, but Scripture does not therefore attribute their ultimate provision to clouds or soil. It attributes them to God. The same principle extends beyond food and rain. The abilities through which we work, the materials with which we build, the relationships we enjoy, the beauty we experience, and the physical world upon which our lives depend all exist within a creation that God made and continues to sustain.
Whatever good mankind receives through creation ultimately depends upon the Creator. And that brings us back to the fundamental mistake made in Eden. Mankind received God's provision through creation but then placed its trust in the creation rather than the Provider. The gift was mistaken for the source. Here again, we are reminded of Paul's words in Romans 1:
"they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator." (Romans 1:25)
The same distinction continues to surface because it lies at the heart of the problem. If creation could provide everything mankind sought from God - life, security, fulfillment, pleasure, and permanence - God becomes unnecessary. Creation could appear sufficient by itself. But God will not allow creation to masquerade as the provider.
Romans 1 repeatedly describes one way in which God responds to mankind's rejection of Him:
"Therefore God gave them up..." (Romans 1:24)
Paul returns to this same language in verses 26 and 28, repeatedly describing God as giving people over to what they have chosen. Rather than describing God actively imposing suffering upon mankind, Paul reveals a different form of judgment. God allows mankind to pursue the very things it has chosen in rejection of Him, withdrawing His restraint and allowing the consequences of those choices to become apparent. This reveals a broader principle concerning mankind's relationship with the Creator. God is the source of life and the One who sustains His creation. When He withholds His protection or restrains His provision, mankind is left to experience the limitations of a creation that cannot independently provide what only God can give. The resulting suffering need not be understood as something God directly inflicts, but as a consequence of mankind's separation from the One upon whom all creation depends.
The ground resists. Bodies deteriorate. Disease occurs. Possessions decay. Relationships are broken. People suffer. And eventually every human being physically dies. God has the power to restrain these things, and their existence should not be understood as though creation somehow escaped God's sovereignty at the Fall and began operating independently of Him. It did not. Creation remains dependent upon God even in its fallen condition. But God does not provide in a way that would conceal what creation would be without Him.
This does not mean that nothing good remains within creation. God declared creation good when He made it, but Scripture also describes its condition after the Fall as one of futility, corruption, and decay. Yet even in that fallen condition, creation continues to reveal something of the God who made it. Paul says in Romans 1 that God's eternal power and divine nature remain perceptible through what He has made. The distinction is that whatever good we receive through creation does not originate independently within creation itself. It continues to come from the God who created and sustains it. Creation can still reveal the Creator and convey His provision, but it cannot replace Him. Nor does every instance of suffering within this fallen world represent God's specific punishment of the person who experiences it.
The conditions of this fallen creation are experienced by believers and unbelievers alike. Jesus says that God sends His sun and rain upon both the evil and the good, the just and the unjust. God's provision is unbiased. Provision and suffering are experienced by both believers and unbelievers. Belief in God does not remove us from the conditions of a fallen world. But it changes what those conditions ultimately mean, because the believer's hope is not located within those conditions in the first place.
That distinction matters. If belief in God consistently guaranteed wealth, health, protection, and freedom from suffering, mankind could appear to seek God while actually seeking only what God could provide. God would become the means. His gifts would become the goal.
Jesus confronted precisely that inclination after feeding the multitude. When the people continued seeking Him, He told them:
“Truly, truly, I say to you, you are seeking me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves.” (John 6:26)
They were seeking Jesus. But Jesus challenged why they were seeking Him.
They had received bread through Him, and they wanted more of what He had provided. Jesus immediately redirected their attention:
“Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life...” (John 6:27)
This thought reaches beyond bread. There is nothing wrong with food, possessions, relationships, health, accomplishment, pleasure, or any of the other good things God allows us to experience within creation. The problem begins when the gifts become what we ultimately desire and God becomes merely the means through which we hope to obtain them. That is the same disorder that began in Eden. We must be careful what we worship.
Mankind wants what God provides, all the while being tempted to place its hope in the things provided rather than in the One who provides them. And this is where suffering and death must be understood from an eternal rather than merely temporal perspective.
If this present physical life were the entirety of human existence, then death and suffering could be evaluated almost entirely according to what it takes from us here. But according to Scripture, this temporal life is not the end of human existence.
As we have already seen, Scripture describes physical death as separation. God's concern for mankind therefore cannot be measured solely by the degree to which He preserves our comfort within this temporary world. Our temporal condition matters, but it is secondary to our eternal condition. The suffering we experience within this present life is temporary; our relationship with God has eternal consequences. God's concern for our temporal well-being therefore cannot be separated from His greater concern that we be reconciled to Him and have eternal life through Christ.
The brokenness of this world reminds us of a truth that its pleasures continually try to draw us away from. Creation is not the source of life. It never was. Everything good we receive through it ultimately comes from God, and nothing within it can replace Him. The creation can provide nothing independently of its Creator. And when mankind attempts to make God's gifts the source of its hope, the limitations of those gifts eventually become impossible to ignore.
Things break. Bodies fail. What we accumulate is eventually lost. And physical death finally separates us from everything this present world can give. The purpose is not merely to demonstrate that creation is broken. Its brokenness exposes our need for the One upon whom creation itself has always depended.
Mankind chose the gifts over the Giver. Yet the gifts never existed independently of the Giver in the first place. And no matter how much of this creation we possess, it can never give us what only God can provide: life that does not end when our participation in this present world does.
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The Ecclesiastes Problem
If creation is not the Provider, then placing our hope in what we receive through creation presents another problem. Whatever we acquire, accomplish, experience, or come to value within this present world, our participation is only temporary. This is the problem Ecclesiastes confronts relentlessly. The writer begins with a deceptively simple question:
“What does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun?” (Ecclesiastes 1:3)
The question is not whether mankind can accomplish anything within this world.
Clearly we can. We work. We build. We acquire possessions. We accumulate wealth. We develop skills. We establish careers. We form relationships. We pursue experiences and accomplish things that may genuinely matter within this life. But Ecclesiastes presses a more difficult question. What is the lasting gain?
After considering his own accomplishments, possessions, pleasures, wisdom, and labor, Solomon confronts something none of them can overcome:
“I hated all my toil in which I toil under the sun, seeing that I must leave it to the man who will come after me.” (Ecclesiastes 2:18)
The problem is not that Solomon had failed to accumulate or accomplish anything. The problem is that he could not keep what he had gained. He could build, but eventually someone else would possess what he built. He could acquire, but eventually someone else would inherit what he acquired. He could accomplish, but eventually even his accomplishments would belong to the past. And Ecclesiastes goes further still. In time, even the memory of what was accomplished fades:
“For of the wise as of the fool there is no enduring remembrance, seeing that in the days to come all will have been long forgotten.” (Ecclesiastes 2:16)
Physical death therefore places a boundary around everything we possess and experience within this present life.
Ecclesiastes states the problem even more starkly:
“As he came from his mother's womb he shall go again, naked as he came, and shall take nothing for his toil that he may carry away in his hand.” (Ecclesiastes 5:15)
A person may leave this world having accumulated far more than he possessed when he entered it. But he cannot carry any of it away in his hand. Again, death separates us from everything we have acquired, accomplished, experienced, and valued within this present life. What we leave behind may remain for a time. Possessions may be inherited, and accomplishments may be remembered by those who immediately follow.
But Ecclesiastes extends the problem beyond our surrounding timeline. What remains does not remain forever. What is inherited eventually passes to another, and another, before being discarded. What is built eventually deteriorates or disappears. What is remembered is eventually forgotten. Even the generations that remember us eventually pass away.
The problem, then, is greater than our inability to take anything with us when we die. Ecclesiastes confronts us with the impermanence of everything we attempt to establish under the sun. The issue extends beyond mere materialism. This is why Ecclesiastes can sound so unsettling. It repeatedly strips away the illusion that anything we acquire or accomplish within this present life can somehow produce permanence. But this is what gives Ecclesiastes value amongst scripture. Mankind spends enormous portions of life pursuing things within this world - security, satisfaction, posessions, pleasure, expiriences, relationships, and recognition. Yet even when those things are obtained, physical death establishes an unavoidable limit upon our present participation in them. Death remains and strips us of the worldliness we chase after. This makes one question unavoidable. What have we spent our lives pursuing?
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(Is this section necessary in light of the previous paragraph, can it just be removed and the thought will be properly expressed?)
A person can spend decades building a life around the things of this world. He can acquire wealth and property. He can gain influence and recognition. He can pursue pleasure and experiences. He can invest himself in accomplishments, relationships, positions, and ambitions that become deeply important to him. Yet physical death eventually separates him from his present participation in all of them.
Ecclesiastes eventually returns the entire problem to the distinction I am forced to repeat again:
“and the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit returns to God who gave it.” (Ecclesiastes 12:7)
The body returns to the creation from which it was formed. The spirit returns to the God who gave it. That distinction brings the argument of Ecclesiastes into direct contact with the definition of death we have been developing throughout this chapter. Physical death is separation. And one of the things from which physical death separates us is everything we have acquired, accomplished, experienced, or come to value within this present life.
This is where the problem becomes much more personal. If the things we ultimately value are found within this present creation, then physical death does more than end our participation in this world. It separates us from the things in which we have placed our hope.
Jesus warned against placing our treasure precisely where it cannot remain:
“Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal.” (Matthew 6:19–20)
Jesus uses the vulnerability of earthly treasure to make the distinction tangible.
Moth can destroy. Rust can consume. Thieves can steal. And even when none of those things happens, physical death eventually accomplishes something no earthly security can prevent. It separates us from our present possession of everything here.
But the principle reaches beyond material possessions. The larger question concerns what we have made ultimately valuable within a world from which physical death will eventually separate us. Jesus therefore continues:
“For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” (Matthew 6:21)
And that brings us to the question Ecclesiastes ultimately forces us to confront. If death will eventually separate us from our worldly desires, the worldly treasures we have stored up, what treasures should we pursue?
That question changes the significance of physical death. Because if death is separation, then what death separates us from depends profoundly upon what we have chosen to make the object of our hope. And Scripture presents a remarkable contrast between the person whose hope is rooted in what must eventually be left behind and the person whose hope is found in the One into whose presence death will ultimately bring him.
Our Hope Properly Aligned
The problem Ecclesiastes presents is unavoidable. But Scripture has already pointed us toward a radically different place for our hope. If our treasure is rooted in this present creation, death separates us from the object of our hope. But if our hope is in God, physical death cannot separate us from the One in whom that hope rests. Quite the opposite, it draws us toward Him.
Paul expresses this distinction in a remarkable statement:
“For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.” (Philippians 1:21)
To die is gain. That statement makes little sense if Paul's ultimate treasure was located within the world he was anticipating leaving. If everything for which Paul lived existed within this present creation, death could only represent loss.
But Paul explains why he can speak differently:
“My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better.” (Philippians 1:23)
Notice the word Paul uses. Depart. Paul does not describe physical death as ceasing to exist. He describes it as departure from his present condition of life. And more importantly, he identifies where his hope lies on the other side of that departure. He will be with Christ.
Paul’s desire to depart and be with Christ takes on another dimension when considered alongside what he says about the conflict he continues to experience in this present life:
“For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” (Romans 7:22–24)
Paul has been reconciled to God through Christ, yet he continues to experience the conflict between his desire for God and the sin that wars against that desire through the flesh. What Paul describes personally is a conflict every believer continues to face. Our relationship with God has been restored, but we continue to inhabit a fallen physical existence in which temptation remains, and the desires of the flesh attempt to draw us back toward earthly priorities, even as our commitment to faith in Christ directs us toward God.
****This gives another significance to Paul’s desire to depart and be with Christ. Physical death separates him from his present participation in this creation, but it also brings an end to the earthly condition in which that conflict continues. Paul looks beyond what death will separate him from and toward the One into whose presence it will bring him. His hope is in Christ, and death cannot separate him from the object of that hope.
(Scriptured tied to the thought that temptation will not exist on the other side of eternity)
That does not make physical death good in itself. Death entered human existence through mankind's separation from God, but Christ's death and resurrection fundamentally changed its significance for those who belong to Him. Scripture looks forward to the final completion of that victory:
“The last enemy to be destroyed is death.” (1 Corinthians 15:26)
Yet the defeat of death has already begun in Christ. His resurrection establishes the promise that those who belong to Him will also be raised. Physical death therefore remains an event believers presently experience, but it no longer represents a form of defeat. Its power to separate us from this present creation remains. Its power to separate us from God does not. In fact, through Christ’s resurrection, death represents the means that we are drawn back into the relationship He designed for us from the beginning.
As Scripture continues, it does not only address this separation through death as a byproduct of our temporal condition. It also makes it clear that the creation itself is bound by limits set by God. Peter describes a future in which the present heavens and earth themselves do not continue indefinitely:
“But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved...” (2 Peter 3:10)
The creation in which mankind has attempted to establish permanence is itself only temporary.
Peter then points beyond it:
“But according to his promise we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells.” (2 Peter 3:13)
The promise of a new heavens and a new earth amplifies a distinction we have encountered repeatedly throughout this chapter. We have already seen that creation does not merely owe its beginning to God; its continued existence depends upon Him. But Peter now carries that reality to its ultimate conclusion. The present creation will continue only as long as God sustains it. When its appointed end comes, it will pass away, and what follows will come from God as well. Our hope therefore does not rest in creation's ability to preserve itself, repair itself, or provide mankind with permanence. It rests in the God who created it, sustains it, and ultimately determines both its end and what will follow it.
This is why placing our hope correctly changes the significance of death so profoundly. If everything we ultimately treasure exists within this present world, death threatens everything. It separates us from everything we hold treasure. But if our ultimate hope is in God, nothing, including physical death, can take the source of our hope away from us.
Paul understood this. His treasure was not ultimately something death could force him to leave behind. His treasure was Christ.
That is why he could say “to die is gain.”
The contrast between Paul and King Solomon could hardly be greater. Ecclesiastes looks at everything mankind can accumulate under the sun and asks what lasting gain can finally be obtained from it. Paul looks at physical death and says that, in Christ, even death can become gain.
The difference is not that Paul found something more permanent within creation than Solomon did. He found his hope outside the creation itself, in its Creator.
Summary
To summarize this chapter we head back to Eden. Human life began with God, but mankind turned from the Creator toward what had been created, and separation followed. From that moment forward, mankind has attempted to establish permanence and ultimate value within a creation incapable of providing either. Yet death eventually separates us from everything we manage to establish within it.
Mankind's rebellion led to separation from God, but it did not change God's desire for relationship with mankind. Though mankind had turned away from Him, God continued to reach out, providing a means through which that broken relationship could be restored. Jesus makes an extraordinary claim:
“I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live.” (John 11:25)
Jesus does not merely promise information about what happens after death. He identifies Himself with the answer. “I am the resurrection and the life.”
That claim takes us beyond the simple observation that human beings desire eternity. It takes us beyond the recognition that physical death is separation. It takes us beyond the realization that creation cannot provide permanence. It locates life in Christ.
Jesus makes the same distinction elsewhere when He says:
“I am the way, and the truth, and the life.” (John 14:6)
Life is not ultimately something mankind extracts from creation. It is found in God, and Him only. When a person places his faith and hope in Christ, the separation introduced through mankind's rebellion is reversed, and proper relationship with God is restored.
This does not eliminate the reality of physical death in the present world. Christians still die. They still experience loss. They still leave possessions, accomplishments, relationships, and everything else belonging to their present earthly lives behind. But for the believer, physical death no longer ends in separation from God. It becomes a departure from this present world into the presence of the One in whom his hope rests.
Paul confidently states:
“For I am sure that neither death nor life... nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:38–39)
There is the reversal.
Death entered through separation from God. Yet in Christ, even death cannot finally separate us from God.
Our hope, therefore, is not that this present creation will somehow become capable of giving us everything we desire. Nor is our hope simply that our present physical lives will continue indefinitely exactly as they are. Our hope is in the God who gave life in the beginning, who sustains life now, who promises a new heavens and a new earth, and who has made reconciliation with Himself possible through Christ.
And that leaves us with a person at the center of everything. If Christ is the one in whom life is found, if He is the one through whom mankind can be reconciled to God, and if He can make the extraordinary claim, “I am the resurrection and the life,” then before we can understand the hope Scripture places in Him, we need to understand who Scripture says He is.
QUESTIONS
- Considering the deceptive way that Satan questioned God’s restriction to eat the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, how does he continue to redefine God’s instruction and guidance in order to separate us from God?