Values in Light of Eternity: The Language of Death

We often speak about death as an ending, or a cessation of life. I would wager that death as an end is what we are referring to in over 90 percent of the instances in which we talk about it. And it's understandable. Our most present example of death is physical death. And the most evident property of physical death is its physical effect, and the (apparent) cessation of consciousness. But according to Christianity, that is not the whole story. In fact, there is no instance in which a person ceases to exist in Christian theology. We must reformulate our language of death.

There are in general three types of death (I do not take credit for these categories or definitions, though I don't remember whose they are): spiritual death, physical death, and eternal death, also called Hell. In none of these deaths does a person cease to exist. Death is instead a separation, whether from the body or from God. Only the third is permanent. All of these deaths result from sin, and without sin we would not experience any of them.

Death as separation rather than cessation obviously has implications for how we live our lives. But what are they? We are all eternal entities, so there is really no such thing as death-as-cessation. An unbeliever suffers all three deaths-as-separation. Christians, however, are cured from one kind of death (spiritual), saved from another (eternal), and conquerors of the last (physical). Christ's atoning death on the cross turned the greatest fear of this world into the gateway to the next one. Death is no longer a punishment for sin, but a method of uniting with Christ (see Grudem, Systematic Theology, chapter 41). The separation of our spirits from our bodies becomes the uniting of our spirits with God. We therefore subsume death into Life.

To a Christian, there is no form of death over which we do not have victory. However, the absence of death-as-cessation means that what we choose in this life does not end at physical death, but carries on into eternity. While believers will be perfected no matter what they do in this life, this consequence means that non-believers are left to grow in their sin for eternity, as their faults and iniquities grow gradually larger and larger. It is obviously essential that they be saved and so be removed from death.

Christians, though, can be encouraged and say with I Corinthians 15:54-55, "Death has been swallowed up in victory. O Death, where is your victory? O Death, where is your sting?"