So there's this scene in the movie Gladiator from 2000 where General Maximus, played by the famous Russell Crowe, tells Commodus that:
Death smiles at all men, and all a man can do is smile back.
I've always remembered that. Even more so over the past couple of days.
I went from the high of fixing a blocked, flooding pipe (cough, cough), without calling a plumber, by the way, to slipping and nearly hitting the back of my head on the metal edge of a stair. Then, days later, my neighbor was brutally murdered by an 18-year-old after being stabbed in the heart.
Two events, one week apart. They've got me thinking about death a lot more.
The only certain thing in life is death. And death isn't racist. It doesn't discriminate based on race, gender, color, political affiliation, social status, etc.
Even among us who love God and are redeemed by the precious sacrifice of Jesus Christ, physical death still comes to us. The only humans to have escaped it so far are Enoch, from Genesis 5, and the prophet Elijah, who was taken into heaven in a chariot of fire.
I believe what people fear isn't death itself, but the uncertainty that comes with it. It can happen at any time. In fact, in Ecclesiastes 8:8, Solomon writes:
No one has power over the spirit to retain the spirit, And no one has power in the day of death.
You can imagine how that stirs up our anxiety, realizing we don't have control.
I've grown up around church circles and seen the power of God transform people. Undeniable impact. But I've also observed that, as much as we're all meant to face physical death one day, many Christians have died in so much agony and fear.
And the thing that disturbs my mind is that the New Testament does teach that we have power over death. It's not the end of us. Jesus conquered it.
If Jesus is the template we all follow, the man said that no man takes away His life. He lays it down at will and takes it back at will.
In essence, He's saying that the crucifixion on the cross didn't surprise Him, neither was He mistaken about what would come after.
I believe that level of clarity and certainty is what we're meant to have as Christians concerning questions of death.
Ecclesiastes 9:12 talks about the spontaneity of death, the way it ambushes us unaware:
For man does not know his time. Like fish that are taken in an evil net, and like birds that are caught in a snare, so the children of man are snared at an evil time, when it suddenly falls upon them.
And in Hebrews 2:15 it says:
And deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage.
Jesus has delivered us from this ever-constant, chronic fear of death and its uncertainty.
So... why then do we live as though He didn't?
IGNORANCE.
If the Bible means what it says and says what it means, our posture towards matters of death should be one of VICTORY.
Something even I am striving towards.
Cheers :)
