If sin brought death, and Jesus’ atonement redeemed us from the curse of the fall of Adam which was death and sickness (incipient death), then why do we still die?

I have never re-written an entry so many times since I started blogging as the following post. Frankly, these thoughts are controversial, and nobody reading it will agree 100% with me, and I’m not trying to provide pat answers in order to uphold my doctrine. I hate when people do that to me–who don’t want to back down from their views, but ignore pertinent Scriptures or just plain rationalize things away. I once wrote this over 2 years ago for my personal blog, and I’ve sinced reworked it over time the more I learned different things.  I realize I’ll never completely be satisfied with it, so I warn you all now—I’m not trying to say I have all the answers. I’m just sharing what I think Scripture shows. I’m also leaving out of this discussion traditional Calvinism and martyrdom, which are valid things to consider, but more of a tangent to this particular post. Comments and discussion are more than welcome.

The last enemy

Let’s begin with keeping in mind 1 Corinthians 15:26 states that the last enemy to be destroyed is death. It tells us death is still ‘here’ until that happens. The context being that this is taught usually as a rapture passage–but how can we be changed at the ‘last trumpet’ unless there are other trumpets first?  I will not go there at this time, other than pointing out for this entry, that this is at the end of history.  The passage states:

I tell you this, brothers: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable.
Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep [die], but we shall all be changed,
in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed.
For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality.
When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written: “Death is swallowed up in victory.”
“O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?”
The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.
But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

1 Corinthians 15:50-57 ESV, parentheses mine.

Observations to note:

  • Verse 50 makes clear that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God. Is it not true that for now we clothed in flesh and blood, perishable mortal bodies (v. 53)?
  • We’re going to have glorified ‘new bodies’ in heaven and not what we’ve got now.

I’ve had people say to me that since we get new bodies at that time, then there’s no point in having our bodies healed now in this lifetime. These can go ahead and practice what they preach. Others say “the ultimate healing is in death.” My response to that ill logic anymore is:  “then stay sick with your illness or problem for the rest of your earthly life until you die.” This shocks most people, but it shouldn’t if they really believe what they say. Who on earth and in their right mind will want to keep an illness or an infirmity for the rest of their earthly life if that burden can or could be removed from them in this lifetime?! Remember that Jesus healed physical ‘perishable bodies’ in his earthly lifetime, even though those people would go on to die one day anyway, so just pointing out that Jesus healed people makes the “we’re all going to die one day” a moot point. Also keep in mind how Romans 8:11 says “If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you.”

And furthermore, keep in mind that in His earthly ministry, Jesus did not raise all the dead. In fact, the accounts of the dead being raised in the Gospels are typically of young people or people who died suddenly from sicknesses—“before their time” if you will. Those are the types of people He raised from the dead, but then they eventually died later anyway. We’re not told how old Lazarus lived to be. We are not told how long Jairus’ daughter lived after being raised from the dead, or the widow’s son. I believe, they would have lived on to fulfill their purpose and destiny. Based on Hebrews 9:27 which says “it is appointed once to die, then after that comes the judgment” (Emphasis mine).

If this passage is true (which all Scripture is!) and if what most evangelicals teach concerning the Sovereignty of God is true, then Jesus was messing up the Father’s plan by raising from the dead those that the Father appointed to die. In fact, how do we handle the fact there are people in human history and in the Gospel records who died twice—the people Jesus raised from the dead, who died later for good? A kingdom divided against itself cannot stand (Matt 12:25). Jesus never did anything in rebellion or contradiction to the Father, but only did what He saw His Father doing (John 5:19). So if Jesus raised people from the dead, it means the Father wanted Jesus to do so, implying the Father didn’t want those peoples’ lives ended at that time. Does Father God have multiple personalities? Does He ‘kill people’ and then raise them again? Of course not!

The thing to keep in mind, is the word “appointed.” Things happen that aren’t God’s will all sorts of times in Scripture.  For example, how can God regret doing anything, if it’s not what He originally intended?  Our own life experiences demonstrate this also–but God is bigger than the devil and can do a good job at cleaning up the devil’s mess. So good, in fact, that we forget there ever was a mess and conclude the thing must have been God’s will all along because of what good we saw come out of it. This also in many ways answers the way God can will for everyone to be healed, but not all get healed, or how He’s not willing that ANY should perish (1 Timothy 2:4, 2 Peter 3:9), but that hell having a population of at least one soul proves something being God’s will doesn’t guarantee it to come to pass. I’ve talked about this in particular elsewhere, and don’t want to get too sidetracked from the ‘why do we still die’ question.

I’ve said before I don’t believe diseases, cancer or terminal illnesses are God’s way of “bringing people home”. It may have happened to a loved one in your family, and you believe without a shadow of a doubt that it was their time to go or that God was the Author of it. I will sympathize with your loss, and won’t argue with you—I just personally don’t believe from Scripture that’s how God does it, and will not settle for it in my own life.  I could be wrong, but obviously this is my view for now in my journey with Christ.

Why do so many Christians believe God and Satan are teammates?

I don’t believe in the ‘sickness unto death’ the way it’s taught (it comes side-by-side with the ‘sickness unto chastisement’ teaching). It teaches that God puts certain sicknesses on us that we will die from. The only Scripture I can think of at the moment is 2 Kings 13:14 which states “Now when Elisha had fallen sick with the illness of which he was to die…” Never mind the fact that this is one sentence mentioning his illness in passing, and never mind the fact we are not told what it was, and that there’s no real New Testament example of something similar, unless people cling tightly to the idea Paul’s thorn in the flesh was a sickness, which was a messenger from SATAN, not God–He just didn’t remove it.

Why do so many believers think we all have to die of something? Don’t many people NOT die of cancer, or heart attacks, or whatever? Is it that hard to believe we’ll just ‘stop working’ one day and go home? Don’t some die in their sleep peacefully? Don’t some just one day drop dead for no reason in particular other than old age, and “give up the ghost?”. Why is it so many Christians are pessimistic instead of optimistic when it comes to healing and sicknesses?!

I had someone tell me recently they believe in healing, but that it’s not God’s will to heal everybody. This is not new, I hear it all the time—the Bible says all sorts of things that Christians have to add a “but” to with their own spin. Never minding that it does sound pious and honorable, but it’s not Scriptural. I sat and listened to this brother carefully, without making any objections or starting any arguments because this “sickness unto chastisement” was actually new to my ears when he told me of it. But when it and ‘sickness unto death’ came up repeatedly, I got really curious where this belief comes from, and later, prior to writing this, did a Google search and read articles (in their entirety) that showed up in the search results. One thing I noticed time and time again is that this teaching is basically based on 1 Corinthians 11 when it’s talking of the church at Corinth partaking unworthily of the Lord’s Supper. Never mind that the sicknesses and people falling ill was JUDGEMENT for the way they partook of this covenant meal! Or lack of ‘covenant protection’ resulting in death–however you want to read it.

Do all who get sick fall ill because they’re under judgment from God? Definitely not! If someone asks me to pray for them, do I tell them the reason they’re sick is judgment from God? Heck no! And if it is, does that mean we shouldn’t be merciful and gracious like Jesus and pray for them anyway? Of course not. Leave that to God, if the judgment is between Him and them, but you do your job and lay hands on them anyway. Read James 5 where it states the elders will pray for the sick, they will be healed and whatever sins they’ve committed will be forgiven (simultaneously as they’re being healed of sickness).

But the New Testament examples I see, such as this one mentioned, involve God judging sin. Obedient children of God following Him have no need of worrying God will judge them if they’re not in disobedience to Him. This sickness unto death/chastisement stuff from what I can tell, does little other than make people wonder if God is upset with them if they fall ill, instead of looking at their real enemy who may more than likely be the real perpetrator. It should be noted, I notice also in all these articles that sickness usually is never viewed as a curse or a BAD thing by most evangelicals–or that the devil is ever involved, but always the “Lord works in mysterious ways and who are we to question what He allows us to go through.” I’ll tell you why should question it—because you could be wrong, and finding out the truth could change your situation around! No wonder many people don’t believe it’s the Lord’s will to heal them if this is the kind of stuff they’re being taught! No wonder we don’t see more healings and miracles—you get what you teach and preach for!

Death

This may shock you that I’d answer this way, or it might not ring right in your ears, but I believe that death, in that we all die one day (because it’s appointed once for all to die) is unrelated to healing, sickness, restoration and the atonement. Hear me out before you assume I’m contradicting myself or sounding like I’m a politician talking out of both sides of my mouth:

Death, in that we live out our lives and then one day “give up the ghost” and go home, is a matter of going home when our numbered days are completed. God doesn’t “kill us”. He brings His children home, and has a time ordained for each to come home. The devil on the other hand, seeks to steal, kill and destroy, and in other words take from us what God gives and gave us—and bring that day to pass sooner. And people do stupid things by way of accident or negligence that God sometimes doesn’t intervene and prevent. Also, it’s the devil whose whole mission and modus operandi is to rob us of our earthly callings and he takes people out, and it’s not God’s will. I will not tackle Calvnistic viewpoints on the sovereignty of God, and I will not cover the subject of martyrdom in this entry on purpose because I don’t want to get more off subject than I already have to some degree already, but these are things I believe regarding death and living out our time.

When Adam and Eve were punished for their disobedience, God says in Genesis 3:22:

Then the LORD God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever–” therefore the LORD God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken.

According to this passage, God kept Adam out of the Garden of Eden after this, so that he would not reach out and eat from the other tree as well–remember, there were two trees in the Garden (Genesis 2:9). The Lord told Adam, that in the day that he ate of the tree of knowledge of good and evil (not to be confused with the tree of life), he’d surely die. Did either Eve or Adam die on the very day they ate the fruit? No?  Then what’s to be made of this ‘death’? Was it just spiritual death? I don’t know exactly. Notice that the Lord tells Adam not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, but in Genesis 3:2-3, Eve tells the serpent it was the tree of life they’re not to eat, or they’d die. Well which was it they were not to eat? Were they not to eat either one? Or was she confused and spoke wrongly, since after all, it wasn’t her directly that the Lord gave this instruction to, since she wasn’t even created yet when the Lord instructed Adam about this? Was she adding to what she was told?

Consider this: In order for God to banish them so that they won’t eat of the tree of life and live forever, it implies they were not going to live forever unless they ate it. This was AFTER they sinned and were now in a fallen state. Death and sin entered creation as a result of their disobedience. Before automatically assuming what I’ve been saying and about to say is heresy, give it some thought and go over the first three chapters of Genesis carefully (I still am doing so), and see if just because you’ve never heard it that way before, doesn’t mean it might not be correct. Also, when reading commentaries and doing searches on Google typing in “if God wills to heal all ,then why do all still die”, I don’t find pages that deal with this passage, so I’m hard pressed to find correct interpretations of this.

I won’t take a dogmatic stand on it, but it does give some insight into this discussion about dying if God wants all of us well in our bodies. God refusing to allow Adam and Eve to eat of the tree of life now that they are corrupt and defiled, was an act of his mercy—He didn’t want man living forever in their sinful flesh, and in a fallen world. That, would be hell. Hell is eternity in sin cut off from the Lord, and if Adam ate of the fruit from the tree of life, it would not have been much better than an eternity in hell will be.

The book of Revelation says we will at that time get to eat of the tree of life. In the meantime, until our lifespan is over, God can and does ‘patch up’ our bodies to keep working, but we don’t get a brand new body in this lifetime.

Conclusion (for now)

So to reiterate, our healing in our current bodies—our redemption and our restoration, has been purchased for us in this lifetime. Are all fully enjoying physical healing 100 % of the time? To answer that question let me pose another question: are we enjoying the full benefits—in this lifetime—of anything God’s given us? Are we fully enjoying the benefits of having our sins forgiven? Physical death has everything, however, do to with resurrection. Can you be resurrected if you’re not dead?

In closing, Isaiah 33:20-24, describes the new Zion where God’s people will dwell:
Behold Zion, the city of our appointed feasts! Your eyes will see Jerusalem, an untroubled habitation, an immovable tent, whose stakes will never be plucked up, nor will any of its cords be broken.
But there the LORD in majesty will be for us a place of broad rivers and streams, where no galley with oars can go, nor majestic ship can pass.
For the LORD is our judge; the LORD is our lawgiver; the LORD is our king; he will save us.
Your cords hang loose; they cannot hold the mast firm in its place or keep the sail spread out. Then prey and spoil in abundance will be divided; even the lame will take the prey.
And no inhabitant will say, “I am sick”; the people who dwell there will be forgiven their iniquity.

Notice verse 24 brings up how nobody will be sick, because their sins are forgiven. The two are related–as I’ve been stating in detail in recent entries–and in this time spoken of here, the full revelation and embodiment of what has been purchased on the cross in the atonement of Christ will be realized.

You can wait until then to see healing in your body if you want to. But I’m still going for it in this lifetime, based on what the Word of God says.

“Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” Matthew 6:10

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