Death is not your friend.

I know we sometimes think of death in those terms, usually in the context of a living person who is suffering from disease. We watch our loved ones toss and turn, bed-ridden and pained, then can’t help but sigh when they take their final breath. We reflect on them leaving this world of pain for “a better place” and think of death as the sweet release that lets us shuffle off this mortal coil and escape the turmoil of the “here and now” for the bliss of the “hereafter.”

I understand the sentiment, but it is misplaced.

Death is not our friend, and that hardship we look to death to release us from is an arrow in the quiver of Satan, just as death is. That relief you feel when a suffering friend finally suffers no more? Do not give thanks to death for it, but to the God whose angels were dispatched to carry the departed soul back to its Maker. Both turmoil and death belong to the same master: The Devil wields them against us. Was there turmoil, sickness, or hardships in Eden? No, and neither was there death. There were no graves in the Paradise Garden. No cemetery was planted there. The desire of God was for us to live with Him in perpetual bliss. Sin ruined that, and as a result, humanity lives in a fallen, corrupt world, where disease and death reign.

Death is not our friend. Jesus is our friend. Through Him, and Him only, we have something to look forward to, and it is not death. The grave is not our companion. An occupied grave is a reminder of the fallen world. It’s a bitter sting, made evident by the tears that flow when loved ones congregate there. If you want to find hope in the grave, do not look at the stone marker that tells of the years a loved one lived on this earth. There is no hope there. Hope is in Jesus, whose Apostle reminds us that, one day, at the coming of Jesus, the graves will open and release their iron grip on our loved ones (1 Thessalonians 4:13-18).

The only good grave is an empty one.

If you want to find hope in a grave, do not go to the cemetery that holds your family. Go to the garden beyond Golgotha, where the mangled body of Jesus was laid, and from which, on that glorious Sunday morning, He unburdened Himself forever, and gave us the hope we carry in our hearts today.

Death is not your friend. Death is the enemy, and in the end, the enemy will be put down for good (1 Corinthians 15:26).

~Matthew