Category Archives: Death

Destroying Death

03 Wednesday Apr 2013

Posted by in Death, Jesus, The Resurrection

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There is no way to understand how the world was so changed by the Christian message if it was just a philosophy. It was a proclamation that something happened.

That’s the reason why Paul is able to actually taunt at death. Why? Because he says in the beginning of Romans 1:4, ‘God declared him to be the Son of God with power by the resurrection.’ Paul didn’t understand he was the Son of God till he saw him raised, and he began to realize what Jesus has done. There is hope why? Because this is the Son of God. Death could not hold him down.

It says in Acts 2, when the first sermon was preached by Peter, ‘He rose from the dead because death could not hold him.’ It was impossible for death to hold him. Think about the power of death for a minute. Think about it. Nothing can stop death. No human being can stop death. The power of decay. The second law of thermodynamics. Even mountains can’t stop death. The mountains eventually get worn down to pebbles. Even the sun and the stars can’t stop death. Even they burn out and go to decay. Think of the power of death.

Yet someone came who overmatched death. Jesus Christ was swallowed by death and exploded in its bowels. Jesus Christ did not just defy death. He did not just deny death. He destroyed death. That’s the reason why Paul can say later on in this chapter, ‘O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?’ At the top of the service we said only Christians have this unbelievable ability to handle worry and handle anxiety. Why? Because they can look at the most powerful obstacle to happiness in the universe, death itself, and actually taunt it.

- Tim Keller

Come On, Crosses!

27 Wednesday Mar 2013

Posted by in Christian Life, Death, Redemption, The Resurrection, Worry

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Christian friends, do you believe in the risen Christ? Is he your Savior? In that case, you can face death but you can face anything. Can you face worry? Can you face troubles? You already sang about it in the first hymn: ‘Ours the cross, the grave, the skies.’ If you believe the risen Christ is now in control of history, even the bad things that happen to you are crosses that are going to raise you. ‘Come on, crosses!’ says a Christian. ‘The lower you lay me, the higher you’ll raise me.’ ‘Come on, crosses!’ you say. ‘Jesus the risen Lord is in charge of everything.’

- Tim Keller

Why We Experience Shame

03 Monday Dec 2012

Posted by in Death, Sin

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A continued look at Genesis 3 shows that as soon as Adam and Eve sinned against God, they experienced internal shame, guilt, and brokenness. They suffered the natural consequences of working against their design. ‘They realized they were naked’ (verse 7). This is the opposite of verse 25 in chapter 2, where we read  that Adam and Eve had been, as we often put it today, ‘naked and unashamed.’ Old Testament scholar David Atkinson writes: ‘Shame… is that sense of unease with yourself at the heart of your being.’ We know there is something wrong with us, but we can’t admit it or identify it. There is a deep restlessness, which can take various forms – guilt and striving to prove ourselves, rebellion and the need to assert our independence, compliance and the need to please others. Something is wrong, and we may know the effects, but we fall short of understanding the true causes. 

Contemporary Western culture tries to account for this restlessness without recourse to the biblical doctrine of sin. Psychologists help us understand the part our early childhoods have played in creating unnecessary shame or a sense of being unloved. Entertainment distracts us from our discomfort. And doing good helps bolster our identity as a good person. But the Bible locates the root issue as our separation from God.

- Tim Keller

Winning Through Losing

18 Friday May 2012

Posted by in Christian Life, Death, Jesus, Justice

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The Jewish chief priests, teachers of the law, and, of course, the Roman rulers should have been standing up for justice but instead conspired to commit an act of injustice by condemning Jesus to death. The cross reveals the systems of the world to be corrupt, serving power and oppression instead of justice and truth. In condemning Jesus, the world was condemning itself. Jesus’s death demonstrates not only the bankruptcy of the world but it also reveals the character of God and of his kingdom. Jesus’s death was not a failure. By submitting to death as penalty, he broke its hold on him and on us.

When Jesus went to the cross and died for our sins, he won through losing; he achieved our forgiveness on the cross by turning the values of the world on their head. He did not ‘fight fire with fire.’ He didn’t come and raise an army in order to put down the latest corrupt regime. He didn’t take power; he gave it up – and yet he triumphed. On the cross, then, the world’s misuse and glorification of power was exposed for what it is and defeated. The spell of the world’s systems was broken.

The corrupt powers of this world have many tools to make people afraid, the worst one being death. When you know that a civil power or some other power can kill you, you’re scared, and they can use your fear to control you. But since Jesus died and rose again from the dead, if you can find a way to approach Jesus and cling to him, you know that death, the worst thing that can possibly happen to you, is now the best thing. Honey, get up. Death will put you in God’s arms and make you all you hoped to be. And when death loses its sting, when death no longer has power over you because of what Jesus did on the cross, then you will be living a life of love and not a life of fear.

- Tim Keller