Death Has No Power
Death Has No Power
Excerpted from “The First Resurrection”
Sermon #391, May 5, 1861
For those who don’t have the assurance of eternal life, death is a terrifying enemy. But for the believer, death does not have the final say. It remains a difficult passageway, but a thoroughfare to a magnificent destination.
He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. The one who conquers will not be hurt by the second death. Revelation 2:11
Note the privilege here promised to the godly: “The one who conquers will not be hurt by the second death.” This is a literal death, none the less literal because its main terror is spiritual, for a spiritual death is as literal as a physical death.
The death which shall come upon the ungodly without exception can never touch the righteous. Oh, brothers and sisters, this is the best of all. As for the first resurrection, if Christ has granted that to his people there must be something glorious in it if we cannot perceive it. “What we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2).
On this point we can understand what Scripture states and understand this much well: that damnation, the second death, shall have no power on those who rise at the first resurrection. How should it? How can damnation fall on any but those who are sinners and are guilty of sin? But the saints are not guilty of sin. They were by nature the children of wrath even as others. But their sin has been lifted from them. It was laid upon the scapegoat’s head in the Old Testament account. The eternal substitute, our Lord Jesus, carried all their guilt and their iniquity into the wilderness of forgetfulness, where it shall never be found against them forever. They wear the Savior’s righteousness, for they have been washed in his blood.
There shall be a second death, but over us it shall have no power. Do you understand the beauty of the picture? As if we might walk through the flames of Hell and they should have no power to devour us, any more than when Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego paced with ease over the hot coals of Nebuchadnezzar’s seven-times heated furnace.
Death may bend his bow and fit the arrow to the string. But we laugh at you, oh death! And you, oh Hell, we will despise! For over both of you enemies of mankind we shall be more than conquerors through him who loved us (Romans 8:37). We shall stand invulnerable and invincible, defying and laughing to scorn our every foe. And all this because we are washed from sin and covered with a spotless righteousness.
But there is another reason why the second death can have no power over the believer. Because when the prince of this world comes against us then, we shall be able to say what our Master did: “He has no claim on me” (John 14:30). When we shall rise again, we shall be freed from all corruption. No evil tendencies shall remain in us.
We shall be as pure as Adam before his fall, as holy as the immaculate manhood when it first came from the divine hand. We shall be better than Adam, for Adam might sin; but we shall be so established in goodness, in truth, and in righteousness that we shall not even be tempted again, much less have any fear of falling. We shall stand spotless and faultless at the last great day.
Brothers and sisters, lift up your heads. Contending with sin and cast down with doubts, lift up your heads and wipe the tears from your eyes. There are days coming, the likes of which angels have not seen, but you shall see them.
And when his followers rise, they shall leave the old Adam behind them. Blessed day! One of the happiest aspects of Heaven will be freedom from the tendency to sin, a total death to that old nature which has been our plague and woe.
Christ promises this about eternal life on the New Earth: “Death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away” (Revelation 21:4).
The prophet Isaiah says of God, “On this mountain he will destroy the shroud that enfolds all peoples, the sheet that covers all nations; he will swallow up death forever. The Sovereign LORD will wipe away the tears from all faces” (Isaiah 25:7-8, NIV).
God guarantees that death will die. He himself will kill it.
Meanwhile, though dying is still difficult for the believer, death itself is radically changed. Death is the means by which God’s children enter his presence. Death is not a wall but a turnstile, a last obstacle that marks a great beginning. Pastor and author Calvin Miller puts it beautifully:
I once scorned ev’ry fearful thought of death, When it was but the end of pulse and breath, But now my eyes have seen that past the pain There is a world that’s waiting to be claimed. Earthmaker, Holy, let me now depart, For living’s such a temporary art. And dying is but getting dressed for God, Our graves are merely doorways cut in sod.a
When it came to Heaven and Hell, Spurgeon’s contemporary across the Atlantic, Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain), never got it. Under the weight of age, he says in his autobiography, “The burden of pain, care, misery grows heavier year by year. At length ambition is dead, pride is dead, vanity is dead, longing for release is in their place. It comes at last—the only unpoisoned gift Earth ever had for them—and they vanish from a world where they were of no consequence; where they achieved nothing; where they were a mistake and a failure and a foolishness.”b
What a contrast to Charles Spurgeon’s perspective on death: “To come to you is to come home from exile, to come to land out of the raging storm, to come to rest after long labor, to come to the goal of my desires and the summit of my wishes.”
For the Christian, death is a difficult means to an incredibly wonderful end.
You may be troubled, feeling uncertain or unready to finish this life. Then make sure of your relationship with Jesus Christ. Be certain that you’re trusting him alone to save you—not anyone or anything else, and certainly not any good works you’ve done. And then, like Spurgeon, allow yourself to get excited about what’s on the other side of death’s door.
a Calvin Miller, The Divine Symphony (Minneapolis: Bethany, 2000), 139.
b Mark Twain, quoted in Charles Ferguson Ball, Heaven (Wheaton, IL: Victor, 1980), 19.
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