Fourth, I want you to see not only that death is an enemy, not only is death the ultimate enemy, and not only is there an ultimate victory over death for us. But I also want you to see that there is a present victory now because the resurrection of the Lord transformed even the kind of death that we know now in our own time and in our own existence and experience.
I believe that before the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ those who died believing went to what the Lord Himself described in speaking to the thief on the cross as Paradise, and which He explained in some degree in the parable of the rich man and Lazarus as being a place of bliss but nevertheless not in His own presence or the presence of God. In the Old Testament the abode of the dead, both of the dying in faith and those who died in unbelief is called Sheol or Hades, and this place of the dead had two parts.
It had a part known as Abraham’s bosom or Paradise, where those who died in faith went awaiting the resurrection; and it had a place of torment, where the rich man in Christ’s parable dwelt. But neither one of these was in the presence of God Himself. When the Lord promised the thief on the cross that he would be with Him that day, the day on which they both died, He did not say, “Today you will be with me in the presence of my Father in heaven.” He said, “You shall be with me in Paradise.” And when the Lord died He went to Paradise and there He proclaimed the benefits of His death and resurrection to those who had died in anticipation of it. And when He arose He carried these, I believe, into heaven for the first time, “leading captivity captive and giving gifts to men” as it says in Ephesians. This was the time at which, as you read the gospels carefully, you find that the tombs were opened and the dead who had died in faith went into the city of Jerusalem and revealed themselves to living believers.
The point I am making is that death is transformed. Before, there was only at best a kind of vague hope in the afterlife that you find in Old Testament times. David and Job and the others expected God to be faithful to them even though worms should destroy their bodies. But it was not a very articulated faith. Now, it is a different thing. And Paul can write as he does in his letter to the Corinthians: “To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord.” And he can say in writing to the Philippians that though he has the desire to remain with them for their good, nevertheless death is far better than that because it means entrance into the presence of God forevermore. That is what death is for us.
Now finally, I want you to see one more thing from this passage. It is that the assurance of these things is ours because of Christ’s resurrection. Apart from that, it would be philosophy, it would be perhaps mysticism, it might even be a parable, but it could not have the cutting edge, the force of conviction and assurance that it does have for Christian people. We believe these things, you see, not just because Paul says them, though he certainly spoke them under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit and therefore spoke them infallibly. But we believe these things because Jesus Christ demonstrated the truth of them by His own death and resurrection.
Unless Christ’s death was a real death we are not talking about a real resurrection. Jesus really died. Unbelievers who nevertheless for some strange compulsion cannot avoid writing about religion usually try to deny one of the two. They either deny that there was a real resurrection or they deny that there was a real death. There have been elaborate theories worked out to deny Jesus’ death, particularly in the nineteenth century. Some have suggested that the Lord only swooned and revived in the tomb, and then escaped and came back to show Himself alive, but He never died in the first place. Or it is said that they crucified the wrong person. Ideas like this were written seriously and taken seriously. But not even the most liberal scholars are willing to believe them now. Jesus died, you see. If anything is a fact of history, it is this: the death of Jesus Christ under Pontius Pilate.