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Death is a transition

In my last post I mentioned two fascinating ideas presented by JRR Tolkien in his work, “The Lord of the Rings.” The first was the unending life of the mortal elves (a contradiction in terms) and the gift of death given to men. It is the second idea that I am addressing here.

Death in the New Testament writings of Paul is presented as our enemy.

Rom 6:23
23    For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. (KJV)

Rom 8:6
6    For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. (KJV)

1 Cor 15:26
26    The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death. (KJV)

1 Cor 15:54-57
54    So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory.
55    O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?
56    The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law.
57    But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. (KJV)

After becoming a Christian, these and other verses that declared death to be our enemy, made his statement ludicrous.   So what did Tolkien mean when he called death the gift of men?   He was a Catholic, so he had a some Christian world view that he wrote from.  And I think he had a Christian meaning in this statement.

There is nothing in the fallen world today that did not exist in the Paradise of the original creation.  All the ills and miseries we call the curse are perversions of the good creation of God.  This realization came to me when visiting the Creation Museum of Dr. Carl Baugh in Glenn Rose, Texas.   He had a display that showed how he accidentally found the venom of a snake became nonvenomous.  The snake was near a hyperbaric chamber and was bathed (unintentionally) in sound waves set at the pitch of bird chirping and song.

This discovery brought home the point that the fluid of the snake was not originally venomous but changed with the fall of Adam and the Flood.  And the greater reality that there is nothing here on Earth that was not already here in Paradise, but all has been marred by sin and the curse.

Which means that death must have existed already in Paradise.  But clearly not the death that we know today.  God had created “a death” that was good as the rest of creation is good.  So what is the good death that God created?  Natural change.

Jesus said:

Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit. (John 12:24 KJV)

A seed has to die in order for the change to occur for it to become  a plant.   The fruit of the plant bearing seed has to die for the seed to be released and the cycle of multiplication to continue.

Another example is the transformation of humans from infants to adults.  This transformation occurs through death. Every seven years (I am told) every cell of the body (except the brain) dies and is renewed.  The renewal of the cell is not just a replacement but that which is needed to form the infant into a child at 7, then from a child to an adolescent at 14, and then from an adolescent to an adult at 21.   And unless God intended Eve to give birth to fully mature adults (I don’t think so), if they had not fallen their first child would have begun and grown with this same process.  Of course, after adulthood the affect of sin and death slowly plays out on the eventual decay of people in old age to the grave.   But death is used in this transformation.

I used to wonder why angels could not repent and be saved.  As far as I understand Scriptures there is no way a fallen angel can repent.   This is why the Lake of Fire was created for the fallen angels and not mankind.  Angels were not created with the ability to die.  So when they are cast into the everlasting punishment, they will continue to live in torment forever.

But not so with humans.  Why we can die, and that they can not, I do not know.  Perhaps it is because they are spirits only, whereas we are body, soul and spirits.   It seems that the multi-dimension of our creation provides more opportunity for salvation.  But angels being only a spirit makes them nonredeemable.  But in truth, I do not know why angels can not be saved.

Nonetheless, for humans, the gift of death is our means of salvation.  Without our ability to die, Jesus would not have been able to take our sins  upon Himself, punish our sins in His own body, and leave those sins behind in His resurrection.  We then, are invited to die with  Christ and to leave our sins behind in joining His death and resurrection.

So why does Paul speak of death as our enemy?  Because death in the fall created the world system and reliance upon our flesh.   Without the new birth we can only see our lives as limited by death.  We do not see life after death.  Of course, the gospel was given to Adam and Eve after their fall, so all mankind has a remembrance of hope of life after death as shown one way or another in all the world’s religions.   But with the natural mind that is an unreliable fairy tale.  So death becomes the source of value in life.

Scarcity creates value.  The more everyone wants something and the fewer there is of it, the more valuable it then becomes.  Works of  art increase in value when the artist dies.  He can not make anymore, so there is now scarcity.  Life is desired by all, and the knowledge of death makes it more valuable.

One would think that death would increase the appreciation  life and families.  Love and friendship would be esteemed higher than anything else.  But this is not so because death was perverted by sin.   The essence of sin is selfishness.  What people value is what self gratification they can gain.  So wealth and power are self gratifying gains.  Rape and abuse of women are self gratifying gains.  Because of the sinful natures all unregenerate people have, death becomes our enemy just as the law could not save us.

The law is good.  And we are told that if we could keep the law, then righteousness could be obtained by the law.  But since we can not keep the law, then the law becomes a magnifier of sin, making sin exceedingly more sinful.  The same is true with death.  Death was a means of transition and growth.  Our bodies mature by the cells dying off.  But since sin perverts the purpose of death, death becomes an end, and not a transition.  “Let us eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die”  means “let us gratify self as along as we can until self no longer exists to be gratified.”     It is this desire within us that resists salvation.  The unregenerate knows in their heart that they have to die to self for salvation, and they do not want to let go of self.

It is this misunderstanding that causes Christians to resist  the further work of the cross in their lives.  For they do not want to lose self, even though they already have in the new birth.  The gift of death is the freedom to change into something greater and better.  For our bodies in childhood it is to become an adult.  In salvation it is to become a Son of God.   Butterflies can not exist until the caterpillar is willing to die in the cocoon.  This is why men have the gift of death and angels can not understand it.