Where, O Death, Is Your Sting (2)

1 Corinthians 15:55 states:

Where, O death, is your victory?
   Where, O death, is your sting?

This will not be the first time I'll have commented on this verse (you can read my earlier post here), since Paul is quoting Hosea 13:14, and I wrote about it when we read Hosea in the summer.  I'll approach this with a different approach than I did back then.

As always, keep in mind who Paul's audience was and what they knew. He's writing to Greeks who weren't familiar with the concept of resurrection for any number of reasons. If you go back to yesterday's reading, you'll see Paul's quote of Isaiah when he wrote "Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die," and in addition to being the Klingon term of greeting to each other in "Star Trek: The Next Generation" (actually, they would greet each other with "It is a good day to die"), it's a great mindset if this life is all there is. If our lives on this world are the pinnacle, if this, as Peggy Lee famously sang, "this is all there is, my friends," then we should do everything to make our lives everything they can be. We should glorify each day, because when we're gone, we're GONE.

Obviously, we don't believe this, and Paul was instructing these early Christians that there is indeed something beyond what we know and see. Faith and hope would be completely unnecessary if there were no resurrection, because we'd have everything we need right in front of us. Every funeral should be a terrible experience because that IS all there is, but we don't believe that. Death claims no victory and the grave has no sting when we have the promise of the resurrection with Christ. These are life-changing words to those ancient Greeks who had spent their entire existence thinking that all ended at death.

And they're just as life-changing today. A true Christian keeps hymn 660 from the red hymnal near and dear to their heart, which is "I'm but a stranger here, heaven is my home," because we're just passing through here. This is NOT the be-all and end-all of our existence, and this is NOT as good as it will get. I have no intention to downgrade the trauma that death has on our loved ones, and I'm not so stupid and insensitive as to even think of telling a grieving person "Well, they're in a better place" or anything like that--it still HURTS, and I'm not so callous as to state otherwise. However, when the emotions have calmed down and we can think rationally, we can ask ourselves a simple question about our loved ones--would they leave heaven to come back to Earth with us? Would you leave Christ's side to come back to a sin-plagued Earth? Who in their right mind would?

There is plenty of victory for those who don't know Christ--death DOES claim victory, and that death DOES sting. Our job is to make sure that, with the Holy Spirit's help, we keep that number as small as possible. On that last day, we'll laugh in Satan's face as he is totally and completely defeated. We know how that story ends--let's make sure we share that with as many people as we can so they can be with us forever.

Scott