“O Death, where is your sting?”

1 Corinthians 15:15

It may seem a mystery to the world that people should be happy in death, which the world considers to be the most terrible of all things, but this is the case of saints. Their happiness is built on a rock that will stand the shock of death. When the storm and floods of death come with their greatest violence, this rock stands firm; neither death nor hell can overthrow it.

The notion of death implies destruction, or perishing, in it, but the godly are not destroyed by death. Death cannot destroy them. As Christ says, they will never perish: “Whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:15). A godly person, when they die, in no way perishes. There is no end put to his life as a Christian because the spiritual life remains unquenched by death. A wicked person, when they die, dies indeed, because all the life they have ends; they have no other life but temporal life, and no other life which they value and love. But a Christian’s life is hidden with Christ and safely laid up with Him in heaven.

Therefore death cannot reach the Christian’s life because it cannot reach heaven. Death can no more reach the believer’s life than Christ’s life. Christ says, for the comfort of His saints, “I am He who lives, and was dead, and behold, I am alive forevermore. Amen. And I have the keys of Hades and of Death” (Revelation 1:18).