On Second Thought
The reality of the Resurrection confronts one of the most universal and unsettling human experiences: the fear of death. Scripture never denies that fear, nor does it shame those who feel its weight. When Martha meets Jesus outside Bethany in John 11, her words carry both faith and ache: “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died” (John 11:21, italics). This is not disbelief; it is wounded trust. She believes in resurrection “at the last day,” yet she stands face-to-face with the immediacy of loss. Jesus does not correct her emotion. Instead, He reframes reality itself: “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die” (John 11:25, italics). Resurrection is no longer only an event on the calendar of the end times; it is a Person standing before her.
History is honest about humanity’s struggle with death. The Duke of Wellington, a seasoned military commander acquainted with mortality, observed that anyone who claims never to have feared death must be either a coward or a liar. Likewise, Samuel Johnson, the great British essayist, admitted that no rational person approaches death without unease. Scripture affirms this realism. Death is not natural in the biblical sense; it is an intruder, an enemy. Yet Christianity insists that it is an enemy already defeated. The tension lies here: death still wounds, but it no longer rules. The Resurrection does not deny the pain of separation; it disarms its finality.
The letter to the Hebrews brings theological clarity to this victory. “Inasmuch then as the children have partaken of flesh and blood, He Himself likewise shared in the same” (Hebrews 2:14, italics). The Greek phrase κεκοινώνηκεν αἵματος καὶ σαρκός (kekoinōnēken haimatos kai sarkos) underscores real participation, not appearance. Christ did not hover above mortality; He entered it fully. The purpose of this descent is startling: “that through death He might destroy him who had the power of death, that is, the devil.” The verb καταργήσῃ (katargēsē) does not mean annihilate but render powerless. Death still exists, but its authority has been stripped. It can wound, but it cannot condemn.
John Stott, in The Cross of Christ, captures this freedom when he writes that Christ sets free those who have been held in lifelong slavery by the fear of death. Fear, not death itself, is the true tyrant. When death is forgiven of its sting, fear loses its leverage. The Apostle Paul presses this imagery further in 1 Corinthians 15, likening death to a scorpion whose sting has been removed. “Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?” (1 Corinthians 15:55, italics). The Greek κέντρον (kentron) refers to the poison-bearing point. Forgiveness in Christ has extracted that poison. Death can still pierce the heart with grief, but it cannot inject despair.
This does not mean Christians face death lightly. Even Jesus wept at Lazarus’s tomb. Resurrection faith does not anesthetize sorrow; it anchors it. Until Christ returns, we still endure the physical decline of the body and the emotional rupture of separation. Yet the Resurrection reframes these experiences. They are no longer endpoints but passages. The early Church did not eliminate funeral tears, but it transformed funerals into testimonies of hope. To believe in the Resurrection is not to deny death’s presence, but to deny its ultimacy.
What steadies the soul is not abstraction but relationship. Jesus does not say, “I will show you resurrection,” but “I am the resurrection.” Faith is not confidence in an outcome alone, but trust in a living Lord who has already crossed death’s threshold and returned. This is why Christian hope is resilient even in hospitals, cemeteries, and quiet rooms of goodbye. Resurrection is not wishful thinking; it is grounded in history, embodied in Christ, and promised to those united with Him.
On Second Thought
On second thought, the paradox of the Resurrection is this: death, which appears to be the greatest interruption of life, becomes in Christ the doorway through which life is finally clarified. We spend much of our lives avoiding death—pushing it to the margins of conversation, distracting ourselves from its certainty—yet Scripture invites us to look at it through the lens of Resurrection. The fear of death often masquerades as a love of life, but in truth it can shrink life, making us cautious where God calls us to trust, and reserved where God calls us to love fully. The Resurrection loosens that grip. When death no longer has the final word, we are freed to live more courageously in the present.
Here is the unexpected insight: the Resurrection is not only about what happens after we die; it reshapes how we live before we die. When fear of death is dethroned, generosity increases, forgiveness deepens, and obedience becomes less calculated. The early Christians did not seek martyrdom, but neither were they ruled by the threat of death. Their hope was not that they would avoid suffering, but that suffering itself had been redefined by Christ’s victory. On second thought, perhaps the greatest evidence that we believe in the Resurrection is not how confidently we face death, but how freely we live in love now—unafraid to give ourselves away because our lives are already secured in Christ.
FEEL FREE TO COMMENT, SUBSCRIBE, AND REPOST, SO OTHERS MAY KNOW