DO you believe in the vicarious character of the passion and death of Jesus?
Do you confess with deep thankfulness that the suffering, which in accordance with God’s righteous judgment should have come to you, Jesus has borne for you, so that you did not suffer it, neither suffer it now, nor will suffer it eternally? And do you likewise confess, that the death, which you had deserved, was endured by Jesus in your stead, so that He died for you, and so died the death which you should have had to die?
If so, why then is it, that you also die? If the bailsman pays, he who obtained the bailsman (surety) does not pay. The selfsame punishment is not twice exacted. By nature and according to the creation-ordinance of God you would not have died, but without death and without dying you would have been changed into higher glory. Then because of and by sin death as punishment for that sin has come into the world. Thereby alone. Only as punishment. If then Jesus has borne for you that punishment of dying, that punishment of death—and you believe this—does it not follow from this that you are rid of death, that death has no more claim on you, and that, when death knocks at your door, you can turn him away by showing him your receipt, which shows that neither suffering nor dying are charged up against you any more, since both of these have been settled for you and in your stead by Jesus?
Death, indeed, according to Holy Scripture, has not been suffered by more than one of God’s saints. Of Enoch it is written, not that he died, as the other patriarchs, but that God took him, in consequence of which he was not. Of Elijah we read, that he went up in a fiery chariot with fiery horses. Jesus said to Peter regarding John: “If I will, that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee?” A saying, which at the same time implies the possibility of passing without dying into glory. And the apostle does not merely say most positively, that they, who confess Jesus in the hour of His return, shall not die, but be changed, but at the same time makes it clearly evident, that he would have thought it, O, so glorious, if that high privilege had been accorded him.
After the vicarious dying of Jesus it would have to be so; from what we quoted, appears that it can. And so the question of the Heidelberger is not to be evaded: Since then Christ died for us, why must we also die? And ever yet there is no better answer given than what the Heidelberger gives: Our death is not a satisfaction for our sins, but only an abolishing of sin, and a passage into eternal life.
FROM this it is clearly evident, that he who falls asleep in his Lord and Savior, does not “die the death” in the sense of Gen. 2, 17, neither dies the death such as Jesus died it upon Golgotha, yea, he does not die like those who die outside of Jesus.
In Gen. 2, 17 death is threatened as a punishment, as the real satisfaction for sin. On Golgotha Jesus dies the death as punishment, and thus at the same time as the satisfaction for sin. And whoever dies outside of Jesus, still undergoes death as punishment, and therefore as a satisfaction for his own sin.
In the same hospital ward two patients may die at the same moment, and the dying of one be something altogether different from the dying of the other.
For the one his punishment, that dreadful satisfaction for his own sin, which now makes a beginning; and for the other a glorious grace of God and his entrance upon eternal life.
This may seem to be the same, but it is not the same.
They both pass through the same gate, but scarcely have they passed the gate, but beyond it the two ways run altogether apart. The one goes below into the eternal death, and the just man goes the other way above, to the holy Zion of God.
And that we are so frequently mistaken in this, is, because we look upon the “giving up of the ghost” as the real dying, as the real death.
Real death only begins after dying. With dying death is not ended, but giving up of the spirit is to the lost but the first step, which he takes on the path of eternal death. Beyond the gate of dying death spreads itself out endlessly in the eternal depth.
And therefore the difference is no less than this, that he who falls asleep in his Lord and Savior, truly passes through the gate of dying, but never enters into death, while he who dies outside of Jesus at once after dying sinks away along the steep path of death, forever to remain a prey of death, and without ever being able to escape from the bands of death.
That Jesus unloosed those bands of eternal death, we owe to His Divine nature. But whoever is man, and only man, can, once sunken away in death, never more escape from death.
Hence the redeemed of the Lord truly die, but without ever for one moment coming under the power of death.
So when they die, they do not go leftward into the depth of death, but rightward up the high path of life.
Giving up the ghost, breathing out the last breath, is for them nothing but passing through the gate, which from this world leads to the world which is with God, and thus for him who dies in Jesus, nothing but a passage into eternal life.
YOU should never therefore compare the dying of Jesus with your own dying.
For Jesus dying was equally as terrible as it is glorious for you.
Once he had passed through the gate, Jesus had to take the downward path on the left, into the depth of eternal death.
Had Jesus’ dying been nothing else than your dying, His soul would not have trembled, as in Gethsemane, but far more glorious still than the most beloved child of God on earth, rejoicing and jubilating, He would have gone to die.
The way of suffering would not have been to Him a way of blood and tears, but one of triumph. A going away from this world to the world above. An escape from the oppression of this life, to enter upon the liberty and glory of God’s children.
But it was not thus for Jesus.
Jesus did not merely die, but He died the death. As it reads in Gen. 2, 17: thou shalt die the death (Dutch version, or “dying thou shalt die”), is what has come upon your Savior. He did not merely give up the ghost, but He underwent the punishment of death, that that punishment of death might never more come upon you.
He did not by way of dying enter into heaven, but after dying, He decended into the depth of eternal death. And only after having sunken away in the depth of eternal death, thanks to the invincible power of His Divine nature, He ascended again, and entered into Paradise, from Paradise, after His resurrection, to return to this world again, and only after forty days from the mount of Olives to go into heaven.
THAT nevertheless for us the passage to eternal life goes through the gate of death, is only explained from the fact, that we are no independent individuals, but are related to the whole human race.
Only when the human race shall come to an end, and Jesus comes again, will that gate be avoidable. Then without dying God’s saints will go into eternity.
But so long as the human race in its entirety is not yet born in all its generations, and new generations must yet come, history on earth goes on, life here on earth is not yet ended, and thus whoever shall enter into eternal life, must be led out from this life, be altogether separated from the living, for a time say farewell to this world, and to this end shake off his body, that now, delivered from the body of this death, provisionally, and in expectation of what is to come afterward, he may enter heaven.
Otherwise he should have to remain upon earth, and wait till the last child on earth had been born, and history came to an end.
He should have to remain here on earth all the time until the coming again of the Lord.
This the Lord spares His saints.
He knows, that this endless permanence here on earth, would become an unbearable burden to them.
He knows that here on earth His saints are still vexed by all sorts of sin and misery. And that in the soul they are homesick, to be delivered from this less-holy state.
He hears the deep call, which now and then ascends from the soul of every believer: “O, wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death” (Rom. 7, 24).
And therefore He calls them off. Therefore He makes an end to this condition. Therefore He does not let them wait, but lets them already now enter into His heaven, that there, far more glorious than on earth, they can await the return of the Lord.
And though this goes through dying, He makes their dying easy, He safeguards them against every contact with real death, and His angels await them on the other side of the gate, to carry them into the Fatherhouse.
For this reason for believers such dying has become a grace.
A grace, for which already here on earth they call upon God. And very certainly a grace, for which, as they enter heaven, they offer Him ardent thanks.