Death is Swallowed in Victory

1 Corinthians 15:26,54-55: "The last enemy to be destroyed is death. When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: 'Death has been swallowed up in victory.'"

When man chose to rebel against the holiness of God by partaking of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, he knew that God had declared previously that death was the consequence for this rebellion. Still Adam and Eve, the first humans to be created by God, chose to commit cosmic treason against the Sovereign Lord by trying to usurp His Rightful Throne. God then pronounced His Divine judgment upon humanity, and banned our fore-parents from the Garden of Eden and placed guardian cherubs with flaming swords at its entrance to protect the tree of life from being consumed. At first glance, it seems that God's prohibition of our consumption of such a tree that would bring life is rather calloused and hardhearted; however, when one begins to reflect upon this protective response to our sin, one can see that God really loves us and desires to save us from the terrible effects of our sin. For if humanity would have consumed the tree of life after having sinned against the LORD, then our eternal state would have been one of witnessing the ever wasting away of our bodies without the deliverance from the consequences of sin. Many of you may have visited people whose declining health had led them to a point of incapacitation. What a tragedy it would be for us to experience this process of continuous, eternal, physical and spiritual decline without the hope of deliverance through death. In God's act of judgment of proscribing death for man's sin; He in fact was merciful in providing a way of escape. Death separates us from the physical effects of sin, whereupon we are ushered into the presence of God Himself.

This reality makes Jesus Christ's resurrection even more significant. His victory over death through His bodily resurrection assures the believer in Christ the hope of being resurrected imperishable and immortal. And when the follower of Jesus Christ experiences this wonderful reunion of body and spirit in the state of sinless perfection, free from decay (as God originally intended), then he can truly say, "Death has been swallowed up in victory."