The Rejuvenating Power of the Gospel: Who Abolished Death ...

In response to Timothy's spiritual fatigue and timidity Paul has taken his student, friend, and fellow preacher  back to the garden of grace we call the gospel. Using "the gospel" as a set of bookends (see vs. 8 and 10) Paul gives him a beautiful reminder that the gospel story - "God at his best" -  is necessary for the believer's soul is to be refreshed and rejuvenated for the work of ministry. Paul preaches the gospel to Timothy and in so doing reminds us all that preaching the gospel to our own hearts is both a privilege and a necessity.

The salvation granted to us in Christ has come about through the plan and purpose of God,  put into play long before human history began. Paul wants this to wash over Timothy, and bring him the  peace only an assured security in God's arms can bring. His own works have not brought about this peace;  it has been the work of Christ, comprehensive and complete, that has rescued and reformed him, and granted him full status as a child of God.

This plan of God, long promised and described in the Old Testament, has at last come to light through the revelation of Jesus Christ. The Savior has appeared, and now the world knows just how the promise of God to reverse the curse will be accomplished. Through the cross and the empty grave, death has been abolished, and life and immortality have been brought to light.

One of the great theological writings of all time is John Owen's great "Death of Death in the Death of Christ." This magnificent treatise on the death of Christ, while wordy, is a treasure that many believers today have never found. It is worth finding, and reading, and even re-reading. The title gives the main point: On the cross, death died. The writer of Hebrews sums it up beautifully in Hebrews 2:14:

"Therefore, since the children share in flesh and blood, He Himself likewise also partook of the same, that through death He might render powerless him who had the power of death, that is, the devil,  15 and might free those who through fear of death were subject to slavery all their lives." (emphasis mine)


Paul understood that Jesus' death was really the death of Satan's most powerful weapon. With death being the "wages of sin"  it was a debt that had to be paid. God's law demanded it while his justice required it. Death was the great unassailable mountain that stood between the sinner and any hope of reunion with God. The sentence must be carried out in full. Yet, God's love determined to redeem those sentenced to this death. And just when his justice and love seemed at eternal odds, God's wisdom stepped in with the perfect plan, designed, initiated and revealed in the perfect man ... Jesus. 


When Jesus cried "it is finished" it was. Sin's bondage, maintained by the chains of death, was forever broken. In one of Paul's most famous passages he explains this joyful circumstance: "For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death" (Romans 8:2).  Paul forces Timothy to remember this, to focus on it, and to rest in it. The Gospel, like a most comfortable feather bed, receives the repentant, believing sinner and enfolds him with the comfort of eternal forgiveness and acceptance. All because Jesus Christ, on the cross, has abolished death.


I don't know if Timothy understood Paul's writing here. I don't know if it set his heart on fire with thanksgiving and praise. I don't know if his soul gained any uplift at all. What I do know is that the Spirit determined to preserve these God-words for us, carruing them down through the channels of time. He has done this for a reason.  Like Timothy, we all need a daily dose of remembrance. And there is nothing like knowing that death - that great enemy of the living - no longer need be feared. Its power has been drained out, and it no longer can hold us. We have been freed by Christ to live an eternal kind of life that happily begins here and now. 


Hope this helps,


David