The Pastor’s Cut: Every sermon leaves something behind. Time runs out, but insight remains. The Pastor’s Cut is where those hidden pieces come to light. Each week, I revisit a passage I preached and share a truth, angle, or application that didn’t make it into Sunday’s message.
On Sunday we looked at the Great White Throne Judgment in Revelation 20:11–15. It is one of the most sobering passages in all of Scripture. Every person who has ever lived will one day stand before Jesus Christ to give an account. For those outside of Christ, it will be the day they discover that every excuse has vanished and every sin stands exposed. For those whose names are written in the Lamb’s Book of Life, however, it will be the day they look into the face of both their Judge and their Redeemer.
One detail from the passage deserves a little more attention than I had time to give it on Sunday. He writes:
“And the sea gave up the dead who were in it, Death and Hades gave up the dead who were in them, and they were judged, each one of them, according to what they had done. Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire.”
Notice was John has done here. He has personified Death and imagined Christ hauling Death over his shoulders as if Death were a defeated enemy and tossing him into the Lake of Fire. The symbolism of Death and Hades being thrown into an eternal inferno powerfully illustrates one of the great themes of Revelation, the ancient existence of Death as an enemy of God, and yet Christ’s sovereign rule over it.
Throughout Revelation, we have watched John describe the systematic defeat of all of Christ’s enemies. The prostitute is defeated. The Beast and the prophet are thrown into the Lake of Fire. The Dragon is defeated and thrown into the Lake of Fire. Then, after every spiritual enemy has been defeated, only one remains, death itself.
Interestingly, this is exactly how the Apostle Paul, in a separate book of the Bible, describes the process. In 1 Corinthians 15, the Apostle Paul is in the midst of describing the resurrection when he writes:
“For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. But each in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ. Then comes the end, when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death.”
The parallel is striking. According to Paul, Christ reigns and destroys every spiritual enemy. Then once every spiritual enemy is defeated, he defeats Death itself. What Paul explained, John has described in story format. What Paul has outlined, John has colored in.
This is not simply some connecting of the dots in the Biblical text. This is living theology. It is for this reason that Christians have never viewed Death as something natural. Our culture loves to speak about Death as the natural way of things. But this is a false understanding of reality. Death was not part of God’s original design. There was no death before sin, and there will be no death in heaven. Death is a foreign enemy. But it is also a defeated enemy. The resurrection of Christ was the declaration of the death of death. And when Christ throws that ancient enemy into the Lake of Fire, it will the culminating end to that enemies reign.
That is one of the great hopes of the Christian faith. We do not merely believe that we will survive death. We believe that Christ has defeated death through his resurrection, and will abolish death forever when he returns.
