O Death, Where Is Thy Sting?

I had an amazing moment the other day, that I’d really like to share with you. It instantly overhauled something really important for me, and gave me a hope and a vision I never had before.

But first, I need to set the stage. Buckle up; I’m going to cover a lot of ground in a hurry, to get to the point.

I’ve been in the midst of deconstructing a lot of my former religious identity for a few years, and adopting a rather different theological stance than before. One big part of the change for me has been that I’m no longer interested in devoting myself to institutional church life.

But the down side of that, I’ve discovered, is that in our American culture, it’s really quite hard to build a faith community outside the walls of an institution. We’ve become so devoted to that practice that most of us have no idea how to escape it.

But I can’t escape the deep awareness that Jesus told His disciples to “go and make disciples” (Matthew 28:19) – which I conclude must also apply to their disciples, repeated all the way down to us today. And I’m not released from a call to pass along what I’ve learned, simply because I’ve concluded that an institution isn’t the right form of assembling of the people of God into a body we call “the Church.”

And that’s where the rubber just isn’t meeting the road today. I haven’t yet found a way to do that discipleship, and I can’t bring myself to adopt what I really do think is a failed and unbiblical definition of “church” just to find ways to disciple others. I’ve been reading Frank Viola’s books about “Organic Church” and “Pagan Christianity,” and he makes some very compelling points about how much harm the institution model has done to the faith. And I really don’t want much part in it.

And even before reading his books, I’d already concluded that the modern church system is shockingly bad at making disciples. If we were doing even a partly decent job of it, Christianity would be an explosively growing, vibrant and glowing reflection of God all around the world – but what we actually see is that it’s just not. Christians as a share of world population declined from about 31% in 2010 to 29% in 2020, even though the total number climbed slightly as the world population increased. And in America, it’s far worse – the percentage of American adults identifying as Christian has fallen from 78% in 2007, to 62% in 2024. If there ARE disciples being made, it’s at far below pure replacement numbers. And most of those people identifying as Christian aren’t reproducing themselves.

So SOMETHING is wrong. In America at least, the Christian community seems to have adopted a “Henry Ford” model of church: mass production of mediocre quality believers, not true disciples who are deeply changed to conform to the model of Jesus. Because as I explored previously in “Exponential Christianity”, if Christians each produced just a few disciples in their lifetimes, actual true disciples who were really modeling the life and character of Jesus, it would take less than a hundred years to see the entire world discipled – over eight billion people. Of course that ideal falls victim to the practicalities of exponential growth – it’s not really that sustainable – but we certainly should expect to see far, far more people being discipled than we do. Instead, most churches seem happy to simply keep track of how many people say some sinner’s prayer and then move on to the next unchurched person they want to target for conversion.

So the rubber – making disciples – just isn’t meeting the road of making disciples.

And that puts a burning in my heart to do my part. I can’t fix the church, but I also can’t just throw my hands up and give up. But, like I said, making disciples seems to revolve around the problem of having people in close relationship to actually have a chance to disciple them. And without institution, I just don’t know how. Because that’s the only context I know.

And I find myself here in my mid 50s, finally feeling like God has given me things that I’m supposed to pour into others – and I’m even more convinced of that than I was in my more arrogant youth – but I have nobody to pour into. And it feels like I wasted a large chunk of my life, and I’ve only got a few years more before it’s my turn to “shuffle off this mortal coil,” as Shakespeare’s Hamlet said.

In other words, I’ve been fretting over an increasing sense of uselessness.

But as I was pondering this trouble, that’s when something occurred to me. Still, before I get to that, I’ve got to build a bit more context.

As I’ve described in several other posts in the last few years, I’m a Christian universalist. I really do believe that God was serious when Romans 5:18 says “through one act of righteousness the result was justification of life to all mankind.” Or 2 Peter 3:9 saying that God was “not willing for ANY to perish but for ALL to come to repentance“. Or Ephesians 1:3-14 which says “the summing up of ALL things in Christ, things in the heavens and things on the earth in Him“. Or Revelations 5:11-14 which describes “EVERY created thing which is in heaven and on the earth and under the earth and on the sea, and ALL things in them” praising God – not grudgingly, but with awe and wonder.

And along with that belief in universal reconciliation to God, I have also increasingly become convinced of the truth of an incarnated body in the afterlife, that we will be given new fleshy but immortal and perfect bodies on a restored earth, on which we will rule and reign with Christ forever. It starts back in Isaiah 26:19 which says “Your dead shall live, their corpses shall rise” and Daniel 12:2-3 which says “Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life and some to shame and everlasting contempt.” (I know, I know, “everlasting contempt” initially looks like it argues against universal salvation. But I discussed the meaning of “everlasting” in my posts about universalism.) And in the New Testament, there are a multitude of verses, like 1 Corinthians 15:51-53, which says “For this perishable body must put on imperishability, and this mortal body must put on immortality.“

As to the earth, we learn it will be renewed and restored from verses like Isaiah 65:17-25, which says “For I am about to create new heavens and a new earth; the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind.” Or Romans 8:19–23 saying “For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God … because the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay.” And 2 Peter 3:13 which says “But, in accordance with his promise, we wait for new heavens and a new earth, where righteousness is at home.“

And I believe that Revelation 21 provides the clearest picture of this. Revelation 21:1–4 says

“Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away…. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying,

‘See, the home of God is among mortals.
He will dwell with them;
they will be his peoples,
and God himself will be with them….’

‘Death will be no more;
mourning and crying and pain will be no more….'”

Notice the movement is not humans going up to heaven, but God’s dwelling coming down to earth. And Revelation 21:24–26 says “The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it.”

So the final biblical scene is a restored garden-city filled with human life in God’s presence. You might ask, “So what? It’s all the good people!” Well, that conflicts with Revelation 21:25-27, which says, “The gates will never be shut by day, and there will be no night there. People will bring into it the glory and honor of the nations. But nothing unclean will enter it, nor anyone who practices abomination or falsehood, but only those who are written in the Lamb’s book of life.” So… the gates will always be open, but there will still be those outside the city who have not yet been cleansed. But don’t miss this: that scene is AFTER the great judgement scene! Somehow, AFTER God has revealed everything in every heart, and handed out the due penalties, life will continue, with much of its messiness and plenty of unreconciled people.

Now, I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve decided that most of Revelation is very non-literal, very hyperbolic, and full of fantastical, mythological imagery. Am I going out on a literalist limb here to then claim that the parts of Revelation I like are literal, while the ones I don’t like are not? Well, perhaps. But I think the wide sweep of scripture supports this idea. I’m not a person who believes in the univocality of the Bible, either – I think a lot of different writers brought very different, and sometimes contradictory, ideas to scripture. But at the same time, I do sense that these real, diverse, and imperfect humans were nonetheless struggling to share a real truth that they’d encountered in part. And so if they were all dimly connecting with Truth, I sense that the Bible does have a certain trustworthy sweep to it, and in that sweep, I find one of the consistent ideas is that our eternal existence will be embodied, incarnate, in a real physical eternal universe – that needs our rule with Christ to bring the Kingdom into greater and greater existence.

So what happens when I put all these ideas together? Let me refresh our memory here:
– Institutional church isn’t making disciples like it should
– But we’re called to make disciples
– But I can’t find a community where that seems possible in today’s culture
– Still, when I think about scripture, it seems I’m going to be around for eternity
– And it will be on a renewed earth with an eternal body, that is connected to the soul in me today

And that’s where something popped for me the other day, and I finally think I’ve given enough context here for it to make sense:

*** My usefulness to the Kingdom does NOT end when I die. ***

In fact, in the context of eternity, I’m just barely getting started!

It may have taken God some 50 years to get me to where I am now, and that process surely won’t stop here. Why would God spend all this time refining and purging my soul and my mind, just to take me to heaven and say “welp, that’s that. Thanks for playing. Welcome to your reward. Now worship Me for eternity.”

As I was growing up evangelical, the picture of Heaven that I had was rather simplistic: streets of gold, huge mansions to inhabit, simply standing around the throne all day singing the praise of the perfect King, casting my crown at God’s feet. In fact, my entire life could have been reduced down to that golden crown – every good thing I did was embodied in that circlet of gold, to be cast at God’s feet as evidence of God’s glory.

But something smells fishy about that. Does God need tens of billions of golden crowns scattered at the foot of the throne to show God’s glory? Or would the glory actually be a people made into the image and likeness of Christ, living out righteousness from moment to moment? Go back and read those descriptions of Revelation 21 – I don’t see any image of sitting in disembodied spiritual bliss for eternity anywhere in there. Instead, I see an image of embodied work to be done, building the Kingdom, inviting in those who still are outside the gates of the glorious city.

In other words, that call to be busy making disciples won’t end just because I die. If Jesus went ahead of me to prepare a place for me, I hope to God it’s not some spiritual mansion where I’ll rest in peace for eternity; I hope it’s a place for me to live and serve the Kingdom with my fellow siblings in Christ.

So suddenly the other day, 1 Corinthians 15:55 took on an amazing new life for me: “O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?” It’s not “hah! I get to go to heaven and live forever.” It’s SO much richer than that: it’s “Hey, death, you can’t stop the purpose of God for my being, just because my time on earth has ended; hey grave, you’ve got no hold on what God created in me. My life, my growth, my purpose, will continue forever!”

Praise God!

I’m going to end by reading Ephesians 1:3 through 2:10. Listen to this from the new perspective I’m describing: what if all this glory doesn’t just… end… when you die? What if literally everything in this glorious passage holds true for eternity, not just your few short years on earth? I think it hits VERY differently, and it’s overwhelmingly powerful.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, just as he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love. He destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace that he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace that he lavished on us. With all wisdom and insight he has made known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure that he set forth in Christ, as a plan for the fullness of time, to gather up all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth. In Christ we have also obtained an inheritance, having been destined according to the purpose of him who accomplishes all things according to his counsel and will, so that we, who were the first to set our hope on Christ, might live for the praise of his glory. In him you also, when you had heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and had believed in him, were marked with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit; this is the pledge of our inheritance toward redemption as God’s own people, to the praise of his glory.

I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, and for this reason I do not cease to give thanks for you as I remember you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may perceive what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe, according to the working of his great power. God put this power to work in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come. And he has put all things under his feet and has made him the head over all things for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.

You were dead through the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work among those who are disobedient. All of us once lived among them in the passions of our flesh, doing the will of flesh and senses, and we were by nature children of wrath, like everyone else, but God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ – by grace you have been saved – and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God – not the result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we may walk in them.

Okay, so I don’t know about you, but I’m inspired. “For the ages to come” – you and I will be part of that! This is powerful stuff, and as for me, I’m thrilled to suddenly have a sense that this is all for something good, even if I can’t see how it will work here in my lifetime.