The Last Enemy
Friday Highlight – The Last Enemy
1 Corinthians 15:26 – The last enemy to be destroyed is death.
Death is our constant enemy. It started in the garden. We were born with access to the Tree of Life, so we were made to live forever in loving communion with God, but then we fell. We disobeyed God and brought something new and horrible into God’s good creation: death. As author David Gibson describes it:
“The unfolding story of Scripture reveals that Adam and Eve’s death began that day even if it did not arrive in full that day. From the moment they vandalized the garden in their rebellion against their loving heavenly Father, introducing sin into the world, they embarked on a one-way journey to an appointment with death that began to cast its long shadow over the once-perfect creation.”[1]
Since then, we’re all born onto a conveyor belt with only one destination. Its ceaseless motion draws us ever closer to that appointment with death. Naturally, we hate it. We fight against it. Collectively, the American people spend billions of dollars to defy death and aging. Why? Our hearts long for eternity. We were made for it, and Ecclesiastes 3:11 says that God “has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.” We constantly crave purpose, beauty, community, and eternity. Blaise Pascal famously described our longings as a “God-shaped hole” in our hearts:
“What else does this craving, and this helplessness, proclaim but that there was once in man a true happiness, of which all that now remains is the empty print and trace? This he tries in vain to fill with everything around him, seeking in things that are not there the help he cannot find in those that are, though none can help, since this infinite abyss can be filled only with an infinite and immutable object; in other words by God himself.”[2]
Do you feel that longing? Does it ache? To this, the Holy Spirit through the Apostle Paul pours a healing balm: The last enemy to be destroyed is death (1 Cor 15:26). Let those words sink in. The itch we’ve all been trying to scratch since Genesis 3 will finally be done away with. The life you’ve always longed for, life that can never end, life abounding in joy and peace, will finally be manifested. How? Death itself will die. God the Father will put every rule, authority, and power–all enemies–under the feet of Jesus (v 24-25). Death rules over this world, it has authority and power, but it will not always be so. There will come a day, and it could be any day, when the trumpet will sound, the Lord Jesus will descend, and everything sad will be undone. All injustice will be dealt with. Every tear will be wiped away. Even death, which has been a constant enemy, always nipping at our heels, will be completely eliminated.
But we’re not there yet. We can’t lose sight of this life simply because the next one will be so amazing. We know that “in this tent [our earthly bodies] we groan, longing to put on our heavenly dwelling” (2 Cor 5:2), but we have to remember that God put us in these bodies, in this life, on purpose (1 Cor 15:38). There are no accidents. He doesn’t make mistakes. He put us here on purpose and with purpose. He has work for us to do while we’re here. What is that work? Building up the church (Eph 4:12). Loving our neighbor (1 Cor 10:24). Keeping in step with the Spirit (Gal 5:25). Bearing the image of Christ (1 Cor 15:49). In short, walking in holiness (1 Thess 4:7).
To be clear, these are not the things we do in order to be saved from death. That’s backwards. These are the things God has called us to do–and empowered by his Spirit–as a result of our salvation. The death and resurrection of Jesus alone defeats sin and death, which sets us free from the dominion of sin and enables us to walk in holiness.
This week, let’s seek to live in this world with the end in mind. Like a stained glass window, you can simultaneously see the artwork and what’s on the other side. Like a landscape painting, you can see what’s in the foreground and the mountain peak in the distance. You know what’s coming. You know the end of the story. As you groan inwardly with the desire for your eternal home, as you feel the ache of living in a sin-soaked world, as you weep over the reality of death and loss, keep this in mind: Death can’t win. In the end, it will be destroyed. God’s in charge. He will make all things new (Rev 21:5).
[1] David Gibson, The Lord of Psalm 23: Jesus Our Shepherd, Companion, and Host. (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2023), 59.
[2] Blaise Pascal, Pensées, trans. W. F. Trotter (Grand Rapids, MI: Christian Classics Ethereal Library, n.d.), VII(425).