Death is a very terrible thing. If you have never lost anyone, at least you know someone who has and it is extremely painful when we lose loved ones.
I have had some experiences with the pain death brings, I have lost friends, former classmates, personal icons and even family relations. I promise you there is nothing sweet about it. But the one question keeps popping up when we discuss death and it is this- If God is good, then why does he let people die? What kind of good God allows his
Statistically, an estimated 160,000 deaths happen around the world daily. I don’t blame or judge you if you have been pushed to the point where you doubt God’s goodness, probably because of a personal loss due to death. But as I empathize with you, I would try to answer the questions that surround death and God’s goodness. So let us get into it with the points below:
– Death is/was not God’s plan
The
He had created man differently from all the other creatures, he created man with the ability to choose. This was very important, because God created man to commune with him and to express mutual love.
The thing about love is, for it to be genuine, it must come from a place of free will. Love is no longer love when the power of choice is taken away. So God placed man in a garden, gave him commandments to cater to it, and then instructed him not to eat of the fruit of one of the trees. Man was not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. God said the day he eats of the tree, he shall surely die. This left man with a choice, obey God and live forever in a perfect environment, disobey and die.
Well, as the story unfolds, the woman was deceived by the devil (serpent), she ate of the fruit and offered it to the man, who also ate of it. That act of disobedience marked the fall of man and true to what God said,
Man’s act of disobedience meant he had to be separated from God (the source of life). This separation also inevitably would result in physical death (separation of spirit from
But God is an all-knowing, infinitely wise and extravagantly merciful being. He had preempted the fall of man and had thought out a perfect plan to remedy the results of the fall, even before man was created. So many years after our first parents fell in the garden, God decides to become a man. He was born through a virgin, to prove his deity and all these for the purpose of saving man from death. This leads me to the next point.
The Gospel is the Answer
The promise we are given in the gospel is the promise of eternal life, this is the only concrete hope you can actually offer a man.
For the gospel is that Jesus paid for man’s sins by his death and those who believe in his death and resurrection receive life
We see how God is all about the solution and not the source of the problem. Death is a painful reality, but for those who put absolute faith in the saving work of Jesus, there is an assurance of resurrection from the dead.
For the gospel is that Jesus paid for man’s sins by his death and those who believe in his death and resurrection receive life eternal. Click To TweetIt only makes sense that one believes in the promise of the resurrection of the dead through Jesus Christ, because he himself rose from the dead and promised the same thing to those who place their trust in him.
So if you have lost anyone, I empathize with you and I know it hurts badly. But those who died in Christ are just sleeping, one day when Christ comes for us, we would rise with him and be together for eternity. Glory!!! Then we shall boldly proclaim that death has been defeated. This is a plea to you, rather than doubt the goodness of God, as a result of death, accept the solution he has provided through Jesus Christ.
Rather than doubt the goodness of God, as a result of death, accept the solution he has provided through Jesus Christ. Click To TweetFor God is good all the time and all the time God is good!!!
Don’t forget to read – Is God Really Good? – Revealing The Other Actors