Death Defeated
Knowing that Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more; death hath no more dominion over him.
Romans 6:9
When my wife and I were students in college, we used to take long walks into the country. Nearby was an old graveyard where we would go to read the epitaphs on the tombstones. Ever since then, I have liked to go to old cemeteries in various parts of the world. Whenever we wandered through a graveyard and looked at the tombstones or went into a church and examined the old monuments, we would see one heading on most of them: “Here lies . . .” Then followed the name, with the date of death and perhaps some praise of the good qualities of the deceased. But how different is the epitaph on the tomb of Jesus! It is neither written in gold nor cut in stone. It is spoken by the mouth of an angel and is the exact reverse of what is put on all other tombs: “He is not here: for he is risen, as he said” (Matthew 28:6).
At the end of his great book Fathers and Sons, Ivan Turgenev described a village graveyard in one of the remote corners of Russia. Along the many neglected graves was one untouched by man, untrampled by beast. Only the birds rested upon it and sang at daybreak. Often from the nearby village two feeble old people, husband and wife, moving with heavy steps and supporting one another, came to visit this grave. Kneeling down at the railing and gazing intently at the stone under which their son was lying, they yearned and wept. After a brief word they wiped the dust away from the stone, set straight a branch of a fir tree, and then began to pray. In this spot they seemed to be nearer their son and their memories of him. And then Turgenev asks, “Can it be that their prayers, their tears, are fruitless? Can it be that love, sacred, devoted love, is not all powerful? Oh no, however passionate, sinning, and rebellious the heart hidden in the tomb, the flowers growing over it peep serenely at us with their innocent eyes. They tell us not of eternal peace alone, of that great peace of indifferent nature; they tell us, too, of eternal reconciliation and of life without end.”
Turgenev was offering hope of an eternal reconciliation. But upon what is that hope based? It is based upon the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Our Father and our God, You have won the victory over death. And because You have, I will also conquer death and live forever. I am ever thankful, Father, for my hope of everlasting life. It makes this frustrating life so much more bearable when I remember Jesus Christ, crucified for me. I pray, therefore, in His powerful name. Amen.
Billy Graham, Unto the Hills: A Daily Devotional (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2010).