“He Will Never See Death”
John 8:42-59
In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit
St. John 8:51 “Very truly I tell you, whoever obeys my word will never see death.”
Dear fellow redeemed in Christ our Lord… As happens all too often when we hear or read God’s Word, we are tempted to make it say what we want it to say. Sometimes we tend to hear God’s Word in such a way that it gets twisted to conform to our personal interpretation or position, or to attack those who are our adversaries. Instead of submitting to God’s Word, we make God’s Word submit to us and to our purposes. That is never a good idea.
We see an example of this in today’s Gospel reading. Jesus said, “If anyone keeps My word, he shall never see death.” That statement angered the Jews. As Jesus spoke, and particularly when He said those words, they turned against Him because those words offered a strong and sure promise, the promise of never seeing death. And that promise was then and is today offered freely to everyone who keeps and holds onto Jesus’ words.
But notice how the Jews changed what Jesus said; notice how they subtly altered His words. They replied, “You say, ‘If anyone keeps My word, he shall never taste death.'” Do you see how they changed the Lord’s words? He said, “see death,” and they heard “taste death.” There are two different words in the Greek. Our Lord wasn’t talking about tasting death. He doesn’t mean, “Whoever keeps My words will never end up in the grave or experience the death of the body.” For that will surely happen to all people until the Lord’s return.
And well it should. For how else can we escape this body of death until it dies and is planted in the ground so that it might rise again? And how else shall we finally and forever be purified and cleansed of sin unless the sin that adheres so fiercely and stubbornly to our flesh is killed with Christ so that our bodies may rise with Christ restored and glorious? You remember what Jesus said: “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it produces much grain” (John 12:24).And so you die, and your body is buried so that it might rise better than you ever imagined, fully restored to perfect communion with God.
St. Paul says it this way: “The body is sown in corruption, it is raised in incorruption. It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. It is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body” (1 Cor 15:42-44).
All of this is according to the Lord’s mysterious and wonderful mercy. For after the disobedience of Adam and Eve, God pronounced the death sentence on all creation – not simply in anger, and not simply to punish, but also to purify and renew and re-create. And this is most certainly true for those who hold to Christ Jesus and His Word. For us, death is only a passing from this life to the next. And, if you can believe it, death is a blessing. And the blessing is this: those who die trusting in the Lord are with the Lord. It is written, “Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on; that they may rest from their labors, and their works follow them.” (Rev 14.13)
Death is a blessing only because our Lord Jesus Christ, the very Son of God, took on and defeated death for us to take away its poison from us. It is written in Hebrews, “We see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels, for the suffering of death crowned with glory and honor, that He, by the grace of God, might taste death for everyone” (Heb. 2:9). Jesus is Himself that true and ultimate grain of wheat planted and buried in the earth. When He died, He didn’t fake it; He didn’t pull off some trick or sleight of hand. Even though He escaped the hands of the Jews here in this reading when they tried to stone Him, He didn’t hide Himself or escape death on the cross. He endured the death we must endure. He died a real death, a horrible death, a necessary death…for you.
And if it is our hope to live with Him, we must also die with Him, for our life is tied to His in the waters of Holy Baptism. As it is written in Romans 6, “We were therefore buried with Him through baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life. If we have been united with Him in His death, we will certainly also be united with Him in His resurrection.” We who hold to Jesus must taste death. And that is good, and according to God’s mercy. For in death, we have life more fully. And through death, we attain our goal – life in the kingdom of heaven.
Yet our Lord Jesus still says today, “Whoever keeps My word shall never see death.” What does that mean? Well, it means that those who hold to Jesus shall never see the full wrath, the full fury, the full punishment, and the full curse of death. In other words, we shall never see eternal death and hell. And we shall never see God with His back turned against us. So, while we will taste of death, we will not see it or experience it in all its infernal horror.
In his sermon on this text in 1534, Luther puts it this way: “For the ungodly, they will see death, feel, and experience it, for they have not believed Christ’s Word and, as a result, will be terrified by death. They will not be able to outrun it but must forever remain in everlasting death, because they have disdained the wonderful, mighty medicine of God’s Word… But whoever heeds and trusts God’s Word will never see death, that is, he will not come into hell because he has forgiveness of his sin and beholds only grace and righteousness. Of course, we naturally have dread for the moment of death, but if we cling to Christ’s Word and believe it without doubting, we shall not see death, that is, feel it and experience it eternally, but will pass from this life as in a sleep and live forever.”
So then, let us hold fast to Jesus’ Word without altering it or changing it. Let us put to death our own ways and ideas and goals and desires and instead keep and receive and cling to the life that His Word gives. Ponder and meditate on the Word of Christ, for in so doing you will not see death but rather you will see Him who is Life incarnate.
That, of course, is the underlying reason why the Jews rejected Jesus; they couldn’t accept that He was, and is, God in the flesh. They were still in bondage to the lies of their father, the devil. The thing that caused them to pick up stones to kill Jesus was when He said, “Most assuredly I say to you, before Abraham was, I AM.” I AM is the name of God revealed to Moses in the burning bush. I AM is Yahweh, the Lord God Almighty. That’s who Jesus is claiming to be by saying this. And this, says Luther in that same sermon, “really vexed the Jews to the core… They take it to be blasphemy against God and say, ‘That is the very devil that this individual, born of a human being, states that He is God,’ and they become so violently aroused that they take up stones to stone him to death.”
But in truth, Jesus had not only seen Abraham and the prophets, but He is also the very Son of God who created them and gave them life, and who spoke to them and guided them. Again, Luther: “What [Jesus’ enemies] did not see or perceive was that according to His divine nature He was before Abraham, before all creatures, before the whole world, and, therefore, they were unable to see the wonderful identical prediction being true of Him, that this man was God, a truth which human reason is incapable of harmonizing.”
And here we have an excellent connection to Abraham, for in fact, it was the voice of Christ that Abraham heard which called out to him and told him not to harm Isaac when he was about to sacrifice his only son. It was the Angel of the Lord who spoke to Abraham – that is, the Messenger of the Father, the Son of God. This was no created angel, for He said to Abraham, “You have not withheld your son, your only son, from Me” (Gen 22:12),that is, from God Himself.
Though the Jews prided themselves on being descendants of Abraham and called him their father, they were not truly his children, for they did not share Abraham’s faith in God’s promises. Jesus said, “Your father Abraham rejoiced to see My day, and he saw it and was glad.” By faith Abraham trusted in God’s promises and was given to see what was coming in Christ. And one of the ways God showed Abraham what was coming was in the account of the offering up of Isaac. Not only was God testing Abraham’s faith in order to strengthen it, He was also giving a living prophecy of what His own Son would later do.
Consider the details of the Abraham and Isaac narrative; consider what was beautifully and mysteriously foreshadowed there. Isaac was the only son, the beloved son of Abraham, conceived in a miraculous way. So also, God the Father gave His only begotten and beloved Son, miraculously conceived by the Holy Spirit in the Blessed Virgin, to offer us deliverance from the power of sin and Satan and the grave.
It was a donkey that carried Abraham’s supplies to Mount Moriah, even as it was a donkey that carried our Lord into Jerusalem. When Abraham came to Moriah on the 3rd day, he said, “We will worship and then we will come back to you” (Gen 22:5). Jesus said to His disciples, “In a little while you will see Me no more, and then after a little while, you will see Me” (Jn 16:16). In other words, “I will go away and then I will come back to you in the power of the resurrection on the third day.”
Abraham laid the wood on Isaac his son, who carried it to the top of the mountain. Even so the Father laid the wood of the cross on His Son Jesus, and it was carried to the top of Mt. Calvary, the place of sacrifice. Just as Isaac was laid on the wood and bound, so Jesus was bound to the wood of the cross.
But the time for sacrificing the son would not come in Abraham’s day, but in Jesus’ day. After God stopped Abraham from sacrificing his own son, Abraham looked up and saw a male sheep, a ram caught in the thicket by its horns. Abraham offered it in place of his son. Even so, Jesus has offered up Himself in your place so that by faith in His work, you would be set free from the judgment of death. He purposely caught Himself in the thorny thicket of your sin so that you would be released from your bondage to the powers of hell and have everlasting life.
He who wore the crown of thorns on His head is that Lamb of God who was sacrificed as your substitute to pay for your sin and the sin of the world. In Christ the words of Abraham are fulfilled for you, “God Himself will provide the Lamb” (Gen 22:8). Abraham named that place, “Yahweh will Provide” (Gen 22:14), for on that holy mountain God provided for your salvation in His only Son, Jesus. Truly then, Abraham saw Jesus’ day and was glad.
You also are given to see Jesus’ day and be glad. For this is the Lord’s Day right now, today, where He gives Himself and shows Himself to you. This is the day you are given to taste Life in the Sacrament of His holy body and blood, so that you might never see death. This and every Lord’s Day is the day He feeds you with Himself for your forgiveness so that He might transfigure and re-create your death-riddled flesh, so that one day you might stand before Him in your renewed and resurrected flesh and share with Christ in His honor and glory. In the name…
