Everybody likes the thought of “happily ever after.” We want to find someone to spend the rest of our lives with, a person who will be by our side through thick and thin. We give rings as a token of our promise and make vows that say “until death do us part.” We want to live together and hope that only a coffin will separate us.
In accent times there was a common expression of love where someone would say, “We will live together and die together.” This thought captured the idea of being bound together for the rest of time. Paul took that sentiment and tweaked it a little when he wrote the letter of Second Corinthians. After having to scold the Corinthian Christians for their stubbornness, Paul wrote, “I do not say this to condemn you, for I said before that you are in our hearts, to die together and to live together (7:3).”
Paul reversed the order, and for good reason. Rather than “live together and die together,” he planned to die together and then live together. This only makes sense in light of the gospel. The unsaved Gentiles could pledge their love to live together, and in death they could be buried together, even being side by side at their final resting place. But they did not believe in life after death. We do, and that life will be far greater than this present one.
Only in Christ can we live together after we die. Obviously Paul is speaking of heaven and the eternal state, living forever in the presence of our Lord. And we will also live together with all those who have gone on before us, from the Old Testament saints all the way to our relatives we already miss. What an amazing thought, that I will be together forever with so many wonderful people! And even now I know that every time I attend a funeral for a fellow believer, it will only be a matter of time until I live with them again. And in that place there will never be another funeral.
We can try to wax poetic and channel our inner Shakespeare, finding ways to tell our significant other that we will be with them for all of life, but as Christians we can do even better, reminding them that we will not only live together, but also live together after we die.
But if we are being honest, the unbelievers will be together in death too, but it will not be pleasant. The truth is that we all will have life after death. As Jesus said of the sheep and the goats in Matthew 25:46, “And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.” Life continues after death, either in heaven or in hell.
Who are you going to live with after death?
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