Coming to Grips with Mortality

Genesis 3:19

For dust you are
and to dust you will return.

It finally happened. I got COVID.

After a year and a half, maybe I thought I’d never get it.

And if I got it, I’d be asymptomatic.

And if I had symptoms, they wouldn’t be that bad.

And if they were bad, at least I wouldn’t be on a ventilator.

And if I got put on a ventilator, I wouldn’t die.

Right?

Well, I’ve ended up somewhere in the middle of that list. I’ve had symptoms. They haven’t been enough to put me in the hospital. And so the worst part has been sitting alone most of the time in my bedroom or in the backyard since my pregnant wife thankfully hasn’t tested positive, and we want to keep it that way. I’ve been wearing a mask in my own house.

In my solitude I’ve had to come to grips with my mortality. “Dust you are, David. To dust you will return.”

But when do we truly come to grips with mortality? Sickness is a reminder. But most of the times we get sick, we also get better. Chronic pain or illness are constant evidence. But even those seem more a part of life than of death. In fact, what does not kill you, may make you feel more and more invincible. Down, but not out. You can take your lumps, but nothing can defeat you.

God wants us to come to grips with mortality. It is the devil who wants us to act as if we’ll live on earth forever. “You will not certainly die” (Genesis 3:4). He wants us to love this life and this world more than we love God. But if it were true that we would live forever on earth, what hope would we have of escaping the illness and pain and troubles of this world?

The Bible makes it plain that we will die. “For dust you are, and to dust you will return” (Genesis 3:19). The word die appears 564 times in the Bible. Death appears 465 times. Sometimes they refer to the death of a person. Sometimes God’s talking about why people die. “The one who sins is the one who will die” (Ezekiel 18:20). “Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned” (Romans 5:12). “The wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23).

When we come to grips with mortality, then we come to grips with the gravity of our sin. Since 1976 in our justice system, the only people sentenced to death have been murderers. Under God’s justice system, the penalty for any sin, no matter how small, is death. Even the act of eating fruit from a tree—an act that seemingly harmed no one—but because God had forbidden it, it was enough to bring sin and death into the world.

God’s desire for us to come to grips with mortality is not so that he can hold death over our heads. It is not as if he says, “As long as you do good, you will not die.” He wants us to understand death so that we seek life. No amount of good we do could stop us from dying. No amount of good can erase the offense we have committed against God.

But God can erase it. God has given us life even though we deserve the death penalty. “The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 6:23). “For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous” (Romans 5:19).

God wants us to come to grips with mortality so that our grip on our Savior Jesus tightens more and more. “Whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).