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“We Were Not Designed For Death”
So what is the Christian hope, which not only explains why we feel death is so unnatural but also gives us the ability to face and even triumph over it?
In John 11 Jesus comes to the tomb of his friend Lazarus, who has recently died. Both verses 33 and 38 say that while he was weeping with grief he was also snorting with anger. Jesus could not have been weeping for Lazarus because he knew he was about to raise him from the dead. What, then, was he so grieved and angry about? He was furious at the sin and death that had ruined the creation and people he loved.
The book of John makes it clear that Jesus claimed to be God, and so it is significant that he could be angry at death without being angry at himself. The book of Genesis explains how this could be so. Death was not part of God’s original design. We were not created to age, weaken, fade, and die.
We were not created for love relationships that end in death. Death is an intrusion, a result of sin and our human race’s turning away from God. Our sense even now that we were made to last, that we were made for love without parting, is a memory trace of our divine origins. We are trapped in a world of death, a world for which we were not designed.
Excerpt from Making Sense of God: An Invitation to the Skeptical by Timothy Keller
Reprinted by arrangement with Viking Books, a member of Penguin Group (USA) LLC, A Penguin Random House Company. Copyright © 2016 by Timothy Keller
So what is the Christian hope, which not only explains why we feel death is so unnatural but also gives us the ability to face and even triumph over it?
In John 11 Jesus comes to the tomb of his friend Lazarus, who has recently died. Both verses 33 and 38 say that while he was weeping with grief he was also snorting with anger. Jesus could not have been weeping for Lazarus because he knew he was about to raise him from the dead. What, then, was he so grieved and angry about? He was furious at the sin and death that had ruined the creation and people he loved.
The book of John makes it clear that Jesus claimed to be God, and so it is significant that he could be angry at death without being angry at himself. The book of Genesis explains how this could be so. Death was not part of God’s original design. We were not created to age, weaken, fade, and die.
We were not created for love relationships that end in death. Death is an intrusion, a result of sin and our human race’s turning away from God. Our sense even now that we were made to last, that we were made for love without parting, is a memory trace of our divine origins. We are trapped in a world of death, a world for which we were not designed.
Excerpt from Making Sense of God: An Invitation to the Skeptical by Timothy Keller
Reprinted by arrangement with Viking Books, a member of Penguin Group (USA) LLC, A Penguin Random House Company. Copyright © 2016 by Timothy Keller
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About this Plan
Our society places such faith in empirical reason, historical progress, and heartfelt emotion that it’s easy to wonder: What role can Christianity play in our modern lives? In this plan, pastor and New York Times bestselling author Timothy Keller invites skeptics to consider that Christianity is more relevant now than ever, and provides believers with inspiring reading on the importance of Christianity today. For more on this topic, buy Timothy Keller’s latest book, Making Sense of God: An Invitation to the Skeptical.
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