Precious Death
We love life! Why would we not? We have been wonderfully and marvelously made. We have been given intellect with which we can challenge ourselves to learn how to design, build and achieve many interesting and essential things. Anything from the kitchen, to industry, to the field, to family awaits us in life!
But we know, as God’s servant Joshua told Israel, death follows us — it is the way of all the earth (Joshua 23:14). “All go to one place: all are from the dust, and all return to dust” (Ecclesiastes 3:20). Even though we anticipate it, death is not something we love. It is seen as the enemy. “The last enemy that will be destroyed is death” (1 Corinthians 15:26).
God doesn’t like death either, from a particular perspective. Speaking to Israel, He said: “Cast away from you all the transgressions which you have committed, and get yourselves a new heart and a new spirit. For why should you die, O house of Israel? For I have no pleasure in the death of one who dies,” says the Lord God. “Therefore, turn and live!”” (Ezekiel 18:31–32). He wholeheartedly desires that all come to repentance and escape a spiritual death.
There is another category of death, however, that He sees quite differently. “Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints” (Psalm 116:15). The death of God’s faithful is something precious to Him. The word translated “precious” means valuable, bright, costly and excellent – many of the same things that we associate with life.
The death of His saints is precious because of what has transpired in the course of their lives. King David explains: “God is greatly to be feared in the assembly of the saints, and to be held in reverence by all those around Him” (Psalm 89:7). His saints have learned, and are learning, the proper fear of and reverence for God. In doing so, they become overcomers – people after God’s own heart.
Here are some of God’s expectations of His precious saints. “But I say to you who hear: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, and pray for those who spitefully use you. To him who strikes you on the one cheek, offer the other also. And from him who takes away your cloak, do not withhold your tunic either. Give to everyone who asks of you. And from him who takes away your goods do not ask them back” (Luke 6:27–30). How precious and rare is this in a world filled with political backstabbing, ladder climbing and habitual one-upmanship, whether in or out of the church? It has to warm God’s heart to see such a willing transformation!
Our Father gives us many opportunities in which we can grow and develop. The objective of those opportunities is laid out plainly by the Apostle Paul. “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good” (Romans 12:21). Seeing His saints desiring and striving to replace evil with good and always getting up and working harder when they fail must endear us greatly to Him, just as it would our own children to us.
Precious also is the humility of the saints who have the childlike faith to never quit. “Being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ” (Philippians 1:6). Only by faith can the work begun by Christ in us be completed. And it was Christ who said that whoever humbles himself will be exalted. By this, we know that such is surely true, because precious in God’s sight is the death of His saints.
Marshall Stiver
