We have no control over the circumstances of our birth. We cannot choose the time, our family, our country. Excepting certain stupid decisions, we have little control over the circumstances of our death. We certainly cannot avoid death (Heb. 9:27).
We can comfort ourselves that none of it is an accident. In Psalm 139, David praises God, saying, “In Your book were all written, The days that were ordained for me, When as yet there was not one of them.” God in heaven controls the start and finish of a life. He declares, “It is I who put to death and give life” (Deut. 32:39).
Death is a cruel enemy. But, did you know that the Bible speaks of yet another death? John recorded a vision of judgment:
…Death and Hades gave up the dead which were in them; and they were judged, every one of them according to their deeds. Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire. And if anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire (Revelation 20:13-15).
If the first death is to die physically, the second death is to die spiritually. It is to be separated from God eternally and thrown into Hell, the lake of fire, where John says, “they will be tormented day and night forever and ever” (Rev. 20:10). “For the cowardly and unbelieving and abominable and murderers and immoral persons and sorcerers and idolaters and all liars, their part will be in the lake that burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death” (Rev. 21:8).
Surely, this second death is far worse than physical death. Our worst fears of suffering violence, drowning, or disease cannot compare to the lake of eternal fire. All physical suffering, no matter how long and torturous, finally ends. The second death does not end.
We can control our participation in the second death! We can live so that the second death “has no power” (Rev. 20:6). Then, the first death is no longer a thing to fear (Matthew 10:28).
Now, here’s where it gets interesting. The Bible speaks of a second birth, too. And, to escape the second death, one needs to participate in the second birth. Jesus taught Nicodemus in John 3:3-5,
“Truly, truly I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.” Nicodemus said to Him, “How can a man be born when he is old? He cannot enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born, can he?”
Jesus answered, “Truly, truly I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.”
The second birth is spiritual, and provides victory over the second death. By grace, through faith, one is taken out of the dead world and placed in the kingdom of God where there is new life. The day of this second birth is the day of one’s baptism into Christ. Romans 6:3-7 says,
Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death? Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.
When we choose to die to the world and be born again in Christ, we escape the hold of death. We must still face physical death, but it shall be for us only a pathway to the throne of God. And the body shall one day follow in the resurrection.
If we refuse to be born again of water and the Spirit, we face physical death alone, and the sundering of body and spirit foreshadows the fearsome second death, the sundering of the spirit from God.
—John Guzzetta