I found in Jonathan Edwards an unexpected voice articulating beautiful aspects of death through the lens of Christ.
As was concluded in our last piece, (see the previous post in our series here) the principle that Christ Jesus is the highest of all goods, is applied when Jonathan Edwards considers the interpersonal relationships of saints in his afternoon sermon. The apparent loss of friends and relatives “is a far more grievous and melancholy circumstance of death... than the parting with profits and honors and sensitive pleasures of the world.” Employing an artistic manner of expression, he explains this point in one of his earliest “Miscellanies” entries:
“DEATH OF A SAINT. When a saint dies, he has no cause at all to grieve because he leaves his friends and relations that he dearly loves, for he doth not properly leave them. For he enjoys them still in Christ; because everything he loves in them and loves them for, is in Christ in an infinite degree; whether it be nearness of relation, or any perfection and good received, or love to us, or a likeness in dispositions, or whatever is a rational ground of love.”[1]
At death, the believer must necessarily leave his friends and relations, but whatever the degree of love within those relationships, they are altogether swallowed up as mere vessels within the heavenly ocean of love the saint enjoys through his union with Christ.
“He leaves the persons, ’tis true, but he doesn’t leave the relation, for he enjoys them all in God. Should you be by death separated from your husband or wife, know ye not that ye are espoused to Jesus Christ? You shall not only find all your relations completed and made up in Jesus Christ but shall become related [to] the whole triumphant and glorious family of God. You shall leave a few friends to go to the employment of thousands nearer, dearer, and far more excellent than any upon earth.”[2]
Whatever qualities of love we enjoy within a relationship here, Edwards is saying, is purified and magnified to an eternal degree in Christ, that all other relationships are reputed as nothing. But the goodness of the Lord even includes a purified and intensified love between us and others sanctified by God:
“And besides all this, you do not leave your friends forever; that is, not any of those that are truly excellent and desirable, whom God hath sanctified and made holy, and so worthy to be the objects of your love in the other world. Them you shall meet again in glory. You shall meet them in Heaven and at the resurrection of the just and shall never part more.”[3]
What a comfort this is to the redeemed of Christ!
But the goodness of the Lord even includes a purified and intensified love between us and others sanctified by God.
Next, Edwards grandly delineates the advantages of a Christian’s death:
“First. At death all the troubles and afflictions of a true Christian have come to an eternal end... This is the first thing that is gained by it: A full and perfect deliverance from affliction, and that eternally.
Second. The second thing is a perfect and eternal freedom from sin as the body is put off and all remainders of sin are put off with it, and the soul ascends into the pure hands of its maker.
Third. Death is a perfect freedom from all temptation. The Devil endeavors with all his might to disturb the peace and calm of a believing soul and interrupt its spiritual pleasures by the injections of hellish temptations and devilish suggestions, and so the Christian is very frequently afflicted with this grand adversary. But death puts him out of reach. He, like his great Lord Jesus Christ, triumphs over the Devil by dying.
Fourth. At death, the believer not only gains a perfect and eternal deliverance from sin and temptation but is adorned with a perfect and glorious holiness. The work of sanctification is then completed, and the beautiful image of God has then its finishing strokes by the pencil of God and begins to shine forth with a heavenly beauty like a seraphim.
Fifth. By death, the true believer is brought to the possession of all those heavenly riches, honors, and glorious pleasures that were laid up by Christ for him. Being this made gloriously beautiful, with perfect holiness, he is embraced in the arms of his glorified Redeemer and is conducted to the infinite treasure that was laid up for him...
Sixth. And lastly, the death of a Christian is in order to a more glorious resurrection.”[4]
Under the heading of “APPLICATION” or “USE” is the third and final section of the sermon. The thrust of the exhortation moves on the axiom, “All must undergo death.” The juxtaposition of the saint and the sinner is fully shown in the sermon’s “USE,” particularly as Edwards leaves the lovely descriptions of the heavenly gain of the saint at death and sets forth the reality of eternal spiritual associations: Heaven or Hell.[5]
Death to the Christian is an entrance into eternal pleasures and unspeakable joys, and for this reason Edwards can contemplate the death of even the dearest of friends or the closest of relations with aesthetic categories of beauty. Through Edwards’s perspective, the saint’s death truly is the peaceful and complete homecoming of God’s justified-by-grace adopted and redeemed children. It is the blood of Christ which assures them of their purchase, and it is the Spirit who confirms them in the same.
In an evangelistic twist, Edwards asks, “Is death gain to you? Is it gain for those you love?” Echoing Scripture, Edwards declares that there is only one safe haven from the sting of death, and that is “to be found in Christ.”[6]
I found in Jonathan Edwards an unexpected voice articulating beautiful aspects of death through the lens of Christ. In doing so, my own Lutheran preaching has extended the axiom, “all theology is Christology,” so that even thanatology is determined by Christology.
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[1] “Sermons and Discourses, 1720-1723, Works, 10, Sermon 1, pages 565-577, published as “Living to Christ,” and Sermon 2, pages 579-591, published as “Dying to Gain.”. 167.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Works, 10. 584.
[4] Ibid. 585-87.
[5] Ibid. 589.
[6] Ibid. 590.
